U.N. bars U.N. watchdog group from monitoring Durban III
Demonstrations at Durban II
In an unprecedented act of discrimination, the United Nations has decided to block the U.N. watchdog group U.N. Watch from attending and monitoring this Thursday’s Durban III “anti-racism” conference. This is the first time in history that U.N. Watch has been officially excluded from a U.N. proceeding.
Comments (2) »U.N. Watch, based in Geneva and accredited by the U.N., has been excluded from a list of 88 approved non-governmental organizations, but a group with close ties to Libya’s former Gaddafi regime was approved to attend next Thursday’s event.
The high-level meeting marks the tenth anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action (DDPA), first adopted in Durban, South Africa. The U.S. and at least 10 other Western democracies have announced they will not attend, because both the 2001 “Durban I” and a 2009 review conference, “Durban II,” picked out Israel for condemnation.
Queries sent to the U.N.’s NGO Branch on Wednesday about the process of NGO accreditation received no reply, but according to a U.N. Web site, the final list of civil society groups permitted to attend was “approved by Member States.”
Among those on the list is the Geneva-based group, North-South 21 (“Nord-Sud 21” in French), a group funded by Muammar Gaddafi in the late 1980s to administer something called the “Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.”
Monday, September 19th, 2011 at 1:11 PM | David Kuner
Israel’s increasing isolation
Israeli citizens feel that our country is currently more isolated than it has been since the state’s birth in 1948. During a recent segment on Israeli Public Radio, popular Israeli news anchor Aryeh Golan summed up how Israelis feel: “In Turkey the government is against us. In Egypt the mob is against us. And in the U.N. the majority is against us.”
Both Turkey and Egypt have turned their backs on decades of cooperation with Israel, and the U.N. General Assembly will most likely add to Israel’s feeling of isolation by rubber stamping the Palestinian Authority’s unilateral statehood declaration later this month. Meanwhile, the mainstream media places fault for Israel’s isolation squarely on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s shoulders, portraying him as not having any interest in peace.
On Thursday, the New York Times opined that the Israeli premier has “refused to make any compromises with the Palestinians, no matter how essential for Israel’s security.” I guess that Netanyahu’s unprecedented ten-month moratorium on West Bank construction and his willingness to openly endorse a two-state solution – an endorsement which no one from Netanyahu’s right wing Likud party has ever given – is not considered “compromise,” according to New York Times standards.
In a recent article posted in Bloomberg News, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called Israel an “ungrateful ally” under Netanyahu’s leadership. Gates supposedly told Obama and other senior White House staff that during Netanyahu’s premiership Israel has given the U.S. nothing in return for its support of the Jewish state, and is responsible for its own isolation.
While popular world opinion pins Israel as the culprit of everything that goes wrong in the Middle East, the Palestinians, on the other hand, can do no wrong. On Tuesday, Palestinian envoy to the U.S. Maen Rashid Areikat openly stated that the PLO will not accept any Jews living in a future Palestinian state. Besides a few conservative publications, the Palestinian envoy’s racist comments went unreported. On the other hand, can you imagine the storm that would ensue if an Israeli politician…
Read More » Comments (17) »Friday, September 16th, 2011 at 7:51 AM | Amichai Farkas
Is Israel an apartheid state?
A young Arab-Israeli woman demolishes the myth:
More on the baseless “Israeli apartheid” charge here. (Via A Soldier’s Mother)
Comments (3) »Monday, September 12th, 2011 at 6:37 AM | David Kuner
How to respond to hatred of Israel
As a partnership of Christians and Jews who publicly and proudly stand for Israel and help Jews in need around the world, our words are often challenged. That comes with the territory. Unfortunately, the “wild west” of new media – communications channels like Facebook and Twitter — provides a vehicle not just for lovers of Israel, but for those who hate the Jewish state as well. 
That point was again illustrated to us last week, when terrorist attacks hit southern Israel. In response to the attacks, our Stand for Israel Facebook page was bombarded with the vilest forms of comments. “Israelis will consider Hitler very merciful compared to what we [Egyptians] will do to you,” and “I will not rest until every Israeli rat is burning,” are just two of them. These slurs came from a wide range of people, from Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt to white supremacists in the U.S.
While we did our best to delete these despicable comments as quickly as they were posted, I was shaken by the depth of their hatred. And I was also reminded just how critical Stand for Israel and all of Israel’s supporters are for defending Israel and the treasured values it shares with those that support her.
Our response to hate speech campaigns like this has to involve more than just deleting or challenging despicable anti-Israel statements. It must involve clear, decisive, and overwhelming support for Israel, based on the facts underlying the Israeli-Arab conflict. Those facts, which we work hard to keep you informed of, show that that Israel is on the right side of history, and has successfully retained the moral high ground in face of the cruelest and most evil actions of its enemies.
Also, we cannot resort to the type of hate speech our enemies use. When I was a teenager and was verbally attacked for being Jewish I asked my rabbi how to respond. He said to me, “Amichai, when a dog barks at you, you don’t bark back.” That’s a lesson that has stuck with…
Read More » Comments (46) »Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 at 7:29 AM | Amichai Farkas
Understanding the U.N. bias against Israel
This four-minute video offers succinct and sobering insight into why the United Nations, the international body supposedly focused on unity and peace, is so critical of the lone democracy in the Middle East: Israel. This informative clip is also an invitation to the pro-Israel demonstration at the U.N.’s third World Conference Against Racism (Durban III) in New York on September 21. Sharing this video and attending this rally are great ways to Stand for Israel!
Comments (16) »
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 at 12:00 PM | David Kuner
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