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Resources updated between Monday, February 21, 2011 and Sunday, February 27, 2011

February 27, 2011

February 26, 2011

February 25, 2011

February 24, 2011

Wednesday, February 23, 2011




Click here to watch how the UN Human Rights Council treated Libya before the people of Libya said "enough."

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The following snapshot by Anne Bayefsky appears today on Pajamas Media.

Here are some vital statistics on the current crisis in the Arab and Muslim world and the rolenot being played by the "global leader," the United Nations:


The UN Security Council job description
(The Charter of the United Nations)

The Purposes of the United Nations are: (1) To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace...

*****


Number of UN Security Council presidential statements or resolutions on the current atrocities perpetrated against their own people by Arab and Muslim dictators in Iran, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain.

ZERO

Number of meetings called by the Security Council to discuss and consider a possible resolution or presidential statement on any of these countries.

ZERO

*****

The UN Human Rights Council job description
(General Assembly Resolution A/RES/60/251)

The General Assembly (1) Decides to establish the Human Rights Council...(2) Decides that the Council shall be responsible for promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of any kind and in a fair and equal manner; (3) Decides also that the Council should address situations of violations of human rights, including gross and systematic violations, and make recommendations thereon...(10) Decides further that the Council...shall be able to hold special sessions, when needed...

*****

Number of special sessions called by the Human Rights Council to draw attention to, discuss, consider a possible resolution on the current atrocities perpetrated against their own people by Arab and Muslim dictators in Iran, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain.

ZERO

Number of resolutions or decisions adopted by the Human Rights Council about the lack of democracy and brutality of the governments of Arab and Muslim dictators in Iran, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia,Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain.

ZERO

*****

Membership Qualifications for the United Nations Human Rights Council
– its lead human rights body (General Assembly Resolution A/RES/60/251)


8. Decides that...when electing members of the Council, Member States shall take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights...9. Decides also that members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights...

*****

Current Members of the UN Human Rights Council

Libya
Saudi Arabia
Bahrain

Egypt just concluded a three-year term in 2010.


*****

On the other hand,

Number of Special Sessions on country situations called by the Human Rights Council on Israel

50% (6 of 12)

Number of Resolutions and Decisions adopted by the Human Rights Council critical of the human rights record of specific states directed at Israel

50% (41 of 83)

Tripoli streets 'lined with dead' Human Rights Voices

Monday, February 21, 2011

This article by Anne Bayefsky and Benjamin Weinthal appears today on National Review Online.

It is no coincidence that the Hezbollah-dominated Lebanese government, a non-standing member of the U.N. Security Council and an Iranian subsidiary, sponsored a resolution last Friday condemning Israeli housing construction in the disputed territories. The anti-Israel-resolution activity diverted the U.N. Security Council from passing resolutions against such authoritarian regimes as Iran and Libya for shooting their citizens and suppressing pro-democracy efforts.

Arab despots - and Iran's regime - have a tried-and-true method for deflecting attention from their profoundly anti-democratic and repressive political systems: Formulate a U.N. resolution to condemn the Jewish State and its vibrant democracy. The fact that EU countries - for example Germany, which asserts that Israel's national security is integral to German interests - joined the diplomatic assault on Israel is nothing short of a major body blow to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

The resolution placed the Obama administration in a bind, especially in light of its having made the U.N. the cornerstone of its foreign policy, notwithstanding the organization's inability to define terrorism or stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and its anti-Israel obsession. But in the end, the president knew that the resolution would be a death knell to the peace process - because instead of negotiating over what are clearly final-status issues, like settlements, the U.N. would have decided outcomes in advance - so the administration vetoed the resolution (with "regret") over the votes of the 14 remaining council members. But the mere fact that the resolution got this far is a stark indication of the Obama administration's foreign-policy impotence.

President Obama consumed an hour on the telephone in an attempt to convince Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw the anti-Israel resolution, but was snubbed, in what will surely be one of the more humiliating memories he takes from office. And the Palestinian leader isn't finished. The veto in the Security Council now opens the door for a so-called resumed emergency session of the U.N. General Assembly. That would be almost the 20th time that the "10th" emergency session has been "resumed" since 1997. In all those years, there has never been a U.N. General Assembly emergency session on any other subject, genocides and horrors around the world notwithstanding. Abbas wants another one, which he will probably get, about Israeli construction.

The explanation U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice gave to the Security Council after casting her negative vote neatly captured the Obama administration's Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde approach to the Jewish State. Instead of taking the opportunity to mention the critical problems unfolding in the Middle East - the agenda item was called "The Situation in the Middle East, Including The Palestinian Question" - she labeled Israel's home-building "folly and illegitimacy" and castigated our only democratic ally in the region as "devastat[ing] trust . . . and threaten[ing] the prospects for peace." Make no mistake, Iran, Libya, Algeria, and the rest of the thugs brutalizing their populations took notice. After all, this took place in the U.N. body with ultimate responsibility for protecting international peace and security.

The U.N.'s pathological obsession with turning Israel into a diplomatic punching bag was well known before the vote. But there is no excuse for the United States, or Britain, France, and Germany, to legitimize the spectacle.

The EU's bizarre and flawed fixation on settlement construction as the linchpin of Mideast peace turned absurd in the British, German, and French statement advocating a one-sided resolution rebuking Israel. It stated: "A way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states." In short, while paying lip service to a negotiated resolution to the conflict, the EU unilaterally purported to settle one of the core elements to be negotiated.

The German move was an extension of its intemperate legislative language toward Israel. In 2010, the Merkel administration made no effort to convince members of its coalition government in the Bundestag not to agree to a resolution blaming the Jewish state for "violating the principle of proportionality" against the occupants of the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara. The ship contained a hardcore group of jihadists whose only aim was to diminish Israel's right to self-defense and create an Iranian port on the Mediterranean.

Israel's ambassador to Berlin was apparently under the mistaken impression that the Merkel administration would likely reject the Security Council resolution. But the anti-Israeli writing was plainly on the wall. As a 2009 WikiLeaks cable from U.S. diplomats in Berlin reveals, Christoph Heusgen, a senior adviser to Merkel, urged the U.S to water down its opposition to the U.N.'s anti-Israel "Goldstone Report" in order to force Israel to freeze settlement construction. The dispatch from Heusgen, Merkel's point man on the Middle East, ought to raise giant question marks over her oft-repeated declarations to the U.S. Congress and the Israeli Knesset that the Jewish state's security is "non-negotiable" for Germany.

A day after German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle instructed his U.N. diplomats to add Germany's voice to the round of condemnations at the Security Council, he traveled to Tehran and met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There were no statements about Israel's security, Iranians dying in the streets, or Ahmadinejad's grotesque denial of the Holocaust. Iranian dissidents speaking to AP called Westerwelle's meeting "simply a disgrace." "His meeting ignored the ruling regime's terror, the people's suffering," they said.

British and French support for the resolution comes at a time when we are learning how deeply immersed both countries are with the dirty business of propping up unsavory regimes in Tunisia and Libya. WikiLeaks cables point directly to Britain's role in releasing the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, in exchange for British energy giant BP's right to access and develop Libyan oil. During the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tunisia, France's foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie offered a sophisticated French police-skills program to the security forces of now-deposed Tunisian despot Ben Ali.

It is long overdue for the EU and the U.S. to make good on their promise to leave the talks about all final-status issues, including settlements and territorial compromises, to the parties themselves. As of today, the EU has given the Palestinians no compelling reason to return to the bargaining table or get serious about living side-by-side with a Jewish state. Instead of obsessing over Israel, the time is now ripe to acquire a healthy obsession with democracy promotion in the Muslim and Arab worlds.