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Resources updated between Monday, May 15, 2017 and Sunday, May 21, 2017

May 21, 2017

A picture from the funeral of Ezra Schwartz, a victim of Palestinian terrorism

"Eighteen months ago, Mohammed Abdel Basset al-Kharoub, a Palestinian Authority terrorist, shot and murdered 18-year old Ezra Schwartz, 51-year old Yaakov Don, and 24-year old Shadi Arafa at the Etzion Junction south of Jerusalem.

Schwartz, a yeshiva student from Sharon, Massachusetts, was studying in Beit Shemesh for a year after completing high school.

A military court found the terrorist guilty of the murders and in March handed down four consecutive life sentences, and required him to pay 250,000 shekels ($69,000) to the families of each of his victims.

Despite their heinous crimes, al-Kharoub and his fellow terrorists now sitting in Israeli prisons receive stipends from the Palestinian Authority and Fatah party – payments in honor of their murderous deeds.

Yet the Palestinian Authority itself continues to receive more than $1.3 billion in international aid every year – aid the PA claims it must receive in order to continue operating...

This week, however, Ruth Schwartz, who lost her son Ezra on that fateful day in November 2015, will address the United Nations at a special forum focusing on the PA's transparent support for terrorism.

The forum, to be held this Wednesday at the UN headquarters in New York, is being organized by the Israeli delegation to the UN, headed by Ambassador Danny Danon.

'The reprehensible terrorists who killed Ezra receives more than $3,000 a month from the Palestinian Authority as a reward for killing innocent people. Foreign aid contributed to the PA by the international community is exploited by the Palestinians and used to support terrorism,' said Danon.

'We call on the Security Council to act to cease these payments and finally put an end to the Palestinian support for terrorism,' the Ambassador continued..."

Mother of murdered American teen to address UN on PA terrorism Article

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto on May 18, 2017

"Budapest is committed to combating anti-Israel bias in the United Nations and the European Union, the country's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told The Jerusalem Post.

'On many occasions I feel that both in the UN and the EU that there are biased positions against Israel,' he said on Thursday...

Upgrading bilateral ties would lead to an increase in EU-Israeli economic cooperation, something that would be helpful to the EU's economy which is losing its competitive edge, he said.

His country, Szijjarto said, has also worked with Israel behind the scenes at the UN and the EU to halt biased actions against the Jewish state. It is among the bloc of EU countries that often abstains on significant votes.

At the UN Human Rights Council, where Hungary is one of the 47 members, 'we were in a continuous coordination and cooperation with your authorities,' he said.

Hungary is one of three countries that have spoken out against EU consumer guidelines to label settlement products as 'not made in Israel.'

'We made it very clear that we do not apply that. We are absolutely against it. We find that it is unacceptable,' he said. 'If you pose the question, does it bring us closer to a solution, [the answer is] definitely not. Then why do we do it, why do we endanger the jobs of Palestinian people?' Szijjarto asked..."

Hungarian FM: We Oppose Anti-Israel Bias in UN, EU Article

May 20, 2017

Said Musa (on the right), former Prime Minister of Belize, at the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People meeting in Managua

The keynote speaker of a UN-organized "Palestinian Diaspora" meeting, Said Musa, claimed Holocaust remembrance is an excuse for Jewish racism and then called on the UN to create a "Palestine Occupation Remembrance Day." The meeting, entitled "Building Bridges with Palestinian Diaspora", was held on February 4, 2017 in Managua, Nicaragua, organized by the UN's Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Said Musa, a former Prime Minister of Belize who claims Palestinian descent, was invited to be the keynote speaker by the Committee.

Musa also accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, extermination, crimes against humanity, racial exclusivity and apartheid, before concluding with support for President Obama's UN Security Council on Israeli settlements, and a call for boycotts of the Jewish state.

In Musa's words:

"2017 is a time when the world seems to be upside down, when those who ruthlessly expel people from their ancestral land and kill those who resist are called victims, and those who are driven out and massacred are called terrorists. It is time to go back to basics. The State of Israel was built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcefully driven from their homes and thousands were brutally killed. We call this the Nakba, and although it began in 1947, it has continued since and is still practiced today...

The Israeli State has simply refused to acknowledge this right of return of the Palestinian refugees. Part of the reason for this is the denial of the Nakba, a pretense that the founders of the Israeli State did not, with malice aforethought, carry out the crime of ethnic cleansing by the brutal forceful removal of Palestinians from their land, accompanied by dozens of massacres, desecration of holy sites, land robbery on a massive scale and other crimes against humanity...

We need to challenge the idea that anyone who denounces the illegal acts of the State of Israel is biased against Jews. This is made credible somehow because of the Nazi crimes against Jews and others in the 1940s. And so the Holocaust is invoked to justify the 'right' to a racially exclusive Jewish state on the land of the Palestinians. But nobody has explained why Palestinians are required to pay for Nazi crimes. Israel has refused to acknowledge guilt for its violent colonial land seizures, massacres and ongoing oppression...

Everybody knows that from the time it was established Israel has maintained a strictly apartheid system... The atrocities committed there over the past decade are too well known for me to repeat them in this forum, but it is useful to recall the judgment of The Russell Tribunal on the evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution...

We should support a move for a resolution to be passed at the United Nations to create an International Palestine Occupation Remembrance Day...

Resolution 2334, with its clear depiction of all the Jewish settlements on Palestinian land as illegal, makes it easier for us to encourage our governments and peoples to join the boycott against all producers and goods produced by Israel in the illegal settlements. We should also support and have our governments enforce the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. In short, the actions we can take to advance the cause of peace in the Middle East must pass through reaching a just solution to the crisis of Israeli occupation of Palestine, and what we can do is: Pursue effective measures that will make known the truth of the situation to the peoples of our region so that they can support their governments to take appropriate action or pressure them to do so; We can support international measures to achieve that objective world-wide; Join in the boycott of goods produced in the illegal settlements in the occupied territories and against those companies investing therein, in keeping with the call in Resolution 2334 for all States 'to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967'. Join the intellectual, artistic and cultural boycott of Israel as long as it persists in its present policies; Recognize the State of Palestine and encourage all types of relations with it..."

Keynote Speaker at UN Event Says Holocaust Remembrance is an Excuse for Jewish Racism Development

A Gaza cleric calls on Palestinians to carry out more stabbing attacks against Jews (File photo)

Border Police officers on Saturday thwarted an attempted stabbing attack at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the West Bank, south of Ramallah, police said.

The suspect - a 14-year-old Palestinian girl - was arrested by officers while carrying a knife in her hand after failing to obey their calls to halt, according to police. According to Hebrew media reports, officers used pepper spray in order to stop the girl.

Officials added that the suspect was taken in for questioning after her arrest.

No shots were reported fired in the incident.

Also on Saturday, police said that a man was lightly injured in a stabbing in Jerusalem's Old City. Although police initially suspected that the incident was a terror attack, the stabbing was later confirmed to be of a criminal nature, police said.

Channel 10 reported that the stabbing occurred following an argument between the 30-year-old victim and another man.

Police later arrested the man believed to be behind the stabbing near the Lions' Gate in the Old City, near the scene of the incident, according to the Ynet news site.

14-year-old Palestinian girl arrested during attempted stabbing attack Document

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nikolay Mladenov (File photo)

"Education Minister and Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett responded sharply to the condemnation by the UN's Middle East Representative, Nikolay Mladenov, of the event at Hawarra and the killing of a Palestinian.

Bennett said that 'I call on Mladenov to apologize for this shameful condemnation. A Jewish citizen was attacked with rocks by an incited mob and nearly murdered. He acted in self-defense. Did you check the facts before you condemned?'"

Israeli Minister to UN official: 'Apologize for shameful condemnation' Article

May 19, 2017

UNESCO Headquarters

UNESCO's Jerusalem Lies Article

Bangladeshi security personnel outside Dhaka (File photo)

Authorities in Bangladesh on Friday arrested 27 men on suspicion of being gay, a criminal offense in the Muslim-majority country, and plan to charge them with drug possession, an official said Friday.

A commander of the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite police unit that made the arrests, said the suspects, mostly students aged 20-30 years, had traveled from across the country and were picked up in a raid on a community center at Keraniganj, outside the nation's capital, early Friday.

Zahangir Hossain Matobbar said they recovered illegal drugs and condoms in their possession and plan to charge them with drug offenses and not homosexuality because they were detained before they engaged in sex.

The agency also arrested the owner of the community center where the suspects used to gather every two months and stay overnight for partying.

Last year, suspected militants killed a leading LGBT activist and his friend in Dhaka.

The 35-year-old Xulhaz Mannan, a USAID official, was hacked to death in April last year at his home.

He had founded the country's only LGBT magazine Roopbaan and was a leading organizer of gays, who are ostracized in Bangladesh.

Since then, many of the gays and lesbians have left the country after they received death threats. Many still live double lives to avoid reprisals.

Homosexuality is a crime in Bangladesh under a law dating back to the British colonial rule, and it has never been amended. The law is rarely enforced.

Bangladesh arrests 27 men on suspicion of being gay Document

Body bags were laid out on the floor after an ISIS raid in Aqareb

ISIS savages have executed and then dismembered dozens of women and children amid fears the terror group is plotting a wave of massacres in Shiite villages.

Extremists beheaded some prisoners and used bricks to kill children before hacking off their limbs during horrific raids in Hama province in central Syria.

More than 50 were killed during clashes including at least 24 women and children in villages where many residents belong to the Ismaili branch of Shiite Islam.

It has raised fears of a new atrocities mirroring those ISIS carried out in other minority communities - including Yazidi areas - in Syria and Iraq.

  The villages, Aqareb and Al-Mabujeh, are located near the town of Salamiyeh and the highway that links the capital, Damascus, to the northern city of Aleppo.

The two villages are home to members of several religious minority sects, and Al-Mabujeh has been targeted by IS before.

In March 2015, the group killed dozens of people and kidnapped some 50 civilians in an attack there.

Media reports and doctors in the area said some of those killed in the latest raid were beheaded and others dismembered. 

At least three of the civilians, a man and his two children, were executed with knives, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

ISIS extremists are notorious for mutilating bodies of their adversaries, particularly members of other sects than Sunni Islam.

The militants stormed homes in the southern part of Aqareb al-Safi village before government forces pushed them back into the desert, the state news agency SANA reported.

The head of the National Hospital in Salamiyeh, Dr. Noufal Safar, said it received 52 bodies, including 11 women and 17 children.

Some of the bodies were badly mutilated, beheaded or had their limbs severed but 'most appear to have died as a result of gunfire,' Safar told The Associated Press by telephone.

Rami Razzouk, a coroner at the hospital who inspected the bodies, said those of children were brought in mostly dismembered while the men had died from shelling or heavy machine-gun fire. 

He said at least nine children were beaten on the head with heavy objects such as bricks or stones. 

The Syrian Observatory also said that 52 people were killed in the fighting, with the dead including 15 civilians, 27 Syrian soldiers and 10 unidentified people.

Razzouk said 120 people were wounded; SANA said 40 were wounded.

The ISIS-linked Aamaq news agency said the militants captured villages of Aqareb al-Safi and Mabouja. It identified residents as members of Assad's Alawite sect, an off-shoot of Shiite Islam. The Sunni extremists view Shiites as apostates deserving of death.

ISIS has massacred thousands of Shiites and other opponents in Syria and Iraq, often boasting about the killings and circulating photos and videos of them online. 

Aamaq claimed that 100 Syrian troops and pro-government gunmen were killed in the fighting.

'Dozens of people are missing but it is not clear if they were kidnapped' by IS, the Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said.

ISIS savages execute and then dismember dozens of women and children Document

A 2012 meeting organized by the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestine People

A UN Committee has embraced the idea of a remembrance day for Palestinians mimicking Holocaust remembrance day. The comments came during a meeting on May 17, 2017 at UN Headquarters of the "UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People." Addressing the Committee, the Palestinian representative harked back to the alleged original crime of the creation of Israel itself. In the words of Feda Abdelhady Nasser: "we meet in these days that the Palestinian people are solemnly commemorating the 69th anniversary of the Nakba of 1948, an injustice that our people continue to suffer the consequences of to this very day." The remarks are a stark reminder of the reason Israel has no Palestinian peace partner.

The Palestinian Rights Committee is composed of 26 UN member states and another 24 observers, and includes many countries with some of the world's worst human rights records, such as Cuba, Pakistan, Turkey, Venezuela, China, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. The Committee's executive is: Senegal (Chair), Malta (Rapporteur), Cuba (Vice-Chair), Indonesia (Vice-Chair), Nicaragua (Vice-Chair). The latter three do not even have diplomatic relations with Israel.

At Wednesday's meeting, the UN Committee engaged in another display of modern antisemitism by appropriating Jewish history and experience as Palestinian. Reporting on the Committee's recent activities, Ambassador Carmelo Iguanez (Malta) called for the UN to establish a "Palestine Occupation Remembrance Day" and repeatedly repeatedly referred to a "Palestinian diaspora."

Similarly, Palestinian representative Feda Abdelhady Nasser alleged there was "Israeli settler terror and incitement against our people" - well aware of the reality of Palestinian terrorism and incitement.

Nasser then demanded more money from the UN, by way of an increase to the budget of the UN's Palestinian Refugee Agency, UNRWA. The money grab was made openly without regard to the needs of any other community around the globe. In her words: "We...have recently circulated to all delegations a...resolution aimed at stabilizing and sustainably funding UNRWA...Here I believe it is necessary to clarify for delegations that...there is no call for an increase in the UN regular budget itself, but rather for a larger share for UNRWA from the budget...for the organization as a whole for the 2018-2019 biennium."

During the meeting, the Committee also demanded that the Secretary-General start producing written reports on Israel's non-compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 2334. (To date the reports have been oral.) Resolution 2334, adopted in December 2017, was the first time that the Security Council declared Israeli settlements to be illegal, and was adopted after the Obama administration joined forces with the Palestinians and abandoned America's closest ally.

The Committee holds Israel-bashing meetings on a year-round basis. Next up: the Committee adopted the program for a major two-day conference to be held at UN Headquarters on June 29 and 30, 2017.

UN Committee wants a UN "Palestine Occupation Remembrance Day" Mimicking Holocaust Remembrance Day Development

Senator John Barasso (File photo)

Senator: Time to End the UN's Anti-Israel Bias Article

May 18, 2017

Islamists in Mali (File photo)

An unmarried couple was publicly stoned to death in eastern Mali, in the first such incident since jihadist groups took control of the area.

"The Islamists dug two pits big enough for the man and woman who lived together but were not married," said a local source. "They were stoned to death."

The execution took place on Tuesday. Local sources added that the public was invited to take part and participate in the stoning. "Four people threw stones at them until they died."

A local resident said the gang leader accused the couple of "violating the laws of Islam," which requires the punishment of death by stoning.

The Human Rights Protection Association described the stoning incident this week as a "cowardly murder."

The stoning event took place on the eve of the visit of the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Mali.

Mali couple stoned to death for being unmarried Document

A Palestinian mob surrounds a car reportedly driven by an Israeli in Hawara, near Nablus, on May 18, 2017.

Some 200 Palestinian Arabs rioted and threw rocks at passing vehicles near the village of Huwara in Samaria on Thursday.

According to Palestinian reports, a Jewish "settler" at the scene opened fire on two rock-throwers. One of them was killed and the other seriously wounded.

Arutz Sheva has information that the resident who was forced to defend his life against impending lynching at the hands of terrorists is a resident of Itamar in Samaria, father of 8, a social worker, who was on his way home to his children after making purchases in the Binyamin region.

He was detained after the incident and said that he felt a danger to his life and shot in the air.

Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, spoke with the Commander of the Samaria regional brigade, encouraged him, and received an update from relevant officials. "We must act with zero tolerance against terrorists seeking to bring routine life to a halt and, put simply, attack residents. We encourage IDF soldiers in their activity for the defense of the citizens of the state of Israel."

He added, "It is forbidden to handle terrorists with kid gloves. It cannot be that a mother goes out with her son in the morning for a doctor's appointment or to work and is attacked in broad daylight."

He backed the resident forced to open fire. "I completely back the resident who protected his life and that of those around him from the attackers," he said.

Attempted lynch of Jewish driver Document

Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir (File photo)

Saudis Invite Indicted Mass Murderer as Guest During Trump Visit Article

May 17, 2017

Fireworks intended to be turned into firebombs

Israeli Police Break Up Terror Cell That Turned Fireworks Into Pipe Bombs Article

May 15, 2017

Controversial WIPO Director General Francis Gurry (File photo)

"For more than a year, a United Nations agency in Geneva has been helping North Korea prepare an international patent application for production of sodium cyanide -- a chemical used to make the nerve gas Tabun -- which has been on a list of materials banned from shipment to that country by the U.N. Security Council since 2006.

The World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, has made no mention of the application to the Security Council committee monitoring North Korea sanctions, nor to the U.N. Panel of Experts that reports sanctions violations to the committee, even while concerns about North Korean weapons of mass destruction, and the willingness to use them, have been on a steep upward spiral...

[T]he U.N.'s Panel of Experts on North Korea "has no record of any communication from WIPO to the Committee or the Panel regarding such a serious patent application," said Hugh Griffiths, coordinator of the international U.N. expert team, in response to a Fox News question...

This is by no means the first time that WIPO, led by its controversial director general, Francis Gurry, has flabbergasted other parts of the U.N. and most Western nations with its casual and undeclared assistance, with potential WMD implications, to the bellicose and unstable North Korean regime...

In 2012, Fox News reported that WIPO had shipped U.S.-made computers and sophisticated computer servers to North Korea, and also to Iran, without informing sanctions committee officials..."

UN agency helps North Korea with patent application for banned nerve gas chemical Article

Surveillance photos that the State Department believes shows a crematorium at Sednaya Prison outside

The Syrian government has constructed and is using a crematorium inside its notorious Sednaya military prison outside Damascus to clandestinely dispose of thousands of prisoners it continues to execute inside the facility, according to the State Department.

At least 50 prisoners a day are executed in the prison, some in mass hangings, said Stuart Jones, the acting assistant secretary of state for the Middle East. A recent Amnesty International report called Sednaya a "human slaughterhouse" and said that thousands of Syrians have been abducted, detained and "exterminated" there.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad, Jones said, has carried out these atrocities and others "seemingly with the unconditional support from Russia and Iran," his main backers.

The information, he said, came from human rights and nonovernmental sources, as well as "intelligence assessments." He released overhead photographs of the facility.

Russia, Jones said, "has either aided in or passively looked away as the regime has" engaged in years of "mass murders" and other atrocities, including extensive bombing of hospitals and other health-care sites and the use of chemical weapons on both civilians and rebel forces.

During last week's meeting in Washington with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Jones said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that "Russia must now, with great urgency, exercise its great influence over the Syrian regime."

Jones's remarks, made in a special State Department briefing, were notable not only for their substance but for the harsh language used to call on Russia to take action.

Report: Syrian regime has built cremation facility to erase evidence of atrocities Document

The flag of the United Nations

UN Policy Still Fails to Protect Whistleblowers Article

Senator Marco Rubio (File photo)

The UN is Thumbing its Nose at the Senate Article