Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and
the Holocaust (IHRH), stood before the U.N. and lambasted it for fanning
the flames of global anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, according to a
copy of her remarks.
Bayefsky delivered her rebuke during an informal briefing on the
threat anti-Semitism poses to international peace and security that was organized on the sidelines of the U.N. by the permanent mission of Palau.
While the briefing took place within the U.N.’s walls—and was
attended mainly by members of the public and outside organizations—it
was not formally sponsored by the international organization, leading Bayefsky to launch a scathing criticism.
The United Nations has barred Jews from attending a Monday meeting of the United Nations Division of 'Palestinian' Rights reports Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust (IHRH), a U.N.-approved NGO group, claims the U.N. Division for Palestinian Rights
(UNDPR) has unjustly barred 18 pro-Israel Jews from attending a Monday
event marking the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian
People.”
U.N. security officials initially had granted the Touro Institute
credentials permitting 18 Birthright Israel alumni to attend the daylong series of meetings, which will be attended by the U.N.’s most high-level officials.
However, those credentials were quickly revoked at the behest of the
UNDPR, according to IHRH officials and e-mails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The incident has sparked a pointed back-and-forth between U.N.
officials and IHRH director Anne Bayefsky, who accuses the body of
allowing the UNDPR to effectively bar pro-Israel groups from attending
major events regarding the Palestinians.
Bayefsky is concerned that this behavior is part of a larger trend by
the Palestinians to control the narrative at the U.N. and prevent
dissenting voices from being heard.
Bayefsky has registered her concerns with multiple U.S. officials and
even U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, who has yet to reply.
“This is the face of modern anti-Semitism by the U.N.,” Bayefsky told the Free Beacon
when asked about the days-long back-and-forth. “This is the how
discrimination works in the real-life operation of the U.N. Where is
Ambassador Samantha Power?”
Well I sure hope she's fighting anti-Israel bias like she promised. Still waiting for someone in the Obama administration to speak up about this. Not holding my breath....
Two countries felt that they needed to respond to Prime Minister Netanyahu's UN General Assembly speech: Iran and North Korea. Anne Bayefsky reports:
North Korea called Israel “a cancer in the Middle East.”
The Iranian ambassador pounded his chest and then said Iran was guilty of nothing but a “smile attack.”
Ironically, the two made Netanyahu’s case for him. The threats of
antisemitism and of nuclear weapons in the hands of states sponsors of
terror are inextricably bound.
The Israeli Prime Minister pointed to a series of inconvenient facts
about Iranian intentions and actions that the Obama administration has
either rejected or ignored in its quest for peace in our time.
When the Iranian regime’s stooges chant “death to the Jews” they mean
it. Rouhani is “acceptable” inside Iran because he’s a loyal follower
of its Supreme Leader.
There was nothing democratic about Rouhani’s election, which came after 99% of candidates were banned from running.
Rouhani is no innocent; he was national security advisor while his regime murdered Israelis and Americans around the world.
After his appointment, the Iranian nuclear weapons program has
continued unabated. His rhetoric may be “soothing,” but there is no
substantial difference with his predecessor, Ahmadinejad.
In Netanyahu’s words: “I wish I could believe Rouhani, but I don't. Because facts are stubborn things.”
His problem, however, is that President Obama is even more stubborn.
Here's an interview with Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (unfortunately, it takes a few seconds for the sound to kick in).
Ireland is reportedly blocking efforts inside the European Union to
formally blacklist Hezbollah as a terror organization. Britain recently
initiated procedures to add the Iran-backed terror group to the E.U.
blacklist, after Bulgarian officials linked Hezbollah to the July 2012
Burgas bombing that killed six civilians and a Cypriot court convicted a
confessed Hezbollah member on terrorism-related charges. The U.S. has
repeatedly called upon the E.U. to follow its example and ban the group,
which has established deep roots on the Continent.
Even as Hezbollah's reach is seen in South America and Syria the European Union refuses to sanction the terror group operating within its borders.
But when it comes to Israel, the world is more intent on preparring a
final solution. In the farcically named UN Human Rights Council, 67
nations and organizations heartily approved the report of asylum
escapee, Richard Falk, condemning Israel. In a just world someone like
Falk would issue his statements from behind the walls of an institution,
but in the topsy-turvey world of the UN he is a respected "Special
Rapporteur." Naturally, in this venue he received support from even the world's worst rights abusers. Look at how they piled on.
During the interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur, speakers
condemned Israel’s persistent refusal to cooperate with the Special
Rapporteur and expressed concerns at the persistence of settlement
activities and human rights violations, including restrictions on
movement, arrests and harassment of Palestinians, and the particular
effects on children. They highlighted the need to put an end to impunity
for human rights violations. Speakers regretted the deterioration of
the situation in Gaza due to the ongoing blockade and the loss of
civilian lives. Some delegations echoed the proposal of the Special
Rapporteur to investigate the activities of businesses connected with
Israeli settlement activity. Others complained about the unbalanced
mandate of the Special Rapporteur and the presence of political
considerations in his report. Mr. Falk was accused of being
anti-Semitic.
Speaking in the discussion were Pakistan on behalf of the Organization
of Islamic Cooperation, the European Union, Mauritania, Egypt, South
Africa, Algeria on behalf of the Arab Group, Indonesia, Iceland, Jordan,
Lebanon, Tunisia, Iran on behalf of the Non Aligned Movement, Iraq,
Qatar, Cuba, Ecuador, Angola, Venezuela, Kuwait, Chile, Morocco,
Bahrain, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Syria, Algeria, Turkey,
Iran, Maldives, Zimbabwe, the United Nations Children’s Fund and
Malaysia.
No, you didn't misread. Syria - whose government has killed more than
80,000 over the past two years - and its patron, Iran (of the laughably
named "non-aligned movement) sit in judgment of Israel in this venue. In
the asylum that is the UN, this is hardly remarkable.
There were, however two speeches that weren't anti-Israel and were, instead, indictments of the "human rights" establishment.
Mr. Falk, in the first page of your report, you attack my NGO and ask
this Council to launch an investigation in order to shut us down.
Does your report allege a crime? No, you simply object to our words. We
are the only watchdog at the UN, and we report what you say. In
reprisal, you now seek to muzzle our voice, to avoid being held
accountable.
The real issue is whether your work, conducted under the banner of human
rights, actually exonerates and exculpates the perpetrators of
terrorism.
.@tomfriedman Earlier, Joseph was falsely accused; as Israel is now. Funny that you left that part out.
— David Gerstman (@soccerdhg) June 5, 2013
But I missed a major goof.
And the world for the most part would not begrudge Israel keeping its
forces on the Jordan River — as will be necessary given the instability
beyond — if it ceded most of the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of
East Jerusalem.
Oh, and don't forget Friedman's other "if-then" fallacy here - that the
world would allow Israel to keep the Jordan Valley as a buffer if only
it would offer the Palestinian Arabs a state. Wasn't that already
offered and rejected?
The bolded phrase contradicts all of the Palestinian statements made
about Israel keeping any soldiers in the West Bank. In point of fact,
the Palestinians absolutely begrudge Israel a force on the Jordan.
Well, I do not know about the "world" but the Pals. would certainly not agree.
Friedman loves to pose as someone who understands simple truths that
those in power (especially in Israel) fail to appreciate. But here he
shows that he hasn't been paying attention to the past twenty years of
the peace process. Maybe in 1993 an Israeli presence in the Jordan
Valley was an accommodation would have made. It is no longer.
3) Soccer news
Despite efforts of anti-Israel activists to prevent it, Israel hosted
this year's UEFA (European soccer's governing body) under 21
championship. Israel did not advance in the tournament. However, the
Israeli team did win its final match in Jerusalem against England. Ofir Krieff, of the Israeli team, scored the game winning goal.
To score in the capital city, in my home town, in front of my home fans,
is a fantastic feeling. We did a really good job. The credit goes to
the team and not to me even though I scored. It's all thanks to the
great work of the staff and the players.
I think that we had a really good tournament overall. To win four points
against these kind of teams is a big achievement. We had some criticism
and it wasn't always right. This team has a lot of potential and we
proved it today against England which is nothing to take for granted.
When I scored I just thought that we had finally got the win after this
hard work. The credit goes to Guy [Luzon]. It was highly important to
finish with a good taste because of him and I'm happy that we gave him
this goodbye present. "I wanted to run over to him but afterwards I saw
nothing because everybody was all over me".
This is a 20-year-old, after all, from a world far removed from the one
he now inhabits as a professional footballer. Defender Twatha is from a
Bedouin family, born and brought up in Jisr az-Zarqa, a coastal town in
the north of Israel which did not even have a football pitch when he was
growing up.
"We have only 13,000 people in Jisr," the left-back explained to
UEFA.com. "Jisr is a very poor town and when I was young there was no
football there – not even a football field. I'm the youngest in my
family. My eldest brother studies medicine in Italy. My other brother
does the same but in Germany. My sister finished nursing school in
Jordan. My father is the school principal and my mum is also a teacher.
I'm the only one to have gone into professional sport."
That he ended up playing UEFA Champions League football for Maccabi
Haifa FC aged just 17 was the result, he says, of a serendipitous moment
seven years earlier – namely, a random phone call from a family friend.
"I tried gymnastics, tennis, karate, but only in the fifth grade did I
start playing football. I had some luck because I was in the car with my
dad one day when a friend of his saw a newspaper ad about a football
school and phoned him about it. I interrupted the call and told him I
wanted to go. Just a year later I moved to Maccabi Haifa."
It was here on the wooded slopes of Latrun on Tuesday that Saeb Erekat,
the chief Palestinian negotiator, chose to mark the anniversary of the
outbreak of the 1967 war and to call for an end of Israeli occupation.
“I am sure many of you are asking why is Saeb Erekat bringing you to
this point,” Mr. Erekat said to a group of diplomats and reporters as he
stood against a backdrop of green fields, a reservoir and an Israeli
settlement of red-roofed houses in the valley below.
“It is not because I want to demarcate the maps or finalize the
negotiations,” he said, referring to the intensive efforts of Secretary
of State John Kerry to get the Israelis and Palestinians to return to
peace talks. “I just want to stand here and say, ‘It is 46 years later.’
”
Control of Latrun was critical for control of the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and at the time, Arab forces had been poised to to attack Irael's narrow coastal corridor. Much as Erekat obfuscates the issue, control of Latrun was essential for Israel's survival.
The New York Times continues.
If nothing else, Mr. Erekat’s selection of Latrun spoke to the great
distance between Palestinians and Israelis. Many Israelis consider
Latrun to be an integral part of Israel. Drivers heading to either Tel
Aviv or Jerusalem speed across the unmarked armistice lines along the
main highway, slicing through several miles of West Bank territory and
designated stretches of buffer zone, oblivious to the area’s fraught
history.
The reporter tells us the obvious, but leaves out something else that is
obvious. The Palestinians once again are seeking to "move the
goalposts." Erekat's press conference was apparently the first move in a
new campaign.
The 'Palestinians' have responded to US Secretary of State John FN
Kerry's pressure on Israel for concessions... by seeking even more
concessions. The 'Palestinians' are now seeking two of Israel's biggest
tourist attractions: Mini Israel and the Latrun tank museum. In fact,
they're seeking the whole area around Latrun...
A favored Palestinian official gives a press conference and a reporter
for the New York Times dutifully records his statements without
explaining what he is doing. She simply writes, "here's one more
Palestinian that needs to be addressed by Israel," and not "the
Palestinians keep changing their demands."
Jonathan Tobin comments:
Erekat’s candor is in a sense quite commendable. Latrun is a potent
symbol of the nature of the Israel that existed in those halcyon days
before the obstacle to peace was the presence of Jews in the West Bank
and in which a small state with indefensible borders and a capital that
could be isolated with ease stood on the precipice of destruction as
Arab armies began to mass on its borders. Erekat was sending a clear
message to Israelis that if they thought the PA would ever accept the
fact that the world had irrevocably changed in those 46 years they could
just keep dreaming.
As Erekat well knows there now exists a broad consensus within Israel
about the desirable nature of a two-state solution. That consensus
includes Prime Minister Netanyahu and most of the members of his
government. Indeed, even the Israeli right knows that if the
Palestinians ever offered a complete end to the conflict and recognized
the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders were drawn
they would find the majority ready to make painful territorial
sacrifices. But by laying down a marker on Latrun—a place that no
Israeli in his right mind would ever consider leaving—Erekat was making
it clear their real priority was not peace but an effort to merely
continue the conflict on more advantageous terms.
Indeed, reminding Israelis of the Israel that existed from 1949 to 1967
is not exactly the way to reassure his ostensible peace partners of the
PA’s good intentions. But of course what else can you expect of a peace
negotiator that has boycotted peace talks for the past four and a half
years?
Israel begged Jordan not to join the war. King Hussein convinced of
Egypt's early success against Israel joined in seeking to cut Israel in
half. western Jerusalem was bombarded. Israel did not decide "we will
dispossess the Palestinians" and seek war. War was forced on them and
they fought to survive. Erekat wishes for the world to forget that.
If the Six Day War hadn't happened... Would there be a Palestinian Arab state today on the West Bank and Gaza?
Perhaps that's something that Erekat ought to consider. If Jordan hadn't
attacked Israel in 1967, would he now be an international celebrity for
promoting Palestinian nationhood?
The rest of the New York Times article is a lament about how both sides
are being unreasonable and how this mutual stubbornness will sink Jonh Kerry's peace plan.
When it's one side that refused to negotiate and then changes the
parameters of negotiations isn't that the side that is uninterested in
peace?
Anne Bayefsky reports that the United Nations' chief 'human rights officer,' Navi Pillay, is doing all she can to make sure that September's Durban III conference is unyieldingly anti-Israel.
For Pillay, championing the Durban conference and its manifesto, the Durban Declaration, is a personal crusade. A native of Durban herself, shortly after her appointment she explained to a Geneva audience that the city's mayor asked her to "rescue the name of Durban," given its unflattering association with anti-Semitism. In response, she helped launch both Durban II in Geneva in 2009 and Durban III.
Unfortunately, her efforts to legitimize the Durban Declaration have little to do with the most basic of human rights: equality. The Durban Declaration charges only one country with racism among all 192 UN states - Israel. It calls Palestinians "victims" of Israeli racism, a 21st century reincarnation of the Zionism-is-racism libel. When Durban II ended with an "outcome document" that reaffirmed the Durban Declaration, Pillay gloated in a news conference on April 24, 2009, that Palestine is indeed "mentioned in the Durban Declaration and the word 'reaffirm' carries those paragraphs into this document."
While Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the "anti-racism" crowd at Durban II, Pillay remained glued to her seat. UN videotape shows her simply watching democratic states walk out in disgust, although she and her secretariat colleagues had a copy of his Holocaust-denying speech in advance. Despite her later scramble, when under pressure, to distance herself from his comments, she issued a flowery thank-you to the Organization of the Islamic Conference for their role in Durban II - which included warm applause for Ahmadinejad.
Pillay's enthusiasm for the Durban "anti-racism" agenda goes hand in hand with her single-minded pursuit of the demonization of Israel throughout her tenure. In January 2009, Pillay called for the creation of what became the Goldstone inquiry. In August 2009, she issued a report that lauded Hamas for having "made public statements that it is committed to respect international human rights and humanitarian law." After Goldstone claimed that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians, Pillay said on Sept. 30, 2009, "I lend my full support to Justice Goldstone's report and its recommendations." Goldstone has since recanted the veracity of his slur; Pillay has not.
...
It is little wonder, therefore, that Pillay should be a fan of Durban III. On Monday, she confirmed that she will be coming to New York to participate in Durban III, which she described as an "important event . . . to combat discrimination." Discrimination defined by the sponsors of discrimination itself.
Each day that they continue to belong to the 'human rights council' headed by Pillay is an eternal stain upon western democracies.
Hudson Institute and Touro College running anti-Durban conference
Hudson Institute and Touro College running a conference on September 22 - the day of the Durban III conference - between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm. The conference is entitled The Perils of Global Intolerance: the United Nations & "Durban III" and will take place at the UN Millenium Plaza Hotel.
The Hudson Institute and the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust today announced an historic conference targeting manifestations of racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance at the United Nations. The conference will coincide with the highly controversial UN event known as “Durban III.” Organizers were galvanized, according to Anne Bayefsky, a Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute and Director of the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, after learning that “Americans will be mourning the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 at the same time as the United Nations will appear to be legitimizing the kind of intolerance that drives terrorism itself.”
"Durban III" is intended to "commemorate" the 10th anniversary of the UN-sponsored anti-Semitic hatefest that took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001. The final product of that conference – the Durban Declaration – charged Israel with racism, the only one of the UN's 192 state members so accused. Led by Congressman and Holocaust survivor Tom Lantos, the United States – along with Israel – walked out of Durban I in disgust.
According to conference organizer, Anne Bayefsky, a Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute and Director of the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, "The Durban conference legitimized hate speech on a global scale." At the widely-perceived racist "anti-racism" conference, the streets were filled with signs such as "for the liberation of Quds machine guns based on faith and Islam must be used," and handouts with Hitler's photo read "What if I had won? The good things: there would be no Israel..." Durban I ended three days before 9/11. The Durban Review Conference, or Durban II, was held in Geneva in 2009, and the only world leader to attend was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Organizers of the "Perils of Global Intolerance" conference were galvanized, Bayefsky said, after learning that "Americans will be mourning the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 at the same time as the United Nations is legitimizing the kind of intolerance that drives terrorism in the first place."
The one-day conference will be a call to action. "Given the events that Durban III is intended to commemorate," Bayefsky noted, "the UN will sadly serve as a global platform to promote the inverse of its original purposes and principles. It is imperative to deny legitimacy to prejudice and the Durban Declaration."
A Speakers List of International Prominence
The conference has gathered an impressive array of distinguished speakers from three continents, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, former US UN Ambassador John Bolton, former Governor Mike Huckabee, world-renowned scholar Bernard Lewis, Ronald Lauder is the current President of the World Jewish Congress, Academy-award winning actor Jon Voight, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Harvard Professor and best-selling author Alan Dershowitz, a psychologist named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world Wafa Sultan, Sudanese human rights activist Simon Deng, former Israeli UN Ambassador Dore Gold, Harvard Professor and National Humanities Medal recipient Ruth Wisse, veteran award-winning journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, Hoover Institution Fellow and National Humanities Medal recipient Shelby Steele, bestselling author and award-winning UK journalist Douglas Murray, and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy Zuhdi Jasser.
Political and other leaders who have a genuine interest in combating xenophobia will be provided a crucial forum to speak with passion about their concerns, and to distance America and decent people everywhere from a multilateralism divorced from fundamental freedoms and inalienable rights.
Read the whole thing. If any of you (especially fellow bloggers) are planning to go, please let me know via email. Yes, I would love to go....
When Geraldine Ferraro stood up to the UN Israel bashers
I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to Geraldine Ferraro - the former Queens Congresswoman and Vice Presidential candidate who passed away over the weekend - than this article by Anne Bayefsky.
At WEOG meetings, Western states hammered out shared policy on issues of common interest before stepping into the full morass of the U.N.’s top human-rights body. At that time, one quarter of all the resolutions adopted by the commission that were critical of specific states condemned Israel alone, while the commission remained silent on almost all egregious violations of human rights around the world. For 25 years, the formal agenda of the commission, which governed every meeting, had contained one item devoted to demonizing Israel and one item to human rights on the almost 200 other U.N. members.
This was the environment into which Ferraro stepped. In addition, she found herself in the middle of an attempt at U.N. “reform.”
The reform effort of that era came to a head in one memorable meeting of WEOG when it became clear that the Europeans had caved to Arab and Muslim states and were prepared to agree on proposals for “reform” that left the Israel-demonization agenda item exactly as it was. In walked Geraldine Ferraro. I don’t remember her staying long or saying much. She just said no. Such a reform sham was not consistent with American values and the United States would not be part of it. She couldn’t be bullied by the multilateral pressure to appear “cooperative.”
With extraordinary poise and straight talk she put everyone else in that room to shame. I remember having to restrain myself from jumping up and clapping in that stuffy chamber, composed almost entirely of men who had spent their careers clawing to the top of foreign offices by being exactly the opposite of Geraldine Ferraro.
In a twist of fate, only a day before she died, virtually the same scenario played out in Geneva 15 years later. A “reform” package was before the Human Rights Council. Again it was a sham. And again it left the same demonization-of-Israel agenda item in place. Only this time, President Obama and Eileen Donahoe, a former fundraiser and his ambassador to the council, desperate for the approval of an un-American audience, waved it through by consensus. Today among Democrats the moral courage necessary to withstand the U.N. hordes is in short supply. Ferraro will be missed.
I'd tell you that Ferraro had more courage and integrity in her pinky than Obama has in his entire body, but that wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a compliment as the story told above.
Shavua tov, a good week, once again. Unlike the two previous posts and the two following posts, all of which I prepared before the Sabbath, this one is more or less live.
The United States vetoed the 'Palestinian'-sponsored UN Security Council resolution. But the Obama administration did not miss the opportunity to slam Israel anyway.
In explaining her veto, US Ambassador Susan E. Rice said the vote should not be misunderstood as support for settlement activity.
“On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” she declared. “Continued settlement activity violates Israel’s international commitments, devastates trust between the parties, and threatens the prospects for peace…
“Every potential action must be measured against one overriding standard: will it move the parties closer to negotiations and an agreement? Unfortunately, this draft resolution risks hardening the positions of both sides. It could encourage the parties to stay out of negotiations and, if and when they did resume, to return to the Security Council whenever they reach an impasse.”
Rice was not alone. Shortly before the UN vote, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told ABC's Christiane Amanpour that Israeli 'settlements' are 'illegitimate' (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
In an exclusive interview with "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpour taped on Friday afternoon, Clinton said, "I think it is absolutely clear to say, number one, that it's been American policy for many years that settlements were illegitimate and it is the continuing goal and highest priority of the Obama administration to keep working toward a two-state solution with both Israelis and Palestinians."
...
In December 2010, Clinton took a similarly harsh line against continued Israeli settlements.
"We do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity," she said in a speech at the Brookings Institution. "We believe their continued expansion is corrosive not only to peace efforts and two-state solution, but to Israel's future itself."
Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney got it right in this piece in National Review (Hat Tip: Memeorandum) in which he tears apart the idea of a UN Security Council 'Presidential statement,' which the US offered as a 'compromise' earlier in the week.
For one thing, the U.N. condemnation put forward by the president puts Israel, our closest ally in the region, in an untenable position. In exchange for peace, previous Israeli governments offered radical border concessions, surrendering most of the West Bank and even portions of Jerusalem. In 2005, the government of Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Gaza Strip, uprooting thousands of its own citizens. Yet all such proposals and steps toward peace have been met by Palestinian rejection, by intifadas, by suicide bombings, and by Qassam rocket fire. Isolated more than ever in the region, Israel must now contend with the fact that its principal backer in the world, the United States, is seeking to ingratiate itself with Arab opinion at its expense. Will an increasingly tenuous relationship with the U.S., at the very moment when it is becoming more vulnerable, encourage Israel to be as flexible as it has in the past, or the reverse? The answer is clear.
For another thing, even on its own terms of supposedly promoting the Arab-Israeli peace process, this is not a step forward but a step back. By taking up and embracing a core Palestinian demand, as the president has done repeatedly on this issue over the past two years, the United States is removing incentives for the Palestinians to parley with Israel at all. They are induced to believe that they can simply wait until their demands are handed to them on a silver platter by Washington. The administration’s contemplated compromise in the U.N. thus would punish Israel and reward Palestinian intransigence.
The harm wrought by the Obama administration’s diplomatic decisionmaking is doubly driven home by the fact that it is taking place in that chamber of double-standards, the United Nations. For decades the U.N. has been the epicenter of the worldwide campaign to delegitimize Israel, a campaign that has often devolved into naked anti-Semitism. Democratic and Republican administrations alike have long resisted this vicious business. It was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who in 1975 denounced the U.N.’s “Zionism Equals Racism” resolution as an obscenity, and it was Pres. George H. W. Bush who in 1991 won its repeal. The Obama administration is abysmally remiss in departing from our proud tradition of standing by a democratic ally when the world’s most unsavory regimes gang up on it.
Finally, there's this from Anne Bayefsky (which I also received by email).
To understand just how evil the scene is, it is necessary to talk about what happened to Lara Logan. The CBS reporter was in Cairo last week covering the aftermath of the overthrow of Mubarak, when she was brutally sexually assaulted by democracy-celebrating Egyptians heard yelling “Jew, Jew.” It does not matter that she wasn’t Jewish. It does matter that the hatred and anti-Semitism which runs so deep among the masses screaming for tolerance, for everybody but Jews, is precisely what is driving the diplomatic mobs at the UN. Ganging up on Israel at the UN Security Council is an ugly and contemptible scene.
Iranians are rioting today against a vicious government that stones women for alleged adultery, murders homosexuals for the crime of existing, amputates limbs by judicial decree, brutalizes anyone wanting free speech, and is currently holding two Americans hostage for hiking. Is there a Security Council resolution in the works on the dying and the dead in Iran? Bahrain? Libya? Tunisia? Egypt? Algeria? Not the slightest possibility.
The only thing on the table at the UN is a statement that it is illegal for any Jew to live on any land that is claimed by Palestinian Arabs. Not only is this a racist recipe for an apartheid Palestine, it is also a direct violation of the American and UN-sponsored “Middle East Roadmap.” The Roadmap states that the settlement issue will not be finally resolved until final status negotiations – “Phase III:… a final, permanent status resolution . . . on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements.” This Security Council resolution is intended to take the settlements issue off the table and pre-determine the outcome without having to negotiate or actually live with Jewish neighbors.
It is a familiar pattern. The Obama administration has repeatedly used the UN to do its diplomatic dirty work of backstabbing an ally while assuring voters of the reverse. Last May, it agreed to Arab demands to hold Israel up as the world’s gravest nuclear threat at a major 2012 international meeting. Last August, it foisted upon Israel a UN Secretary-General investigation over nine Turkish extremists killed on a boat while attempting to pave the way for an Iranian port on the Mediterranean. In 2009, it joined the UN Human Rights Council, the most notorious anti-Israel UN body of them all, immediately lending it undeserved credibility. And it is still refusing to pull out of the UN’s latest “anti-racism” bash known as Durban III — scheduled for New York City in September — though demonizing the Jewish state is the meeting’s raison d’etre.
Last week UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay held a news conference in Jerusalem to make it clear that her first priority was to condemn Israelis for building and living, not Arab states for destroying and killing.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
