On Blaming America – and Israel – First
Richard Falk (Photo: United Nations- Geneva)
Richard Falk, a Professor Emeritus at Princeton and the U.N. Human Rights Council’s “special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories” has done it again. Previously, Falk has made remarkably harsh anti-Israel statements and has blamed Israel for 9/11. This time, he wrote in the online Foreign Policy Journal that the Boston bombings are the result of U.S. status as a superpower and, of course, because of U.S. support for Israel.
U.S. support for Israel is a common whipping boy for Islamists and their apologists in the West. The charge is false. Islamists want to kill and terrorize non-Muslims. If pro-Israel foreign policy were the dividing line between those the radical jihadists want to kill and those they’ll leave alone, then how would pro-Israel policies explain the attacks on Thailand, Malaysia, India, Russia, Spain, Bulgaria, or the U.K.? Why attack fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and across Northern Africa? Surely, they’re not pro-Israel, too.
The reality is that the blaming of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Israel is a ploy by terrorists and their pro-appeasement apologists to separate Israel from the U.S. in diplomatic and military terms, thus making Israel easier to destroy. Jew-haters like Richard Falk – whose continued involvement with the UNHRC should cause us to suspend ours – aren’t interested in what really caused the bombings in Boston. If they were, they’d be pointing fingers at the Tsarnaev brothers and their ideological co-conspirators in the radical Islamist movements, rather than at Americans. But, of course, as President Reagan’s U.N. Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, famously said, “they always blame America first.”
Comments (46) »Thursday, April 25th, 2013 at 7:40 AM | Stand For Israel
Houses Demolished, Outcry Missing
Palestinian Legislative Council, Ramallah (Photo: Wikipedia/ Lockesdonkey)
When Israel demolishes Palestinian homes that have been illegally built or that have been co-opted for terrorist use, there is international outcry. Elliott Abrams, writing at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that, when the Hamas terrorists who run the Gaza Strip do it – and do it without any judicial oversight – there is … silence.
Comments (24) »The government of Israel sometimes demolishes homes, saying that they were illegally built on public land. And of course, it is a member state of the United Nations, not a terrorist group. But when it does, one can expect various governments to condemn the action and can expect action in the UN Human Rights Council, perhaps even a debate in the UN General Assembly or Security Council in New York.
Thursday, February 14th, 2013 at 10:08 AM | Stand For Israel
Who’s Next?
For years, those in the pro-Israel movement have warned Western countries that the disproportionate focus by international organizations – especially bodies of the United Nations – on Israel would, eventually, bleed over into criticism of other sister democracies. Bodies such as the U.N. Human Rights Council have been entirely co-opted by dictatorships who love that they can sit in judgment of free countries with the imprimatur of the “international community.” They always choose to beat up on the Jews and their country first. But it was predictable that it wouldn’t stop there.
So it wasn’t surprising last week when the U.N. Human Rights Council – whose membership includes the world’s worst human rights violators and whose vice presidency is currently held by a country (Mauritania) that is home to the globe’s most robust slave-trade – criticized Canada for recent protests by aboriginal Canadian tribes. (more…)
Comments (28) »Thursday, January 17th, 2013 at 10:01 AM | Stand For Israel
U.N. – Again – Bashes Israel While Ignoring the Rest of the World
Two days ago, the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) – the body made up of representatives of all member nations – passed nine anti-Israel resolutions. By week’s end, the total number of anti-Israel resolutions passed during this year’s session of the UNGA will be 22. The total number of resolutions dealing with the rest of the world? Four. That’s not a type-o. Four total resolutions passed about the rest of the world.
Today, the UNGA will adopt the resolutions and recommendations of the 47-nation, totally misnamed, Human Rights Council. The Council boasts the membership of such stalwart defenders of human rights as Congo, China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia, and has as its Vice President a country, Mauritania, that is considered the world’s worst enabler of modern slavery. One resolution names the anti-Western intellectual hero of Holocaust denial as an “Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order” – a mandate created at the behest of communist Cuba, specifically to criticize self-flagellating Western democracies. Others take Israel to task for defending itself, building in its own capital city, and, less specifically, for continuing to exist.
Seriously…you couldn’t make up anything more absurd. I dare you to try.
At SFI, we are frequently critical of the United Nations. Weeks like this one make me feel as if we’re not critical enough.
Comments (37) »Thursday, December 20th, 2012 at 10:25 AM | Stand For Israel
Lawmakers Call for Cuts to U.N., PA
Alana Goodman notes that the United Nations and Palestinian Authority may (and, in our view, should) suffer for yesterday’s disgraceful and dangerous anti-Israel vote (her article was written before the measure passed).
Senator Orrin Hatch has already filed an amendment to the upcoming defense bill that would abolish UN funding if the status change is approved.
Read the rest in Commentary.
Friday, November 30th, 2012 at 10:04 AM | Stand For Israel
PA’s U.N. Bid Won’t Undermine Hamas
Writing in Commentary, Jonathan Tobin says that the PA bid for a status upgrade at the U.N. not only doesn’t do anything to move Palestinians closer to a state (which they don’t care about), it also doesn’t do anything to make Fatah look better than Hamas (which is the only real point).
Comments (18) »Those worried about Hamas’s ascendancy keep telling us that the only way to answer the Islamist threat is to bolster Abbas’s corrupt and discredited government. That seems to be the motivation for the French whose president, Francois Hollande, is also not adverse to firing a shot across the bow of an Israeli government that the doesn’t like. But as the reservations expressed by the British government — which is equally hostile to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu but more attuned to political reality — make clear, the UN vote won’t bring the region closer to peace.
Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 at 10:57 AM | Stand For Israel
PA’s U.N. vote may be held during Jewish High Holy Days
UN General Assembly
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has receieved reports indicating that the Palestinian Authority may attempt to bring their statehood bid to the United Nations during the Jewish high holidays of Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, in an attempt to prevent Israel from speaking before the General Assembly or exerting any pressure behind the scenes:
Comments (20) »Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to address the forum on September 23rd. However, there is still uncertainty as to when the actual vote on Palestinian independence will take place.
One of the dates that is repeatedly heard is September 27, a day before Rosh Hashana. However, new information suggests that it might take place during the holiday itself.
If the vote is held on Yom Kippur, there will not be a single Israeli diplomat at the UN.
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 at 1:04 PM | Stand For Israel