Son of Hamas stuns the United Nations

A must see from UN Watch



The expressions on the faces of the Palestinian delegates are priceless.

Statement by United Nations Watch
to 36th Session, U.N. Human Rights Council
Delivered by Mosab Hassan Yousef

Thank you, Mr. President.

I take the floor on behalf of UN Watch.

My name is Mosab Hassan Yousef. I grew up in Ramallah as a member of Hamas.

I address my words to the Palestinian Authority, which claims to be the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people.

I ask: where does your legitimacy come from?

The Palestinian people did not elect you, and they did not appoint you to represent them.

You are self-appointed.

Your accountability is not to your own people. This is evidenced by your total violation of their human rights.

In fact, the Palestinian individual and their human development is the least of your concerns.

You kidnap Palestinian students from campus and torture them in your jails. You torture your political rivals. The suffering of the Palestinian people is the outcome of your selfish political interests. You are the greatest enemy of the Palestinian people.

If Israel did not exist, you would have no one to blame. Take responsibility for the outcome of your own actions.

You fan the flames of conflict to maintain your abusive power.

Finally, you use this platform to mislead the international community, and to mislead Palestinian society, to believe that Israel is responsible for the problems you create.

Thank you.

What we are reading this weekend

What we are reading this weekend:

*   Dan Pine writes in the J weekly; the Jewish News weekly of Northern California  "having covered BDS for a while, I am convinced that many BDS activists don’t want Israel to change. They want it to disappear."
Read about what Dan calls the "malice-in-Wonderland hypocrisies of BDS"

BDS activists playing by unprincipled rules

*   Marianne, the latest ship in the so-called "Freedom Flotilla" is now sailing the Mediterranean, en route to Gaza. Their claims of carrying essential humanitarian supplies for the besieged people of Gaza have been daylighted by the Ma'an News Agency, which has revealed they carry one, yes one, solar panel as cargo.
Freedom Flotilla vows to break siege: 'This time we will reach Gaza'
*Via UNWatch

A report on the Gaza Conflict 2014,  authored by General Klaus Naumann and 10 other former chiefs of staff, generals, senior officers, political leaders and officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, Holland, Spain, Italy, Australia and Colombia.has concluded

“Our overall findings are that during Operation Protective Edge last summer, in the air, on the ground and at sea, Israel not only met a reasonable international standard of observance of the laws of armed conflict, but in many cases significantly exceeded that standard.”

Ahead of UN Report on 2014 Gaza War, Multinational Mission of Generals Find: "Israel not only met but significantly exceeded international legal standards" 

The full report is available here:

Key Preliminary Findings of the High Level International Military Group on the Gaza Conflict

Hillel Neuer: And there was no one left to speak for me

From Hillel Neuer of UN Watch

Hillel Neuer from UN Watch at U.C.Berkeley

Tuesday evening Nov 25 at 7 PM at UC Berkeley, Wheeler Hall 110: Hillel Neuer of UN Watch will be speaking.

Tikvah (UC Berkeley's pro-Israel student group) will be hosting Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, to speak about the United Nations, human rights and Israel. He will address the controversial Schabas Commission on the Israel-Gaza conflict this summer.

He will also survey the overall history and current practices of the UN Human Rights Council.

Hillel C. Neuer is the executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO in Geneva, Switzerland. Mr. Neuer appears regularly before the United Nations Human Rights Council, intervening for the victims of Darfur, the rights of women, political prisoners in China, Russia and Zimbabwe and the cause of Middle East peace.

Hillel Neuer's banned U.N. speech   has became the most viewed and written-about NGO speech in the history of the United Nations.

Visions of Orwell: North Korea and Iran attack Canada for human rights abuses

In which United Nations Human Rights Council becomes indistinguishable from the “Onion”

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.   And Iran, North Korea and China and other bastions of individual freedoms have joined forces to attack Canada for its ‘human rights abuses”.

From the National Post:

Canada was the focus of critical attacks on its human rights record at a prominent United Nations forum by a cluster of countries with dubious human rights records, including North Korea, Iran and China.

The delegation from North Korea lamented: “We have serious concerns about continued violations of the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, torture and other ill-treatment, racism and xenophobia...”

Iran railed against “violations of human rights by Canadian government” including “child sexual exploitation and trafficking, the right to food, discriminatory law and regulation against indigenous people and minority groups including Muslim, Arab and African communities.”

China’s delegate complained of “widespread racial discrimination in Canada.”

Pakistan was dismayed by Canada’s “increased poverty and unemployment rate among immigrant communities”; Egypt by Canada’s “racial profiling in law-enforcement action”; and Cuba with the “racism and xenophobia” in Canada.

Russia expressed alarm over Canada’s “police actions of torture and cruelty against peaceful demonstrators.”....

From Hillel Neuer, a Canadian-born lawyer,  human rights advocate, and director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO

“The continued subversion of the UN human rights system — whereby thugs, murderers and rapists purport to judge the human rights record of a liberal democracy — undermines the founding principles and credibility of the United Nations.” 

UNESCO rejection of Palestinian claim "a spectacle as rare as Halley’s Comet”

From J Post

"The secretariat of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has come out against a bid by the Palestinian Authority to use an emergency procedure to register Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity under the country of “Palestine” as a World Heritage site.

“At the UN, where the General Assembly each year adopts more resolutions criticizing Israel than on the rest of the world combined, this is a spectacle as rare as Halley’s Comet,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said.

“This is the first time in recent memory that a draft resolution circulated by the United Nations – let alone by UNESCO, which recently elected Assad’s Syria to its human rights committee – openly rejected a Palestinian claim or position,” Neuer said. His Geneva-based nonprofit group monitors UN activity."

From UN Watch:

"The United Nations circulated a draft resolution that would reject a Palestinian bid to list the birthplace of Jesus as an endangered World Heritage site, citing a report by international experts who investigated and dismissed claims that the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem was under any specific danger.

The draft resolution will be considered by UNESCO's 21-nation World Heritage Committee at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, later this month.

The committee — which includes Algeria, Cambodia, Iraq, Malaysia, Mali, Qatar, Russia, Senegal, and the United Arab Emirates — has the power to overturn the expert-drafted text, but insiders say that Arab states may not win the required two-thirds majority, noting that several states, including Russia, the host country, may be hesitant to upset an objective evaluation submitted by UN professionals...

The reason for the extraordinary occurrence is very simple: the Palestinians have just been admitted to UNESCO as a member state, and this is their first time taking advantage of the World Heritage procedure, which is governed in its initial stages by experts who are non-political -- instead of by the very political 195 governments, most of whom join the automatic UN majority that rubber-stamps Arab resolutions...

a comprehensive investigation and report by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) – a Paris-based entity that advises the World Heritage Committee on which nominated properties to list — said the very opposite.

“[T]he Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage route in Bethlehem, Palestine should not be inscribed on the World Heritage List on an emergency basis," said the experts.

"ICOMOS does not consider that the conditions required by paragraph 161 of the Operational Guidelines are fully met, concerning damage or serious and specific dangers to the Church of the Nativity that make its condition an emergency that needs to be addressed by the World Heritage Committee with immediate action necessary for the survival of the property.”

ICOMOS found that, contrary to the Palestinian submission now before the UNESCO committee, the Church of the Nativity was neither “severely damaged,” nor “under imminent threat”.

There was no “immediate action… necessary for the survival of the property”. Despite the Palestinian claims, Israel was not found to be a major obstacle to the preservation of the Church of the Nativity.

In fact, the report pointed out that the church’s roof – said to be at greatest risk – was repaired “most recently in 1990, when works were implemented by the Israeli military authorities.”

Gaza Activist Stabbed After Exposing Hamas Use of Human Shields

And the world is silent.
From UN Watch

"The stabbing in Gaza of a Palestinian rights activist after he exposed Hamas' contempt for its own people by using them as human shields, and after he criticized the radical Islamic group for torture, abuse and trampling free speech, should be strongly condemned by the United Nations—both as an attack on the victim’s human rights, and on the idea of freedom of expression.

Masked attackers on Friday stabbed Mahmud Abu Rahma multiple times in the back, leg and shoulders, it was revealed today.

This latest attack on a rights activist underscores Gaza's brutally enforced intolerance for any discourse other the anti-Israel mantras of Hamas, which rules the area with an iron fist.

The attack only proves the simple truth of the victim's words.

Abu Rahma's crime was publishing an article in the Palestinian press that dared to criticize Hamas' "outrageous attack upon free expression and peaceful assembly" over the past year, and the "hundreds of cases of torture and abuse."

Abu Rahma also dared to publish basic facts about Gaza that completely contradict the Hamas narrative, and that of the UN's Goldstone Report, which repeatedly found "no evidence" that Hamas used civilians as human shields.

What is remarkable is that with all of the massive UN resources ostensibly dedicated to protecting Palestinians—the 16-member Division for Palestinian Rights, the 20-odd resolutions on Palestinians last year by the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council's special agenda item on Palestinians at every session, resolutions on Palestinians by UNESCO, the WHO and numerous other agencies, the full-time post of "Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Palestine" held by Richard Falk—still, with all that and more, the world body somehow managed to turn a blind eye to the massive violations of Palestinian rights described by Abu Rahma

• Although Abu Rahma considers Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations to be “resistance groups,” he said they "show little or no care for people's life and well being.”

• “Military training sites function and are located in places very close to neighborhoods and/or schools, from where acts of resistance, including firing rockets, also occur.” As a result, “The population of these locations are inevitably vulnerable to Israeli attacks.”

• “Numerous people were injured from live fire coming from resistance groups training sites; including children and at least one man who lost his eye.”

• “There is a training site in the town of Beit Lahiya that threatens people every day, including a girl who was injured inside her school when an explosion occurred in this site on Sep. 20 2011.”

• “Explosions also occur frequently in densely-populated areas around Gaza, and have their victims, many of whom are children.”

• A man in the al-Nasser neighborhood in Gaza city, whose house is near a military training site, “complained to the resistance members many times. He explained the family’s fear for their life and house. But he was told the family could move out of the area, even if they had no resources to move. He died the way he feared most: tragically.”

• “The state of carelessness from the part of resistance is also causing continued victims of the misfiring of home-made rockets that fall on houses inside Gaza. Many of the victims are children and all of them are civilians who happen to be in their homes.”

• “There are more victims of shootings from, or explosions in, training sites. Many children are killed or maimed when explosive devices left in the streets or farms explode in their hands. And there is the young man who was shot in the legs for daring to publicly criticize a local resistance leader.”

If the UN's colossal pro-Palestinian infrastructure would have truly done its job and reported the above simple facts about Hamas perfidy to the world's attention, it is fair to ask whether Abu Rahma would have been assaulted for writing his article.

The incident raises serious questions about the ability of the Palestinians to create a democratic state where people feel free to question their government without fear of being seriously injured or killed for doing so.

The attack should be immediately denounced by Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, by Irina Bokova, the director general of UNESCO, the world agency mandated to uphold press freedom, and by Frank La Rue, the UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression.

The attack is also serious enough for its implications that even the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, should personally condemn it."
Read it all here

Direct Challenge to the Goldstone Report

Link

Read the transcript at UN Watch.


xposted to In the Gloaming.