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The UN – here we go again

November 14, 2017

The UN – here we go again | Anne’s Opinions, 13th November 2017

UN – Useless Nations

It was action replay time at the UN General Assembly last week, as the UN lived down to our expectations and voted to condemn Israel 9 times:

GENEVA, Nov. 10, 2017 – The U.N. General Assembly will condemn Israel nine times today, “part of its annual ritual of enacting 20 Arab-sponsored resolutions singling out the Jewish state, and making no mention of Hamas stabbings, shootings or vehicular attacks against Israelis,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch. Click here for list of 9 resolutions.

By contrast, in this year’s session there will be a total of 6 condemnatory resolutions for the rest of the world combined — with one each on Syria, North Korea, Iran, Crimea, Myanmar, as well as one on the U.S. for its Cuba embargo.

All 193 UN member states participate in the initial committee vote today, and then almost always vote the same way in a second and final vote at the GA plenary in December.

“The U.N.’s assault on Israel today with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said Neuer.

“Even after Syrian president Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people within the past year, the U.N. is about to adopt a resolution — drafted and co-sponsored by Syria — which falsely condemns Israel for ‘repressive measures’ against Syrian citizens on the Golan Heights. It’s obscene,” said Neuer.

“While there will be a total of 20 resolutions against Israel this session, not a single U.N. General Assembly resolution is planned today or this year for gross human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, China, Cuba, Pakistan or Zimbabwe.”

“At a time when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his state-controlled media incite to the continued stabbing and shooting of Israeli Jews, the U.N.’s response is to reflexively condemn Israel in nine separate resolutions, each of them one-sided, each of them utterly silent on Palestinian abuses.”

The resolution drafted annually by Syria condemns Israel for holding on to the Golan Heights, and demands Israel hand the land and its people to Syria.

Israeli military medics assisting wounded Syrians in April. Credit Dusan Vranic/Associated Press

“It’s astonishing,” said Neuer. “After the Syrian regime has killed its own people by the hundreds of thousands over six years, how can the U.N. call for more people to be subject to Assad’s rule? The timing of today’s text is morally galling, and logically absurd.”

“Today’s resolutions claim to care about Palestinians, yet the U.N. is oblivious to the dozens of Palestinians who have been slaughtered, maimed and expelled by Assad’s forces, and more than 3,000 victims killed since 2011.”

“Today’s farce at the General Assembly underscores a simple fact: the U.N.’s automatic majority has no interest in truly helping Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone’s human rights; the goal of these ritual, one-sided condemnations remains the scapegoating of Israel,” said Neuer.

“The U.N.’s disproportionate assault against the Jewish state undermines the institutional credibility of what is supposed to be an impartial international body. Politicization and selectivity harm its founding mission, eroding the U.N. Charter promise of equal treatment to all nations large and small,” Neuer added.

As a further example of the UN’s extreme insanity, there is a possibility that Iran will chair the next UNESCO Executive Board!

A diplomatic battle is under way to prevent Iran’s election to the post of UNESCO Executive Board chairman to replace Michael Worbs of Germany.

The words of Jeremiah in Eicha (Lamentations) illustrated perfectly at UNESCO

Israel has had a contentious relationship with the 58-member board, which in the past has approved resolutions that some say have ignored Jewish ties to Judaim’s holiest site, the Temple Mount.

US and Israeli efforts to block Iran received a boost on Wednesday when the Philippines was one of 27 countries the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s General Assembly elected to a four-year term on the board, effective immediately. Some of those countries are serving their second four-year terms.

In advance of the November 16 election, the board has been split between choosing Iran or South Korea to head the board, but it is possible that the Asia Pacific group will push the Philippines ambassador as a compromise candidate, a diplomatic source speculated in a conversation with The Jerusalem Post.

But the overall make-up of the board with the new members is seen as more hostile to Israel than the previous one.

Germany and the Netherlands lost seats and Turkey gained one. Jordan joined Egypt on the board, thereby providing additional support to any anti-Israel resolutions regarding Jerusalem in the future.

Whether Iran is elected or not, the result is almost irrelevant given the inherent hostility to Israel built in to the organization. The more important issue is the fact that a terror-supporting and revolution-exporting country, which is destabilising the Middle East and holding the world hostage to its desire to build nuclear weapons, could even be considered for such a symbolic post. In fact Iran should not be allowed to be a member of the UN at all.

Then again if the UN expelled every terror-supporting member state, there would be almost no UN left at all. Quite a comforting thought, all in all.

Israel’s Ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama Hacohen, slammed the organization as “the Titanic of international organizations”:

UNESCO is “the Titanic of international organizations,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said, accusing it of deliberately falsifying history to persecute the Jewish people.

Carmel Shama Hacohen argues with a Palestinian diplomat at UNESCO

In a scathing speech Friday to UNESCO’s 39th General Conference in Paris, Carmel Shama-Hacohen also slammed the United Arab Emirates for having given a gift to all member states but Israel, urging delegates to give it back in protest.

…

“UNESCO is the Titanic of international organizations, which was hijacked and led by the Arab Group into crashing the iceberg of politicization, and which has been sinking ever since,” Shama-Hacohen said.

…

He added: “Sadly, UNESCO has been hijacked and abused as a tool for the persecution of Israel and the Jewish people, while concocting fake facts and fake history, meant to erase our history in Jerusalem and rewrite global history.”

Shama-Hacohen dedicated a significant part of his speech to the UAE’s October 30 snub of Israel, though he did not name the Gulf state by name.

At the opening of the General Conference in Paris, the Emirati delegation had placed a box containing a silver medal on the desk of each foreign delegation in honor of the UAE having sponsored the renovation of the conference hall. No box, however, was placed on Shama-Hacohen’s desk.

…

“Even the inauguration of this very hall was contaminated with the poison of politicization, as the donor state handed out to all member missions a greeting letter and a medal memorabilia: all member missions, aside from one — Israel,” the Israeli envoy said Friday. “How petty, how primitive, how pathetic.”

The incident made clear once again “that petro-dollars can buy much, but there’s no price tag on wisdom, manners and etiquette. Your wealth might be in money, but in dignity you are poorer than poor,” he added.

…

“These wrongs are done in full daylight, and all keep quiet: silent accomplices to discrimination in sports: one of the foundations of education and culture, and silent accomplices to the attempts to isolate and ostracize Israel in the inauguration of this hall,” Shama-Hacohen said Friday.

“As for the silver medal, which was handed to you as a gift, I’d return it if I were you, so as not to partake in a despicable act which has no place in a free and enlightened world.”

Kol hakavod to those diplomats who took Hacohen at his word and handed him their medals:

Many foreign diplomats stationed at UNESCO gave him their medals — which bore a portrait of Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai and the country’s finance minister of the UAE — in protest of the UAE’s move, the Israeli envoy said.

“My initial instinct was to put it to good use as a doorstop,” he said. “However, after giving it some more thought, I decided to donate them to the Syrian refugees who are wandering the cold streets of Paris. These refugees include infants and children, who escaped the atrocities of the Syrian regime and the chemical attacks of that member of the Arab Group against its own women, children and innocent civilians.”

He added: “If you only invested in them 1% of the efforts you put in here against Israel, their lives would have been better.”

Watch his speech below. If only his English was better pronunciated he would make a much bigger impact. Nevertheless, kol hakavod on an excellent speech:

As a palate cleanser listen to UN Ambassador the UN Nikki Haley’s fantastic speech to the Israel-American Council as she blasted the previous Obama administration for its betrayal of Israel at the UN, and pledged staunch American support for Israel:

Nikki Haley is a shining example of what a diplomat should look like. Sadly she is a rare diamond in a pig sty.

Categories: Anti-Israel, Anti-Zionism, Nikki Haley, UNESCO, United Nations and Israel
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The UN’s theater of the absurd

November 30, 2014

The UN’s theater of the absurd, Israel Hayom, Ron Prosor, November 30, 2014

(Please see also Ambassador Proser’s recent address to the U.N. General assembly. — DM)

In 1975, after repeated attempts to kick Israel out of the U.N., the General Assembly succumbed to the pressure exerted by the Arab countries and determined that Zionism is racism. The decision was the cornerstone of the institutionalized factory of discrimination against Israel at the United Nations. The U.N. waited 16 long years before retracting its “Zionism is racism” decision. The protocols have been updated, but even with no official reminder, the stain remains on the walls of the general assembly hall and the stench is still in the U.N.’s corridors today.

Of the 193 states that belong to the U.N., only 87 are democracies — less than half. The countries that are taking advantage of the democratic process at the United Nations are the same ones that suppress any spark of democracy within their borders. Although the U.N. uses a parliamentary mechanism, many of the hands raised to vote are the hands of brutal dictators.

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On Nov. 29, 1947, a Saturday night, the entire Yishuv (the Jewish community of pre-state Israel) held its breath. The tiny voice of Brazilian U.N. General Assembly President Osvaldo Aranha blared from the radios in every home. The agenda for the day: Resolution 181 on the end of the British Mandate and the partition plan of Palestine. Holocaust survivors, Jews who were kicked out of Arab lands, the many waves of immigrants to Israel, the pioneers and those who immigrated illegally all cast their lot with the promising institution that would be a magnificent monument to the triumph of good over evil in World War II.

Sixty-seven years after that historical vote — the U.N.’s shattered dream lies before us. Over the years, it has gone from a monument of victory to a memorial, a remnant of the hope that has vanished. Although it was designed to prevent the reoccurrence of Nazi crimes, the U.N. has become an international arena for Arab criminal bullying. The Arab world attacked the Yishuv only hours after rejecting the outcome of the vote, and it did not stop even after the thunder of the Napoleon cannons subsided at the end of the War of Independence. The unification of Arab and Muslim countries at the U.N. has created the foundation for a 120-state-strong anti-Israel diplomatic cartel.

In 1975, after repeated attempts to kick Israel out of the U.N., the General Assembly succumbed to the pressure exerted by the Arab countries and determined that Zionism is racism. The decision was the cornerstone of the institutionalized factory of discrimination against Israel at the United Nations. The U.N. waited 16 long years before retracting its “Zionism is racism” decision. The protocols have been updated, but even with no official reminder, the stain remains on the walls of the general assembly hall and the stench is still in the U.N.’s corridors today.

Of the 193 states that belong to the U.N., only 87 are democracies — less than half. The countries that are taking advantage of the democratic process at the United Nations are the same ones that suppress any spark of democracy within their borders. Although the U.N. uses a parliamentary mechanism, many of the hands raised to vote are the hands of brutal dictators.

The U.N. has gone from being a stage for courageous statecraft to a theater of the absurd: The General Assembly allows wild Palestinian incitement, the Security Council has Venezuela and Malaysia managing peacekeeping forces, and then there is the Human Rights Council, in which the guardians of humanity are regimes without a shred of humanity, regimes that invent blood libels against Israel while in Syria, a tyrant slaughters hundreds of thousands of his own people.

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had a vision of cross-border cooperation. It’s doubtful that this is the United Nations they envisioned: Nations united by their hatred of Israel. Right now, the U.N. is being asked to decide on its place in the annals of history, will it be remembered as an obstacle to the free world or as a magnet to the nations that aspire to join it?

“Our future does not depend on what the Gentiles will say, but on what the Jews will do,” David Ben-Gurion once said. Israel is not waiting for the U.N. to reform itself — our response to its injustices is in our actions. Our response to the demonization of Israel in the Human Rights Council is the uncompromising defense of the rights of all sectors of society, including women, members of the proud community and the disabled. Our response to delegitimization in the Security Council is the contribution of knowledge and professional experience to the U.N. peacekeeping forces. Our response to incitement in the General Assembly is a series of initiatives that aspire to create a better world, including agricultural technology in the Third World, entrepreneurship in developing countries and taking steps toward religious tolerance, like making Yom Kippur the first Jewish holiday officially recognized by the United Nations.

On the fifth day of the Hebrew month of Iyyar in 1948, the Declaration of Independence was signed. Its text mentions the United Nations no less than seven times. The founders of the state committed with their signatures to stay true to the principles of its charter. Even though the U.N. has lost its way, Israel is keeping its promise. Israeli eye doctors are spreading light in East Africa, Israeli officers offer help during every disaster, and the sharing of blue-and-white knowledge and resources brings water and solar energy to areas in need — we will continue to light the way for the international community until we will again gather in our homes in Israel, looking toward the United Nations filled with hope, not disappointment, appreciation and not contempt.

Ron Prosor is the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.

Categories: Antisemitism, Israel
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The UN’s terrorism apologists

October 15, 2014

The UN’s terrorism apologists, New York Daily News, , October 15, 2014

bayefsky16e-1-webHassan Rouhani of Iran.

It’s a two-step charade. First, since the UN has no definition of terrorism, state sponsors of terrorism happily denounce “terrorism” at the very same time as they promote it. Second, the terrorist funders and weapons suppliers redirect the world’s attention to the supposed “root causes” of terrorism.

On Oct. 7, at the legal committee meeting at UN headquarters, Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon listed “root causes that may lead to radicalism such as . . . poverty, social exclusion and marginalization” along with “Islamophobia.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani played the same card in an address to the General Assembly in September when he whined about “Iranophobia.

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While we are looking for terrorists sneaking across borders, lurking in mosques and holed up in caves, pro-terrorist ideology is spreading across America and around the globe — disseminated in plain sight from the United Nations, in the heart of New York City.

Over the past week, the UN’s top legal committee — a General Assembly body where all 193 states are represented — met to discuss terrorism. The webcasts are broadcast globally in multiple languages. The documents are translated and disseminated on a mammoth website free of charge.

It’s a two-step charade. First, since the UN has no definition of terrorism, state sponsors of terrorism happily denounce “terrorism” at the very same time as they promote it. Second, the terrorist funders and weapons suppliers redirect the world’s attention to the supposed “root causes” of terrorism.

Conveniently, the catalog of root causes of terrorism dreamed up in these circles never includes religiously driven bigotry doled out by anti-Semites and misogynist, homophobic sociopaths — whose need to torture, rape and kill requires no deep explanation.

A quick moral inversion, and the terrorist becomes the victim.

The UN was full of such dangerous canards last week.

On Oct. 7, at the legal committee meeting at UN headquarters, Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon listed “root causes that may lead to radicalism such as . . . poverty, social exclusion and marginalization” along with “Islamophobia.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani played the same card in an address to the General Assembly in September when he whined about “Iranophobia.”

Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism. And to the organization’s great shame, Iran is also the president of the so-called “Non-Aligned Movement” — a group of nations routinely aligned against the West. As such, Iran speaks for 120 UN member states — a majority of the 193 UN countries.

Here’s the Iranian speech to the UN legal beagles that was webcast Oct. 7: “Terrorism should not be equated with the legitimate struggle of peoples under colonial or alien domination and foreign occupation for self-determination and national liberation.”

Here’s state sponsor of terrorism North Korea on the same day: “Domination and interference, poverty and social inequality, and racial or religious discrimination constitute the root cause of terrorism. International efforts to put an end to terrorism should be preceded by removing the root cause of terrorism.”

All 56 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation have signed on to the Islamic Convention on Combating International Terrorism, which gives a green light to killing Israelis, Americans and anybody else deemed fair game. The treaty says: “Peoples’ struggle, including armed struggle against foreign occupation, aggression, colonialism and hegemony, aimed at liberation and self-determination . . . shall not be considered a terrorist crime.”

Speaking on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Oct. 7, Egypt reiterated this pro-terror exemption clause. Over the course of Oct. 7 and 8, the UN trumpeted support for the Iranian and Organization of Islamic Cooperation call to arms from half of all the speakers.

Compounding the efficacy of this outrage, unfortunately, is the Obama administration. With great fanfare, on Sept. 24,, President Obama chaired a Security Council meeting that unanimously adopted a resolution on foreign terrorist fighters.

But the only reason everybody could agree that “terrorism constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security” was because terrorism was left undefined.

Moreover, the Security Council didn’t just denounce terrorism. It demanded we “address the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism.” Next it insisted we “counter the violent, extremist narrative that can incite terrorist acts.” And then it ordered us to “address the conditions conducive to the spread of violent extremism.”

In other words, Obama sold us an infinite regression. Because at the UN, the buck never stops with radical Islamists or the governments that support them.

Categories: International Community, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Obama, Syria, Terrorism, United Nations
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