Making History Amid the Same Old UN Farce: Editorial, New York Post, Dec. 7, 2018— UN Ambassador Nikki Haley this week warned the General Assembly, “Today could be a historic day at the United Nations, or it could be just another day.”
Human Rights Day Nothing to Celebrate: Gerald M. Steinberg, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 6, 2018— International Human Rights Day – commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions on December 10, 1948 – is marked every year in the United Nations and by other organizations claiming to carry out its noble principles.
Why Do NGOs Sacrifice Palestinian Welfare Over Political Goals?: Jamie Berk, Algemeiner, Dec. 11, 2018 — During International Human Rights Week, we commemorate the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that every person in the world has the right to maintain an adequate standard of living, health, and protections in the event of illness or unemployment.
More UN Chicanery: Bruce Bawer, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 9, 2018— In Britain, the rage over Muslim rape gangs and Theresa May’s Brexit foul-up is spreading.
On Topic Links
How Does Trump’s New U.N. Ambassador Stack up on Israel?: Josh Axelrod, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 7, 2018
Despite Support from Canada, U.S., UN Fails to Pass Anti-Hamas Resolution: JNS, Dec. 7, 2018
With Nikki Haley’s Resignation, We Israelis Lost A Hero: Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, Forward, Oct.9, 2018
The Human Rights Declaration Turns 70: Sean Nelson, National Review, Dec. 7, 2018
MAKING HISTORY AMID THE SAME OLD UN FARCE
Editorial
New York Post, Dec. 7, 2018
UN Ambassador Nikki Haley this week warned the General Assembly, “Today could be a historic day at the United Nations, or it could be just another day.” As things turned out, it was both. For the first time ever, an overwhelming plurality voted to condemn Hamas for its ongoing war of terror against Israel.
But a last-minute maneuver set an unusually high bar, a two-thirds vote, for passage. So the US-sponsored resolution officially failed. Then the General Assembly went on to approve another measure demanding “an end to the Israeli occupation” and a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders. Business as usual, that is, in a body that has passed over 700 resolutions condemning Israel — yet not one calling out Hamas.
Still, don’t underestimate the significance of the 87-57 vote (with 33 abstentions and 23 no-shows) citing Hamas for “repeatedly firing rockets into Israel” and calling on it and Islamic Jihad to “cease all provocative actions and violent activity, including by using airborne incendiary devices.” Or the fact that the two-thirds requirement passed by a mere three votes.
Yet the fact remains that the UN continues to ignore terrorism directed against Israel — a maddening double standard that, as Haley declared, “is a condemnation of the United Nations itself.” It’s also painfully self-defeating, as she also noted, since those “who have suffered the most [from] Hamas are the Palestinians themselves.”
General Assembly resolutions aren’t binding, so the vote has little practical effect. But the Trump administration had lobbied hard for passage, eventually winning the support of the entire European Union. It would’ve been nice for Haley to finish her successful tenure at the UN with a crowning achievement — and she did come close. Instead, this goes down as another moral failure by the feckless world body, albeit with hope that justice may triumph someday.
HUMAN RIGHTS DAY NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
Gerald M. Steinberg
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 6, 2018
International Human Rights Day – commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions on December 10, 1948 – is marked every year in the United Nations and by other organizations claiming to carry out its noble principles. But in stark contrast to the self-congratulation and high-sounding rhetoric that characterize these events, the reality makes a particularly desolate picture.
If anything, this day is a timely reminder of the failures of the institutions that were created after the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust to protect and defend human rights. Indeed, 2018 was another dismal year, and there is little to celebrate. The massive government bureaucracies and millions provided to groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International did nothing to prevent the carnage in Syria that destroyed millions of lives. And the triumph of the Assad-Russia-Iran-Hezbollah coalition offers no hope for the future. In Venezuela, the tyranny of oppression and repression continues, and hopes that after the death of Hugo Chavez the situation would improve have been dashed.
Ignoring most of the victims around the world, the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva continues to be controlled by some of the worst violators, including Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia (a major offender long before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi), Egypt and China. The member-states and UN officials they appoint routinely exploit the rhetoric of international law to deflect attention from their own behavior, and obsessively target Israel. Syrian and Iranian diplomats take the floor to make poisonous accusations against Israel, while their governments make genocidal threats that turn the 1948 declaration into a mockery.
This year, the council voted to again conduct a pseudo-investigation of Israel, this time over the claims of excessive force and war crimes during the Hamas-orchestrated violent “Grand Return March” incidents along the Gaza border with Israel. Like the infamous (and eventually discredited) Goldstone Report published in 2009, the one-sided results of this version were decided before the commission members were named. For these reasons and more, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley declared “the Human Rights Council is the United Nations’ greatest failure.” After all efforts to enact reforms were rejected, the US suspended its membership, further diminishing the council’s legitimacy.
ADDING TO the disaster, powerful non-governmental organizations claiming to promote human rights, including Amnesty and HRW, promote the agendas of the dictatorships they are ostensibly monitoring. At the UN meetings, these NGOs routinely take the floor to repeat unsupported claims and denounce democracies, with a particular relish for reinforcing the attacks against Israel. After HRW sought funds from Saudi Arabia, referred to the Libyan dictator Ghaddafi as a “human rights reformer” and took a leading role in “turning Israel into a pariah state,” founder Robert Bernstein denounced his own organization. But nothing changed, and the same radical anti-Western and anti-Israel ideologues continue to lead HRW.
The plague of antisemitic attacks in 2018 from the extreme Right and Left that culminated in the massacre of worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue highlights another blatant failure of the human rights industry. The HRC has given the barest of lip service to attacks on Jews in Europe, North America and elsewhere, while a number of its member-states are flagrant violators. Antisemitism is not on the agendas of the NGOs such as HRW and Amnesty that claim to act in the name of the 1948 Universal Declaration, and which, in a number of cases, contribute to this hatred.
Amid these bleak developments, it is difficult to find a basis for optimism as we are about to enter 2019. The best hope comes from increasing exposure of those responsible for these moral failures who exploit the language of human rights and international law in order to justify their own roles in promoting hate and discrimination.
In a number of parliaments and among responsible journalists, the officials responsible for making policy and providing funding ostensibly designated for human rights are being held to account, which is an important beginning. Denmark and the Netherlands, for example, recently adopted criteria for NGO funding that will end support for the groups that promote hate – including the boycott movement against Israel – and violence. In addition, a growing number of countries and institutions have accepted the definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA). If these trends continue, and go beyond empty declarations, perhaps by next year’s International Human Rights Day, enough will change to give us something to celebrate.
WHY DO NGOS SACRIFICE PALESTINIAN WELFARE
OVER POLITICAL GOALS?
Jamie Berk
Algemeiner, Dec. 11, 2018
During International Human Rights Week, we commemorate the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that every person in the world has the right to maintain an adequate standard of living, health, and protections in the event of illness or unemployment.
In order to achieve these goals, the UN recognizes that economic growth can be “instrumental for the realization of human rights.” The UN’s 2030 goals for Sustainable Development build off this principle and call for an end to global poverty by creating social, economic, and environmental sustainability for all. Why then, do so many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that claim to help Palestinians fail to advance these goals?
Many NGOs that say they are focused on Palestinian rights have actually sacrificed economic development and peaceful relations with Israel in favor of their own radical and ideological objectives. For example, BDS and anti-normalization campaigns — which are promoted by a wide range of Palestinian and international NGOs — work to economically and socially isolate Palestinians from Israel and Israelis, eschewing peaceful neighborly relations, and curbing potential economic development.
For more than a decade, a number of Israeli and local Palestinian leaders lobbied the Palestinian Authority to cooperate with a plan to build sewage treatment and wastewater infrastructure plants in the Kidron Valley in Area B of the West Bank. Water is very scarce in this region, and due to the lack of infrastructure, many Palestinians are unable to utilize this resource — some even fall ill due to sewage and wastewater pollution. The proposed Israeli project aimed to solve this problem.
However, instead of helping to promote a solution, Dutch “development” and “peace” NGOs — such as Cordaid, the IKV Pax Christi, and the InterChurch Organization for Development — petitioned their government and a Dutch engineering firm to sabotage the initiative because Israel would be involved. This project would have truly benefited Palestinians in the area. Instead, the organizations’ political considerations outweighed improving the public health and sustainability of the Palestinian population. Finally, in April 2017, after 13 years of negotiation and impasse, and despite the best efforts of these NGOs, a plan to build Israeli and Palestinian pipelines to divert sewage from the Kidron Valley was approved by the PA.
A similar case occurred during the construction of Jerusalem’s light rail line. For more than a decade, numerous international and Palestinian NGOs protested the construction of the new transit system because it passes through east Jerusalem. The powerful French NGOs Ligue des droits de l’Hommes (LdH) and International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), as well as Swedish NGO Diakonia and Amnesty International, ran BDS campaigns against participation in the project, and successfully pressured French contractor Transdev to exit the light rail system in 2015.
Not surprisingly, the ideological convictions that drove these NGO campaigns ignored the needs of Arab Jerusalemites. Prior to the construction of the light rail, many residents of neighborhoods like Shuafat and Beit Hanina had few public transportation options. And today, a large portion of the 140,000 people who ride the train daily are members of Jerusalem’s Arab community. This doesn’t even mention the environmental benefits of the transit system, including a reduction in the level of pollution from private cars.
In 2012, the BDS National Committee (BNC), a leading BDS group, issued a statement decrying the Palestinian entrepreneur Bashar al-Masri. Al-Masri, a leader behind a new planned Palestinian city in the West Bank, was condemned by the group for participating in the “Israeli High Tech Industry Association” annual conference. For BNC, instead of seeing Rawabi and al-Masri’s efforts as an opportunity to improve the local economy, the group, like others, favored politics at the expense of development.
Oxfam International also placed politics over economic needs in 2014, when it protested the location of SodaStream’s manufacturing plant in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone. Oxfam argued that the facility furthered “the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities,” overtly disregarding the 600 Palestinians that worked at the Mishor Adumim factory. In 2016, SodaStream chose to move its factory to Israel’s Negev desert, resulting in the unemployment of many of its Palestinian workers. Moreover, Oxfam abandoned its rights-based approach to development, and its actions resulted in negative consequences for the people it was supposedly trying to help.
These few of many examples show that although the UN and international NGOs espouse “development,” this concept is often secondary to partisan political expediency. In reality, ending normalized relations with Israel and boycotts of the Jewish state take precedence, while infrastructure projects and employment opportunities for Palestinians are discouraged. During International Human Rights Week, it is important to remember that rights, such as development, should come before politics.
MORE UN CHICANERY
Bruce Bawer
Gatestone Institute, Dec. 9, 2018
In Britain, the rage over Muslim rape gangs and Theresa May’s Brexit foul-up is spreading. In Germany, anger about Merkel’s recklessly transformative refugee policies is mounting. In France, the growing cost of immigrant freeloaders to taxpayers has sparked the most sensational public demonstrations since 1968. In Italy and Austria, opponents of the Islamization of Europe now hold the reins of power. Elsewhere in Western Europe, more and more citizens are standing up to their masters’ open-borders dhimmitude.
Yet much of this principled and patriotic resistance may turn out to be for naught, thanks to the so-called Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which is scheduled to be signed by representatives of the UN member states at a December 10-11 conference. Supporters of the compact are quick to reassure its critics that it is not a binding treaty and that it reaffirms the concept of national sovereignty. Nevertheless, when you come right down to it, it is nothing more or less than a dangerous effort to weaken national borders, to normalize mass migration, to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration, and to bolster the idea that people claiming to be refugees enjoy a panoply of rights in countries where they have never before set foot.
As for the 34-page-long document itself, it is written in the kind of numbing, abstraction-heavy prose that will be familiar to anyone who has ever read anything issued by the UN. It declares that “migration is a defining feature of our globalized world, connecting societies within and across all regions, making us all countries of origin, transit and destination.” It states that the goal of the Global Compact is “to create conducive conditions that enable all [!] migrants to enrich our societies through their human, economic and social capacities, and thus facilitate their contributions to sustainable development at the local, national, regional and global levels.” It also affirms that:
“[w]e must save lives and keep migrants out of harm’s way. We must empower migrants to become full members of our societies, highlight their positive contributions, and promote inclusion and social cohesion. We must generate greater predictability and certainty for States, communities and migrants alike. To achieve this, we commit to facilitate and ensure safe, orderly and regular migration for the benefit of all.”
There is a lot more where this came from, and it is not entirely clear what most of it means. Is it just a load of empty, feel-good rhetoric, or is it meant to commit signatories to specific action? What does it mean to say that the Global Compact “mainstreams a gender perspective” or that “a whole-of-government approach is needed to ensure horizontal and vertical policy coherence across all sectors and levels of government”? On the other hand, the document certainly does appear to encourage illegal migration. It unambiguously urges governments to feed their citizens propaganda about the delights of migrants and migration and to “sensitiz[e] and educat[e] media professionals on migration-related issues and terminology” and, in effect, to strong-arm journalists who refuse to play ball. Some readers of the document say that it calls for the criminalization of any criticism of migration, although its backers deny this.
One thing about the agreement, in any event, is irrefutable: almost nobody in the Western world has been clamoring for this. It is, quite simply, a project of the globalist elites. It is a UN power-grab. As the Guardian reported last year, Louise Arbour, the hack put in charge of this project, “regards the global compact as a chance to shift world opinion on the need to address future migration, in the same way that the UN had managed to persuade the world it needed to address climate change.” In short, this is yet another reminder that the UN is run by power-hungry busybodies who see it as their job not to respond to and act upon world opinion but to shape it and, if necessary, punish it.
It is something else, too: it is an effort to enhance the clout of the UN’s largest and most influential power bloc – namely, the Arab and Muslim states. Just check out the UN website devoted to this Global Compact — it’s illustrated by a picture of a young man and woman holding their index fingers and thumbs together to form a heart. She is in hijab. Repeat: she is in hijab. Briefly put, whatever this deal is or is not, it is definitely not good news for the West, for freedom, or for national identity and security. It seems fitting that the December 10-11 signing ceremony will take place in Marrakesh, Morocco.
US President Donald J. Trump, to his credit, saw through this mischievous piece of work last December, when he announced that the U.S. wanted nothing to do with it. He got flak for that move. In a UN vote this past July, the Global Compact was approved by every member nation except for the U.S. But then at least some media starting paying attention and a resistance formed. In recent weeks, more and more governments have said that they are not going to sign the deal after all. So far, the list includes Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland.
In several other Western European countries, the issue is still being debated. I suspect the situation in Norway, where I live, is not unique. Most of the political parties here ardently support the Global Compact and, in the run-up to the signing ceremony, have striven — with the collaboration of the country’s mainstream media — to keep this potentially controversial agreement out of the public eye in the run-up to the signing ceremony. After a handful of alternative news and opinion websites sounded the alarm about the deal, however, it was reported on December 5 that the Progress Party had forced the government to allow a parliamentary discussion of the proposed accord.
Alas, the Big Three countries of Western Europe are all in. Theresa May has committed her government to the deal. Ditto Angela Merkel. Emmanuel Macron has stuck to his line that the Global Compact is “admirable.” What’s more, thanks to Justin Trudeau, whose mantra continues to be “diversity is a source of strength,” Canada is on board as well. So while there is no need to worry that the Global Compact will supersede the U.S. Constitution any time soon, there is legitimate reason for concern that this devious deal will constitute yet another obstacle to citizens of the free world who care about protecting and preserving their countries — but whose elites are dead set on thwarting their will.
On Topic Links
How Does Trump’s New U.N. Ambassador Stack up on Israel?: Josh Axelrod, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 7, 2018—Heather Nauert, State Department spokeswoman and former Fox News reporter, will be replacing Nikki Haley as the next ambassador to the United Nations. With big shoes to fill, many Israelis wonder how Nauert will compare to her predecessor.
Despite Support from Canada, U.S., UN Fails to Pass Anti-Hamas Resolution: JNS, Dec. 7, 2018— The United Nations rejected a resolution on Thursday that required a two-thirds majority to pass condemning the terrorist group Hamas for launching rockets from Gaza into Israel in addition to its infrastructure such as building tunnels to infiltrate and attack the Jewish state.
With Nikki Haley’s Resignation, We Israelis Lost A Hero: Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, Forward, Oct.9, 2018— It felt like a blow. “Nikki Haley resigned” kept popping up in my messages.
The Human Rights Declaration Turns 70: Sean Nelson, National Review, Dec. 7, 2018— This month marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
