The United Nations hosted a fashion show on November 10th celebrating the UN’s international year of solidarity with the Palestinian people. The event was held on the same day that Palestinians, incited by their leaders, murdered two Israelis in cold blood.
The Obama administration is so desperate to reach a nuclear deal with Iran by the current deadline of November 24th that it is willing to trust Russia to play a key implementation role.
The Obama administration’s contemptible hostility towards Israel has reached the level of the kind of despicable Israel-bashing one hears every day at the United Nations.
Secretary of State John Kerry chose a White House ceremony on October 16th for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha to regurgitate a false theory linking the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with the increase of jihadist violence and recruitment in the Middle East region.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose country was just elected by the United Nations General Assembly to serve a two year term on the Security Council during 2015 and 2016 in place of departing Argentina, gave a preview of the anti-West, anti-capitalism rhetoric we can expect his country to contribute. He blamed the United States for the recent decline in global oil prices, noting what he claimed was the intent to hurt Russia.
Speaking at the Wind Technology Testing Center in Boston Massachusetts on October 9th, the windsurfer and windbag-in-chief himself, Secretary of State John Kerry, pronounced that climate change, if left unaddressed, will result in the end of times: “Life as you know it on Earth ends,” Kerry said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a powerful and sobering speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 29th. He said he came from Jerusalem to speak on behalf of the Israeli people and to “expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country and the brave soldiers who defend it.”
Turkey may well be the jihadists’ fifth column in NATO.
Turkey’s autocratic president, Tayyip Erdogan, has allowed Turkey’s border to become a passageway for jihadist fighters streaming into Syria to join ISIS and the al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra.
President Obama delivered his annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24th. This speech was his strongest UN General Assembly address to date, which doesn’t say very much given his prior speeches that presented a portrait of a humble America that must defer more often to the will of the “international community.” And even this speech, like many of his prior speeches directed to global audiences, contained some strains of America-bashing.
President Obama finally decided to pull the trigger and approve intensive airstrikes on key ISIS positions in Syria. Several Sunni Arab countries participated. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Obama administration is also getting what it needs from Turkey, but did not elaborate.
The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), established in 1974 to “[m]aintain the ceasefire between Israel and Syria” and … “[s]upervise the areas of separation and limitation” in the vicinity of the Golan Heights, has recently withdrawn its peacekeepers from its positions on the Syrian side of the border. They have been moved to Israeli territory.
Russia has expanded the scope of its military intervention in Ukraine. Following on the heels of its illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea and arming of the separatists fighting the Ukrainian government in eastern Ukraine, Russian regular troops have now joined the separatists’ fight.
The United Kingdom’s United Nations Ambassador Lyall Grant, serving as this month’s president of the Security Council, said that the Security Council met on August 18th in closed consultative session following a public briefing on the Middle East by Robert Serry, the UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East. The main focus was on Gaza. The members discussed a number of parameters they considered necessary for a durable ceasefire in Gaza going forward.
Hamas resumed its firing of multiple rockets, aimed for Israeli population centers, immediately at the end of the 72 hour ceasefire Friday morning, Israel was willing to extend the ceasefire indefinitely, but Hamas refused. Indeed, Hamas's military wing signaled its intention to go back on the warpath with its threat that, unless Israel acceded to its demands, Hamas would launch new rockets with larger warheads and thousands of Israelis would die.
Media bias against Israel continues apace. Even the recent apparent confirmation from the alleged ringleader that Hamas funded the abduction of the three murdered Israeli teenagers this past June gets hardly a mention or is derided in the press.
The United Nations Security Council met once again Thursday on the crisis in Gaza. This time it heard "humanitarian" briefings from Under Secretary-General for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Valerie Amos, and the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Pierre Krahenbuhl.
President Obama is seeking to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into agreeing to an immediate unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. In a phone call on Sunday, Obama reportedly told the Israeli prime minister that such a ceasefire was "a strategic imperative." Obama specifically referred to the ceasefire proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry, which Israel's security cabinet rejected unanimously last Friday.
Hamas not only uses civilian human shields in Gaza to protect its operatives and weapons. It hides behind the diplomatic propaganda shield that the UN too willingly provides.
There are two Gazas. One is at street level, where Palestinian civilians serve as Hamas’s human shields in the face of Israel’s narrowly targeted response to the more than 1500 rockets that have rained down on its citizens in recent days.
In a small incremental but constructive step forward, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a humanitarian aid resolution on July 14th regarding embattled Syria. The purpose of the resolution is to enable increased access to civilians in difficult-to-reach areas by authorizing the delivery of humanitarian assistance across more national borders and internal conflict lines.
Joseph A. Klein is the author of Global Deception: The UN's Stealth Assault on America's Freedom.
