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Resources updated between Monday, September 24, 2012 and Sunday, September 30, 2012

Friday, September 28, 2012

This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on Fox News.

On Sept. 27, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu came to the UN General Assembly and laid it all on the table. He held up a stylized drawing of a bomb, explained to the nations of the world the three stages of enriching the uranium required to produce a nuclear weapon, took out a red marker and drew a red line across the chart.

The red line – the stage after which Iran can no longer be stopped from getting a nuclear bomb.

The step Iran must not be allowed to cross, if we are to eliminate this perilous threat to our way of life.

And the red line which President Obama refuses to draw.

As Secretary of State Hilary Clinton told Bloomberg News from Russia on Sept. 9: "We're not setting deadlines."

Ironically, her message was confirmed by the President to Netanyahu on the evening of Sept. 11. So around the same time the President was pretending the deadly terrorist attack in Libya was a video problem, he told Netanyahu he was not going to get tough with Iran. The New York Times quotes an unnamed "senior administration official" describing the conversation: "President Obama rejected an appeal by Prime Minister Netanyahu to spell out a specific "red line" that Iran could not cross in its nuclear program."

Netanyahu went out of his way to be bipartisan – referring to what he said were common goals of "Democrats and Republicans alike." But the two leaders appear to be on a collision course and there is nothing Netanyahu can do about it – short of failing to defend his people.

Netanyahu pressed hard to make the case that "red lines don't lead to war; red lines prevent war." He argued that faced with red lines Iran would "back down." He urged listeners to be realistic: "today, a great battle is being waged between the modern and the medieval...The forces of medievalism seek a world...in which not life but death is glorified."

But President Obama spent his time earlier this week at the General Assembly repeatedly conjuring up images of harmony and telling UN members "people everywhere long for" freedom, dignity, and justice.

Perhaps exemplifying the distance in judgment between the two governments was the behavior of their respective ambassadors. When President Obama spoke, the Ambassador of Israel Ron Prosor, was seated respectfully in the Israeli General Assembly seat. When Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke, the Ambassador of the United States Susan Rice was absent. She is said to have had more important things to do.

When Americans decide on their next commander-in-chief, they will not be able to say they haven't been warned. Netanyahu told all who would listen: "Iran is the world's most dangerous terrorist regime." "Imagine the world with a nuclear-armed Al Qaeda."

Draft, as orally revised, was adopted with 37 votes in favor, 1 against and 9 abstentions

HRC Draft Resolution "From rhetoric to reality: global call for concrete action against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" Development

Draft was adopted with 41 votes in favor, 3 against and 3 abstentions

HRC Draft Resolution "The human rights situation in the Syrian Arab Republic" Development

Thursday, September 27, 2012

This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on Fox News.

For years, Israelis most often believed the poison oozing from the United Nations was so implausible that it had to be benign. But this week Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu departed his country immediately after the sun set on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar to address the General Assembly on September 27. Unfortunately, the urgency has as much to do with President Obama's UN address earlier in the week as it does with Iranian President Ahmadinejad's speech on Wednesday.

Here's what sets off alarm bells.

First, President Obama's address indicated he doesn't grasp or want to grasp grievous threats to American national security, let alone Israel's. During the most important general foreign policy address in his annual schedule, he referred a whopping six times to a single anti-Muslim youtube "video" – which he has helped make famous. In his words: the "video sparked outrage." "We understand why people take offense at this video." And so on and so forth.

By the time of his speech, the Libyan President and members of Obama's own administration, had already called the murder of an American ambassador on the anniversary of 9/11 a terror attack and fingered Al Qaeda. And yet, President Obama never referred to the strike in Libya as terrorism and trumpted a"weakened" Al Qaeda.

Second, the opening of the UN's annual session is traditionally used by American presidents to demonstrate U.S. foreign policy priorities throughout the world. The President's priorities raised a lot of red flags.

The President devoted half of his thirty minutes to the grievances of the Muslim world. "[T]he video...is an insult to Muslims." "Muslims have suffered..." "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

In the course of this exhibition he even managed to insult Holocaust survivors, by analogizing the denial of the historical fact of six million Jewish dead to the insult taken by a 14-minute video. The President: "[T]o be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn...the Holocaust that is denied."

Moreover, the concept of "slandering the prophet of Islam," or what is also called defamation of religion, in practice is defined and applied by extremists and used to deny individual freedom. Which is why the President's false analogy happens to originate from the centers of antisemitism in the Muslim world. It is no accident that on September 19 from Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan, for instance, complained that it wasn't "fair" that those who "doubt the Holocaust happened" are treated differently than "those who insult Islam."

Third, President Obama's words on Iran reinforced the widely-held belief in Israel that he does not have the political will necessary to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. The President stood before world leaders, wrung his hands and said this about Iran: "[I]t has failed to take the opportunity to demonstrate that its nuclear program is peaceful."

Maybe that's because the Iranian nuclear program isn't peaceful!

Rather than at the very least coming clean on Iran's intentions, President Obama repeated his empty refrain that he had the "time and space" to "resolve this issue," "but that time is not unlimited."

An Israeli government faced with the threat of its country's annihilation would add this latest "freebie" – to use Netanyahu's apt language from last spring – to a long list of similar administration pronouncements on Iran.

As far back as October 1, 2009, President Obama said: "If Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely... Our patience is not unlimited." The message heard by both Iran and Israel is loud and clear. No deadlines. Just blah-blah-blah.

The wink-wink to Iran is even more disturbing for Israel because of simultaneous pressure surrounding the creation of a nuclear weapons-free Middle East. President Obama touched on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) in his address, and it featured prominently in the first UN speech of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy on September 26.

In the works is a 2012 international conference which Obama agreed to promote and co-sponsor – contrary to assurances he gave Israel in 2010 – on this Middle East weapons-free zone. Given that Muslim states, headed by Egypt, clearly intend the meeting as a means to gang-up, disarm and disable Israel, President Obama has put the scheduling on the back burner – in the run-up to the American election. Discussions about a Helsinki venue for post-November 2012 continue.

In a similar opportunistic vein, for the first time President Obama decided to pull U.S. delegates from their seats prior to the commencement of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's remarks on Wednesday. He didn't take that step in 2009, 2010 or 2011. By contrast, Canada has stayed completely away from the Iranian's speech for all of those years.

Faced with an Iranian President openly committed to genocide but still welcomed by the vast majority of UN members, Prime Minister Netanyahu bears a heavy burden when addressing the organization's General Assembly – one made so much heavier by the current President of the United States.

Draft, as orally revised, was adopted without a vote

HRC Draft Resolution "The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association" Development

Draft, as orally revised, was adopted without a vote

HRC Draft Resolution on the Safety of Journalists Development

September 26, 2012

September 25, 2012

At UN Obama equates denial of fact of systematic murder of 6 million Jews with hurt feelings over YouTube video

Statement by President Obama at the United Nations General Assembly Development

Monday, September 24, 2012

This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on Fox News.

President Obama is fond of boasting about his foreign policy prowess and is anxious to use his UN General Assembly address on September 25 to amplify that claim. His competence took a hit this past week after he pontificated on CBS – less than 24 hours after the murder of our Libyan ambassador – that as president he'd "learned" you have "to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts." It turned out that he didn't have the facts, but he and his officials kept yakking anyway.

One of those sent out to face the fire, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, will be front and center at the American desk in the Assembly Hall as the president makes his UN pitch. Rice's implacable insistence that the 'video-done-it' has been widely ridiculed, and is now disputed by the White House itself. In fact, the administration's video-fixated apologies appear to have been fueling the flames.

So last Friday, during a television appearance Daily Beast columnist and Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers asked the right question: "Why was Susan Rice lying?"

The answer will be clearer after hearing the president's speech, but the answer – to borrow a word from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney – is self-evident. She was taking her cue from the top.

For over three years, the president has burnished his international affairs credentials via a steady stream of misinformation, much of it generated from his diplomatic corps. Bogus UN "success" stories can therefore be expected to factor into tomorrow's oration.

Here are some possible chestnuts.

There's the one about the glories of the UN Human Rights Council – which 2012 state department fact sheets say is an "effective and credible multilateral forum for promoting and protecting human rights."

Given that the UN's top human rights body counts Cuba, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia among its members, and starting in 2013, Venezuela, Pakistan and Kazakhstan, it isn't obvious to Americans how this move promotes or protects their values.

Enter Esther Brimmer, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations and storyteller extraordinaire. Addressing a crowd in Washington, D.C. on September 18, 2012, she said: "[S]ince 2009, the United States and our partners on the Human Rights Council have expanded international mechanisms to monitor and protect core human rights, including freedom of expression..."

Actually, the Council has ceased adopting a substantive resolution on freedom of opinion and expression altogether. While the Canadians shepherded such a resolution through the UN Human Rights Commission (the Council's predecessor) for twelve successive years to 2004, team Obama agreed to set aside the detailed free speech resolution after October 2009 and turn its attention to a new annual UN standard-bearer.

The name of today's American-backed paradigm? "Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief." Needless, to say, Obama officials cut that raw deal with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Many months later in 2011, Obama diplomats begged none other than the Egyptian government to help them resurrect a substantive freedom of opinion and expression resolution. Egypt refused.

Another tale concerns Israel, and the Human Rights Council's ongoing attempt to delegitimize the Jewish state. With an agenda reserving one item on Israel and one item on the remaining 192 UN states, 40% of all condemnations directed at Israel alone, and a new witch hunt (aka "fact-finding mission") launched last March, Israel ceased all cooperation with the Council this year and asked the Obama administration to stop validating the institution.

Instead, the administration decided to run for a second three-year term while dispatching Susan Rice and her state department colleagues during election season to Jewish venues in Florida. Clearly a pro at her game, here's Ambassador Rice last spring: "Not a day goes by - not one - when my colleagues and I don't work hard to defend Israel's security and legitimacy at the United Nations."

Then there's the success story about UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, reappointed in May with the approval of the Obama administration. Opening the Council's latest session on September 10, 2012 she discussed stoning in Iran in the same paragraph as executions in the United States. The woman who questioned the legality of killing Usama bin Laden, went on to tell the world "I am distressed by recent executions carried out in Belarus, China,... Saudi Arabia and the United States."

One more foreign policy charade which is sure to make its way into the President's General Assembly speech – more finger-wagging at Iran. Be prepared for the familiar lingo about "strongest sanctions ever" – albeit that beefy Security Council hasn't imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran in over two years. We might also hear a variation of this oft-repeated formula for getting tough on Iran: "nuclear weapons are really really bad, but the door is still open if Ahmadinejad should take my hand and walk through it."

President Obama will also remind the nuclear weapon have-nots in the crowd that he has consistently placed the nuclear disarmament of the United States and other democracies on a par with the evils of nuclear proliferation by genocidal dictators.

So why did Susan Rice lie? Because President Obama fully intends to appear before the UN General Assembly and tell the world his priorities are: preserving American values like free speech not undermining it, educating merely misinformed Muslim rioters not appeasing them, strengthening alliances not weakening our allies, protecting American security not disabling our defenses, and assuring American voters that our "tiny" enemies are on the run and we're now well-loved notwithstanding a spontaneous murder here and there.

In other words, she is not alone.