Category Archives: United Nations

Netanyahu Speech at UN

On Thursday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly, one day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the international body. Though it was anticipated that Ahmadinejad would use his time to rail against Israel, as he had done in the past, his speech was relatively tame. The bulk of his address focused on restructuring the UN, which he says is skewed toward powerful states, which dominate the world order. View the full report, video and transcript here.

The downgrading of the Palestinian UN bid

Herb Keinon, writing in the Jerusalem Post, suggests that Israel is not as isolated as it sometimes seems.

Distinct similarities are beginning to emerge between the “freedom flotilla” that was supposed to set sail for Gaza from Europe this summer with “1,500 activists in 15 ships,” and the Palestinian’s unilateral statehood bid that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to launch Friday at the UN.

Both were accompanied by sound and fury and expectations of what these “dramatic, historic” steps would signify.

Both were accompanied by nightmare predictions, here and abroad, of the damage that would be caused to Israel, and of how it would further isolate our already badly isolated country.

Both were held up as evidence of this country’s impotence and the failure of its diplomacy. Both were used to strike fear into the hearts of the populace that things have rarely been worse.

In the end, the vaunted flotilla ended with a whimper as the Greeks prevented it from setting sail, and only one vessel with a motley handful of radical leftists and journalists took to the seas, easily intercepted by the navy.

And while the Palestinian UN gambit is still a work in progress, there, too, the buildup is shaping up as being much greater than the climax.

Read more »

Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes

By Richard Goldstone, Washington Post

We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Continue reading →

UN Watch criticizes HRC resolution

From UN Watch:

Geneva, Nov. 15, 2006 – On the same day that Palestinian rockets fired from Northern Gaza killed one Israeli civilian and injured another, the UN Human Rights Council met in special session today to condemn Israel for defending itself against such attacks.

The session was requested by the Council’s Arab and Islamic members, who also drafted the one-sided resolution that ultimately was passed. That resolution, adopted by a vote of 32 in favor, 8 opposed, and 6 abstaining, condemns Israel for the “willful killing” of Palestinian civilians, yet completely ignores the willful killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or any other Palestinian group. The no votes were from Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and the United Kingdom. France, Guatemala, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, and Ukraine abstained.

“Today’s resolution entirely ignores the systematic Palestinian firing of Kassam rockets from Gaza into Israel, which this morning killed 57-year-old Fatima Slutzker, a resident of Sderot, as she was crossing the street with her husband,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer, in a speech before the Council plenary. “Another victim lost both his legs in the barrage. Yet none of this is mentioned anywhere in the resolution. Its inflammatory language against Israel will embolden extremists in the region and give moral support to the Hamas government’s recent promise to send more suicide bombers to attack Israel.”
Continue reading UN Watch criticizes HRC resolution

Rally for Israel at UN

From Power Line comes news of an encouraging but under-reported rally:

Some 35,000 people rallied across from the United Nations to protest Ahmadinejad’s presence at the world body. The crowd also wanted to show solidarity for Israel and implore the United Nations to enforce Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended Israel’s war this summer with Hezbollah and calls for the release of three Israeli soldiers taken hostage by Hamas and Hezbollah.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference, referred to Ahmadinejad’s Tuesday night speech to the General Assembly, in which he portrayed the creation of Israel as aggression against the Muslim world.

“He’s constantly lied and misrepresented the truth,” Hoenlein said, “and he comes and lectures the rest of the world?”

The rally drew dozens of speakers, including Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, New York Gov. George Pataki and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

We wish our Jewish readers Shana Tova – a happy new year!