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Resources updated between Monday, October 23, 2017 and Sunday, October 29, 2017
October 29, 2017
October 28, 2017
"A special investigator assigned by the United Nations Human Rights Council to look into abuses in the Palestinian territories left out any mention of actual Palestinian abuses in his report. He instead released a litany of complaints and charges against Israel...
However, at a press conference at the world body in New York, Lynk, the U.N. special rapporteur, admitted to journalists that he did not add human rights abuses by either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas to his report because that was not in his mandate to do so, even though his title seemed to indicate it was...
Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon fired off a statement following his press conference accusing Lynk of spreading hateful 'incitement against the State of Israel.'
'The U.N. Human Rights Council has lost its legitimacy as it focuses obsessively on attacking Israel instead of working on resolving the real human rights problems plaguing the world. The Council has lost all touch with reality and the original intent of upon which it was founded,' Danon said.
Lynk asserted that he has the independence to choose his topics under the framework of his mandate given to him by the council.
Anne Bayefsky, professor and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and Holocaust, told Fox News that Lynk's title gives the opposite impression of what he actually does.
'Link demonstrates how dangerous the U.N. Human Rights Council really is,' she said. 'The Council gave him the misleading title of U.N. human rights expert investigator, knowing in advance he had made up his mind about the subject he was to investigate. Lynk went into the U.N. job wildly anti-Israel, and voilà, he now produces statements and reports containing wild anti-Israel pronouncements, starting with analogies to apartheid South Africa.'..."
Israel accuses UN human rights official of hateful incitement Article
The UN "expert" is proving to be a deep embarrassment to the legal fraternity from which he comes. On October 26 in the basement of the UN General Assembly building in New York, Canadian law professor Michael Lynk spent his twenty minutes of fame inventing an astounding array of rules. Using the words law/lawful/legal/illegal forty-five times, he had no problem with a UN job that violates the elementary principle of non-discrimination. The express UN mandate of this UN rapporteur is to investigate Israeli human rights violations and ignore everything done by Palestinians.
Lynk was hand-picked by the UN Human Rights Council because of his well-known anti-Israel biases. The Israeli delegate pointed out this UN's human rights "expert" "has compared Israel to the Nazis" and "three days after 9/11, Lynk blamed not the terrorists, but the West, for the tragedy."
Welcoming Lynk to the UN General Assembly's Third Committee, however, was Syria. Notwithstanding this committee is charged with dealing with human rights,, delegates listened respectfully to the Syrian delegate calling Israel and ISIS "brothers."
The meeting included:
Hate-mongering UN "expert" urges UN to go the "non-recognition" route for apartheid-like Israel Development
October 27, 2017
October 26, 2017
October 24, 2017
Islamic countries at the UN spent an afternoon accusing Israel of "grave violations" and "racist policies" over Israel's use of its own natural resources. The accusations were made on October 23, 2017 during an annual debate in the UN General Assembly's Second Committee – composed of all 193 UN Member States – on the topic of "Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources".
The debate immediately followed the presentation of a report by ESCWA (the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia) Executive Secretary Mohamed Ali Alhakim – whose predecessor infamously accused Israel of "apartheid". The report delivered by Alhakim is entitled "Economic and social repercussions of the Israeli occupation on the living conditions of the Palestinian people..."
Numerous Islamic states accused Israel of violating the rights of Arabs inside Israel, notwithstanding the deplorable living conditions and widespread discrimination in nearby countries such as Syria and Iran. Nearly hysterical accusations were made of Israel, such as it being "ruthless," of "lopsided treachery," "crimes against humanity," "pillaging," and "abominable policies." Deaf to the irony, many countries alleged the Arabs of the Golan Heights, which Syria claims as its territory, were suffering by not being under the control of the Syrian regime.
In their words:
UN meeting Slams Israel for using natural resources to build while its neighbors use them to destroy Development
"Every so often the United Nations decides to dignify a tyrant, or a tyranny, in ways so in-your-face perverse that it draws public attention, provokes highly embarrasing protest -- and the UN scuttles to back away. So it went with the recent decision by the World Health Organization to appoint as one of its goodwill ambassadors the longtime tyrant of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe.
On Oct. 18, the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, of Ethiopia, announced he was 'honored' to name Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador. For good measure, Tedros praised Zimbabwe as 'a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the center of its policies to provide health care to all.'...
For the UN, the embarrassment will likely fade. But the over-arching problem here -- of which Mugabe's fleeting four days as a goodwill ambassador is merely a symptom -- is a United Nations that inveterately dignifies and honors tyrants and tyrannies, though usually in less prominent fashion.
For a sampling of just how deep this problem runs, take the case of Iran -- ruled since 1989 by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei...
There's a solid argument to be made that under the UN's 1945 Charter, which says that membership is open to peace-loving states that respect human rights, today's Iran does not belong in the UN at all.
But at the UN, Iran's regime not only enjoys a seat as one of the 193 member states. It also enjoys the privileges of holding seats on a remarkable array of the governing boards of major UN agencies..."
The UN's Mugabe Moment, and Its Perennial Iran Problem Article
The United Nations Human Rights Council and the U.N.'s human rights chief are threatening companies in the U.S. and around the world for doing business with Israel. Monday, Maryland become the 23rd state to adopt anti-boycott rules. It is urgent for Congress to pass the bipartisan Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a vital tool to prevent anti-Jewish discrimination and to protect American businesses from blackmail.
On Oct. 16 the CEO of Israel's telecom giant Bezeq, Stella Handler, posted a two-page letter that her company had received from the office of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, a Jordanian prince. The letter, dated Sept. 22, lists Bezeq's operations that allegedly are ensnared by a resolution of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
The Human Rights Council is the U.N.'s top human rights body. The menacing letter neglects to mention the human rights credentials of the 35 Council members that passed the resolution back in 2016 – states like Algeria, Bolivia, Burundi, China, Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
More specifically, the Council resolution calls for the production of a "database" of businesses that "directly or indirectly" are connected to Israeli settlements. In effect, the "database" is a blacklist. High Commissioner Zeid has said he intends to release the database/blacklist by the end of this year.
The letter Zeid sent to Bezeq is not unique. According to leaks to various news agencies, Zeid has sent similar letters to 150 companies around the world. Thirty of such companies are said to be American.
Recipients reportedly include Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, Priceline.com, TripAdvisor, and Airbnb, as well as Israeli businesses such as pharmaceutical leader Teva, the country's two largest banks (Hapoalim and Leumi), the bus company Egged, the national water company Mekorot, and other major Israeli businesses in addition to Bezeq.
Zeid's letter dictates that the company has 60 days to send "information or comments...confirming, clarifying or contesting" the U.N.'s account of the company's business dealings in any area that the U.N. has decided is Arab territory. The information received, continues the U.N. letter, will "enable adequate consideration of whether there are reasonable grounds for inclusion of Bezeq in the database, as per the Council resolution."
In plain English, companies face public censure – driven by the U.N.'s vast global network – unless they comply with the demands of Zeid and the Human Rights Council.
Bezeq's CEO vowed her company would not be intimidated, and declared that Bezeq would "protect the rights of all our customers without discrimination" regardless of their religion, race, gender or where they lived.
How right she was.
The fact is that U.N. Human Rights Council resolutions have the legal status of toilet paper.
But that isn't stopping the high commissioner from huffing, puffing and bluffing. And alarmingly, until now, nearly all the recipients of these letters appear to have been playing by the blackmailer's rules. The "don't you dare go to the police" routine has thrown a cone of silence around the whole affair.
Shareholders, employees, and communities that depend on the well-being of the blackmailed companies – along with the elected representatives responsible for serving these constituents – have been kept in the dark.
Bezeq has brought the U.N. moves out of the shadows. This is the most egregious boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign directed against Israel ever launched by the United Nations. It is not the first, but it is the most audacious.
At its core, BDS is a response to the failure of Arab combatants to defeat Israel on the battlefield. Destroying Israel through economic isolation is perceived by Israel's enemies as Plan B.
The two goals of the U.N. blacklist are first, devastating Israel's economy, and second, circumventing a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For according to existing legal agreements, ownership of disputed territories is to be determined through negotiations between the parties – not by U.N. bullies.
Asked about the blacklist on Aug. 22, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, told reporters: "We have made clear our opposition regarding the creation of a database of businesses...and we have not participated and will not participate in its creation or contribute to its content."
The response is disingenuous. Last December the Obama administration agreed in the General Assembly to the overall U.N. regular budget, knowing full well that the budget included funding for the blacklist. Hence, American taxpayers are currently paying 22 percent of all the costs of creating the blacklist. That sounds like a "contribution" to those of us who don't speak diplo-babble.
Which brings us to the bottom line.
U.N. High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein is the last person on Earth who should be telling American companies how to run their businesses.
And on the off-chance that U.N. letterhead makes American CEOs nervous, they need to be reminded that they owe their allegiance to American law and public policy.
It is past midnight for Congress and President Trump to step up and answer this U.N. assault on American businesses and our ally Israel.
Three simple, morally unambiguous steps will do it:
- The expeditious adoption of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.
- The immediate resignation of the United States from the specious Human Rights Council
- The refusal to send Prince Zeid another penny.
Protect American business from blackmail – Congress, pass the Israel Anti-Boycott Act Article
October 23, 2017