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Isranet Daily Briefing: When it Comes to Israel, The UN Rises To a Higher Level of Absurdity (June 21, 2019)

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis meets with Israel’s defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., March 7, 2017. (DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jette Carr, (Source: Wikipedia)
Farce: UN’s Health Assembly Condemns Israel Only
Hillel Neuer
The Times of Israel, May 23, 2019The annual assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization yesterday voted 96 to 11 for a Palestinian-drafted resolution, co-sponsored by Syria, Sudan, and Venezuela, that singled out Israel over “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”Out of 21 items on the meeting’s Agenda, only one — Item No. 14 against Israel — focused on a specific country.
There was no agenda item or resolution on any other country, including Syria, where hospitals and medical infrastructure have suffered devastating bombings by Syrian and Russian forces; Yemen, where 19.7 million people lack access to health care service due to the current crisis; or Venezuela, where the health system has collapsed, causing millions to flee the country.The resolution is a fantastic lie, an obscene and Orwellian canard. The UN reached new heights of absurdity by enacting a resolution which accuses Israel of violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan, even as in reality Israeli hospitals provide life-saving treatment to Syrians fleeing to the Golan from the Assad regime’s barbaric attacks.Shame on France, Belgium, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland for encouraging this hijacking of the annual world health assembly, and diverting precious time, money, and resources from global health priorities, in order to wage a political prosecution of Israel, especially when, in reality, anyone who has ever walked into an Israeli hospital or clinic knows that they are providing world-class health care to thousands of Palestinian Arabs — including last week to Palestinian leader Jibril Rajoub — as well as to Syrians fleeing Assad. The vote was 96 to 11 on the resolution, with 21 abstentions and 56 absent.Those that voted no, like last year, were the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Guatemala, and Israel, while those that changed their votes to no this year were Brazil, Czech Republic, Germany, Honduras, and Hungary.Both Brazil and most recently Germany announced that they would oppose biased UN resolutions against Israel, and today they kept their promise.In addition to voting against the resolution, the US, the UK, Germany, and Canada took the floor to strongly object to the politicization of the forum.The adopted text calls for a report on a series of alleged Israeli violations, including on “the mental health of Palestinians affected by the exposure to violence and the context of chronic occupation.”By passing the resolution, the body also adopted a report that points the finger at Israel for increased health and mental health issues stemming from “trauma injuries and exposure to violence during the ‘Great March of Return.’” The report completely ignores the leading role of Hamas and other terrorist groups in orchestrating the violent riots and deliberately encouraging demonstrators to approach the hostile area of the Gaza-Israel border.The WHO’s report also lauded the successful training of 1,600 UNRWA staff members in providing mental health services, omitting the impact of UNRWA teachers’ incitement to terrorism and violence on the mental health of Palestinian children.
UN Humanitarian Agency’s Propaganda War on Israel Continues
Gerald Steinberg
Algemeiner, Mar. 7, 2019For decades, American taxpayers have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into United Nations “aid” agencies that promoted Palestinian propaganda wars against Israel. The most notorious is UNRWA (the specialized Palestinian refugee framework, created in 1949), which was finally cut off from US funds last year.But the problem continues in other, and in some ways even more virulent, forms. For example, the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” branch of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-oPt) is also neck-deep in political warfare and demonization.Under the guise of providing aid, this agency sends out a constant flow of false accusations, including reports to the Security Council and “news items” promoted on its specialized ReliefWeb media platform. The officials also coordinate the agendas of dozens of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that are active in these political attacks. The anti-Israel Norwegian Refugee Council and the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) are among their main partners in promoting radical goals.But the façade that has protected OCHA-oPt and its partners is being slowly stripped away. Jamie McGoldrick, the UN’s “Humanitarian Coordinator,” complained about “UN Watch and NGO Monitor, [the organization I founded and lead] who are out there to delegitimize humanitarian action in Palestine, including allegations of misconduct and misuse of funds.”In January, his organization’s bulletin warned against what they refer to as Israeli “delegitimization, access restrictions, and administrative constraints,” and warned about a nefarious “network of Israeli civil society groups … with the apparent support of the Israeli government.” No details are provided — only shadowy allegations and hints of dark conspiracies. (For the record, NGO Monitor neither requests nor receives any support from any government, unlike OCH-oPt’s circle of friends.)Getting further into the mud, this diatribe refers to “Targeted defamation and smear campaigns [that] allege violations of counter-terrorism legislation. … Most of these allegations are baseless or misrepresent and distort critical factual or legal elements. Humanitarian organizations operating in the oPt adhere strictly to the principles of neutrality, impartiality, independence, and humanity.”

Behind the bluster, the evidence clearly exposes OCHA-oPt’s facade. For example, a number of core groups are affiliated with terror organizations, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as first documented in NGO Monitor’s meticulous research (in sharp contrast to UN practice) and reiterated by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. And the terror links of groups such as the Palestine Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), Addameer, Al-Haq, and others — members of OCHA’s “displacement working group” — are nether “baseless” nor distortions.

The organization’s claim to “adhere strictly to the principles of neutrality” is a farce. Its partners, such as Norwegian People’s Aid and Medical Aid for Palestinians, devote significant resources to demonizing Israel. Also, many of OCHA-oPt’s NGO clients are among the leaders of antisemitic and anti-Israel BDS and lawfare campaigns before the International Criminal Court.

Their Israeli NGO partners, such as B’Tselem and Adalah, are political opposition groups with no role in humanitarian aid. Use of terms such as “neutral” and “impartial” in this context strips them of all meaning. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]

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India Now Supports Israel at the UN against Palestine. Are They Allies?
Andrew Korybko
Global Research, June 12, 2019

India broke with decades of its post-independence political traditions by unprecedentedly supporting “Israel” at the UN and voting against granting consultative status to a Palestinian NGO that allegedly has ties with Hamas, therefore formally allying with the self-professed “Jewish State” at the this global body and confirming that Modi’s second term in office will see his country more determinedly siding with the fading Unipolar World Order at the multipolar one’s expense.

India just made history at the UN earlier this week, but in what’s sure to be interpreted as an ignoble way by the supporters of the emerging Multipolar World Order. Encouraged by the massive mandate that he received after his resounding re-election last month, Modi gave the go-ahead for his government to break with decades of its post-independence political traditions by unprecedentedly supporting “Israel” at the global body and voting against granting consultative status to a Palestinian NGO that allegedly has ties with Hamas. The self-professed “Jewish State’s” deputy chief of mission in India praised this diplomatic pivot by tweeting “Thank you #India for standing with @IsraelinUN and rejecting the request of terrorist organization “Shahed” to obtain the status of an observer in #UN. Together we will continue to act against terrorist organizations that intend to harm”, in what certainly signifies that Modi’s second term in office will see his country more determinedly siding with the fading Unipolar World Order at the multipolar one’s expense.

India had hitherto been trying to make inroads with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), but its hopes for future progress on this front have likely been dashed by the self-inflicted soft power damage that it just did by diplomatically allying with “Israel” at the UN. Although Resistance leader Iran continues to beg India to reconsider its decision to abide by the US’ unilateral sanctions regime against it, it’ll now be doing so with the full knowledge that the South Asian state is officially one of its hated “Israeli” foes’ key allies in thwarting the attempts of the Palestinians to have a greater global voice in publicizing their plight. This would make the Islamic Republic’s further outreaches to India even more humiliating than before, possibly raising the chance that it might finally give up in order to save “face” and protect its hard-earned and very proud reputation as the world’s leading anti-Zionist state.

In parallel with this, the global pivot state of Pakistan is now by default the most prominent pro-Palestinian voice in South Asia, especially after Minister for Human Rights Dr. Shireen Mazari recently promised that her country will continue supporting the Palestinians and urged all her Muslim counterparts to do so as well. The fact of the matter is that the Palestinian and Kashmiri causes are inseparable because they’re essentially one and the same — the indigenous Muslim majority of each region have been oppressed by foreign occupiers for decades and have yet to be granted the right to democratically decide their own political futures. Actually, it’s precisely because of these interlinked conflicts that India and “Israel” initially began to ally with one another because they play the same roles in each of them. Accordingly, they’ve increased military cooperation to such a point that “Israel” is now India’s second-largest military supplier and India is “Israel’s” top arms destination.  … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]

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The Problem With Ocasio-Cortez’s Shameful Ignorance Of History
David Harsanyi
The Federalist, June 18, 2019

The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border. That is what they are.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In April 1944, two Slovakian Jews named Alfred Weczler and Rudolf Vrba escaped from Auschwitz, and provided one of the first eyewitness accounts of the horrors of the European concentration camps. Both men had been rounded up with a group of their countrymen and sent to the Birkenau section of the camp in the spring of 1941, where they were immediately put to work as slave labor.
This was before the German regime had properly streamlined and industrialized efforts to destroy European Jewry. In the early days of the camp, any man incapable of labor was immediately executed. Those who survived were sent to do the grueling work of construction.

The men began their work at sunrise, and except for a half-hour break at noon, when the prisoners were fed cabbage and turnip soup, they worked until 6 p.m. For dinner, the men were given an ounce of moldy bread made from “ersatz flour and sawdust.” Lice and fleas tortured their emaciated bodies as they slept on wooden boards. “Rats were so bold they gnawed at the toes and fingers of sleepers and stole the crumbs they had left in their pockets,” wrote Robert Conot in his book “Justice at Nuremberg.”
A third of the prisoners died every week. If a worker was hurt, he was allotted three days of recovery time. If they failed to heal, the infirmary—where Dr. Mengele had already begun his nefarious work on women and children—would inject a fatal dose of phenol directly into their hearts.

Of the 2,722 Slovakian Jews who had been rounded up with Weczler and Vrba, only 159 survived to the summer of 1942. Those who died had been dumped, with another approximately 105,000 bodies, into shallow trenches around Birkenau. “As they decomposed” Conot noted, “the earth rose like a yeasty mixture of dough and bubbled up nauseating gases, which spread for miles.”

I think of that last sentence whenever some modern-day know-nothing begins comparing the United States to a proto-Nazi state. Maybe it’s because their analogies are embarrassingly ignorant and intellectually lazy, or maybe it’s because people like Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps unknowingly, diminish the suffering of millions of dead. Or maybe it’s because my own grandfather was taken as slave labor in Austria.

Maybe it’s because their analogies are embarrassingly ignorant and intellectually lazy, or maybe it’s because people like Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps unknowingly, diminish the suffering of millions of dead. Or maybe it’s because my own grandfather was taken as slave labor in Austria. Then again, maybe it’s because the comparison itself is a despicable smear of the American people.

It’s true that we’re not prepared for the crush of refugees on the southern border. While there is a border, however, we ask migrants who show up to follow existing laws, ones that are subject to the democratic process and the court system.

Sometimes we reacted ham-fistedly, even temporarily breaking up families who are transporting children without any oversight. Some migrants have been abused, and some have died in our care. There is no excuse for it. Neither is sanctioned by the state. If you believe any of this is morally equivalent to carting away millions of people to crematoriums for execution because their faith, your moral compass is irreparably broken. This doesn’t mean that people of good faith can never be critical of U.S. policy or contrast any policy with those of Nazi Germany.

“Concentration camps” have a long history that predates the Holocaust, after all. But the contemporary usage is clear, notwithstanding Ocasio-Cortez’s unconvincing attempts to walk back her initial statements. She, in fact, stresses: “I don’t use those words lightly. I don’t use those words to just throw bombs.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]

On Topic Links 

Nikki Haley: Trump’s Peace Plan Puts Israel’s Security FirstJNS, June 13, 2019 — Nikki Haley may no longer be the United States’ permanent representative to the United Nations, but her passion for defending Israel remains as strong as ever.

 

Trump’s UN Pick Vows to Fight Anti-Israel Bias, Anti-Semitism:  JNS,  June 19, 2019 — Nearly four months after being nominated, Kelly Craft—U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Nikki Haley as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations—vowed on Wednesday to fight the international body’s anti-Israel bias, in addition to calling out anti-Semitism.
Trump’s Mideast Envoy Slams UN Over ‘Band-Aid’ Solutions to Israel-Palestinian Conflict:  Ben Evansky Fox News, May 22, 2019 — The Trump administration’s chief negotiator for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict delivered a blunt message to the United Nations Security Council Wednesday, asserting that it is time “to move past Band-Aid solutions” and claiming that the U.N. agency to support Palestinian refugees had “failed” in its mission.
Hoenlein: UNESCO Has Distorted The History of the Jewish People:  Shaked Karabelnicoff, Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2019 — Over the past two years, UNESCO has been washing away evidence of Jewish history in Israel, according to Malcolm Hoenlein, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
British Christian Zionism and George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda :  Philip Earl Steele, Fathom Journal, June 2019 — In the introduction to her recent lecture-series on Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, Harvard Professor of Yiddish and Comparative Literature Ruth R. Wisse stated: ‘Twenty years before the rise of Zionism, [Eliot] put forth the idea that Jews had to reclaim their national sovereignty in the Land of Israel’.
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The CIJR’s French language BriefingCommunique: Israël a-t-il le Droit d’Annexer une Partie des Territoires Conquis en 1967?
(Published every Friday.)
To subscribe, please send your name and email address to administrator@isranet.org
Today’s two main articles in our french Communique are: La Traduction Des Termes, La Manipulation Politique Et La Désinformation:  Freddy Eytan, LPH Info, June 17, 2019

Dossier: Territoires occupés ou disputés !:  Europe Israel News, The CIJR would like to wish our friends and subscribers Shabbat Shalom

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