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United Nations Tag

So awful. The Associated Press has uncovered an internal UN investigation into a child sex ring in Haiti by UN peacekeepers. According to the AP report, one individual from Pakistan received jail time while a court in Uruguay convicted four of “private violence." Peacekeepers from places like Sri Lanka and Uruguay came to the island in the recent decades and should have provided help and security to the abandoned children. While the peacekeepers had food, the report stated they made the children pay for it....with sex.

While President Donald Trump was holding a joint news conference with Jordanian King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein describing his new approach to Syria and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after suspected chemical attacks killed dozens of civilians, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley was at a Security Council meeting blasting Russia over its support of the regime. It was epic. The full video is a must-see:

New United Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley wowed the audience at AIPAC this evening, saying "The days of Israel-bashing are over," in a conversation with former Defense Department official Dan Senor. Haley told Senor that while she had heard that there was anti-Israel bias at the UN "you can’t comprehend how ridiculous it is.”

Last week the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), a group comprised entirely of Arab countries, issued a report accusing Israel of practicing apartheid against the Palestinians. Having a U.N. group make such an accusation was considered a major propaganda win for the anti-Israel movement. As discussed below, the report was authored by people with longstanding anti-Israel records. The report was so disgraceful in content and so obviously political in motive that by Friday the Secretary General of the UN had first disassociated himself from the report and then asked that it removed from the ESCWA's website. Also on Friday, Rima Khalaf, the Jordanian head of ESCWA resigned. Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., is credited by many as working to negate this anti-Israel move. This may be a sign of a new U.S. assertiveness at the U.N.

Nikki Haley always has been pro-Israel. But as U.N. Ambassador, she doesn't get to voice purely personal opinions, but rather, speaks for the administration. Yet, any ambassador cannot help but bring his or her own style and wording to the job. We certainly saw that with Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, when he lambasted the U.N. General Assembly after passage of the infamous (and now revoked) 1975 "Zionism is Racism" Resolution 3379. Given that the rhetoric from the anti-Israel boycott movement, including far-left regressive Jews, mirrors the "Zionism is Racism" resolution, it's worth revisiting Moynihan's words.

The U.S. is the largest donor (pdf.) to The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), contributing $380 million in 2015. We previously have reported how UNRWA indoctrinates Palestinian children to hate Jews and incites violence, VIDEO – How UN Refugee agency teaches children to hate and attack Jews:
We recently showed a video about how Palestinian incitement to violence is generated both top-down from the Palestinian Authority, and bottom-up through social media, VIDEO: No truly “Lone Wolves” in the Palestinian Knife Intifada

Iran has defied the United Nations (UN) with a ballistic missile test in Semnan, located 140 miles east of Tehran. But the test violated UN resolution 2231, which states that the country cannot conduct these missile tests. Fox News reported:
The Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missile flew 600 miles before exploding, in a failed test of a reentry vehicle, officials said. Iran defense minister Brigadier Gen. Hossein Dehqan said in September that Iran would start production of the missile.

When the final acts of now former President Obama are analyzed, it will be hard to determine which one was the slimiest. There are many possible contenders for that dishonor, but the transfer of a significant amount of American taxpayer-dollars per a U.N. climate change agreement Donald Trump opposes should be high on that list.
Barack Obama has heeded calls to help secure the future of the historic Paris agreement by transferring a second $500m instalment to the Green Climate Fund, just three days before he leaves office.

I live blogged Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt's senate hearing for the EPA, but three other cabinet choices had their own senate hearings today. That included Rep. Tom Price for Health and Human Services, Wilbur Ross for Commerce, and Nikki Haley for UN. Obamacare took control of Price's hearing, since the Republicans in D.C. want to repeal and replace it. Price told the committee that states should lead on a replacement.

In a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, January 15, 2017, Secretary of State John Kerry assured the prime minister that there would be no further United Nations Security Council action taken against Israel in the wake the Paris peace conference. That conference brought 70+ nations together to discuss terms of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, without either party being present. United Nations Security Council resolution 2334, passed in late December 2016, when the United States abstained and failed to protect Israel from a resolution that stated that the Israeli presence in all lands captured in 1967, including parts of Jerusalem, constituted a flagrant violation of international law. The immediate effects of the resolution was to encourage boycotts of Israel and increase Palestinian violence, mostly rock throwing, against Israel.

In an Israeli TV interview conducted earlier this week at the White House, President Obama dismissed the criticism that he had betrayed Israel by opting not to veto United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2334. The U.S. abstention allowed the Security Council to adopt the resolution on December 23. It branded Israel’s settlements in east Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria/the West Bank as illegal and occupied Palestinian land. The interview for Israel’s Channel 2 aired on Tuesday night. In it, Obama insisted that the resolution was the “best move for peace” and that he had “an obligation to do what I think is right.”

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approves House Resolution 11 (full embed at bottom) which criticizes not only anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334, but also the U.S. abstention. It was the criticism of the abstention that split Democrats, with several speakers claiming Republicans were politicizing support for Israel in Congress. Several speakers claimed the Resolution was a swipe at Obama as he was leaving office. Potential DNC Chair Keith Ellison voted No.

Last week I was invited by an editor of The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog to contribute an article focusing on the issues surrounding president-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The article, “Trump’s plan to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could help the peace process”, was published yesterday:

In all the fury over the anti-Israel UN Resolution 2334 the Obama administration marshalled through the Security Council, with an "abstain" vote providing cover for the perfidy, few people have focused on a particularly pernicious and dangerous provision. I'm not talking about the provisions effectively declaring it illegal for Jews to live in Jewish Quarter of the Old City or to worship at the Western Wall. Here is the provision I'm talking about in Resolution 2334 (pdf.):

We've covered the back and forth today, from John Kerry's angry policy speech putting most of the blame on Israel for failure to reach an agreement on the final status of the dispute, to Bibi Netanyahu's equally blistering rebuttal. The rallying around Israel and Netanyahu by politicians on both sides of the aisle is a reflection of both ideological support for Israel and the fact that Israel remains hugely popular among the American public. The maligned "Israel Lobby" consists of a substantial majority of Americans who not only support Israel, but support Israel over the Palestinians. The American people are the Israel Lobby. But that can't explain the reaction against Obama's U.N. move.