Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist

The Obama Administration Sides With Hamas

Hamas' allies have achieved what they set out to do – to push Israel into a corner by provoking a confrontation against the blockade-breaker flotilla of ships and then using Israel's response to force an end to the blockade against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Time For Real Action Against North Korea

Tensions are rising in the Korean Peninsula, following confirmation by international investigators that North Korea torpedoed a South Korean ship in March, killing 46 sailors which were South Korea’s worst military fatalities since the Korean War ended in 1953. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed to cut off nearly all trade with North Korea and to deny North Korean merchant ships permission to use South Korean sea lanes. South Korea also plans to broadcast propaganda messages into the North and to drop leaflets by air.

The toothless nuclear nonproliferation treaty

Every five years or so the United Nations hosts a foreign minister level conference to review the implementation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). This year, Iranian strongman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to join the party. He delivered, on the first morning of the review conference last week, his customary condemnation of Israel and of the United States while defending his country’s nuclear program.

Hamas is responsible for Gaza’s humanitarian plight

John Ging, the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Operations in Gaza, briefed correspondents at United Nations headquarters in New York last week on the humanitarian plight of the people in Gaza. He said that the Palestinian people in Gaza faced “a struggle to survive on a daily basis.”

Russian occupation and evictions in Georgia: A double standard

While the United Nations Human Rights Council continues to trump up charges against Israel for defending itself against Islamic extremist terrorists seeking its destruction, the Council continues to ignore real illegal occupation of territory within the democratic nation of Georgia by the Russian Federation.

UN Ambassador Susan Rice Ducks an important trip to the Congo

Africa has been a heart-felt concern of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for years Rice joined the Clinton administration’s National Security Council in 1995 as a special assistant to the President and senior director for African Affairs. In 1997, Rice moved into the high-profile role of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. During the years of the Bush administration, she joined the Brookings Institution and wrote about Africa.

More Israel-hater mail and a rebuttal

Here is an example of e-mail comments that I continue to receive from Israel-haters who did not like my two recent articles on Norman Finkelstein and the Hamas-Israeli conflict in Gaza. The e-mail – actually one of the more temperate of its ilk – accuses me of “hiding behind an ambiguity,” lying, and writing an article “filled with myths.”

A response to Israel’s haters

My article appearing in Canada Free Press last Friday entitled “Hamas apologist Norman Finkelstein attacks Israel again” (along with its publication by FrontPage Magazine under the title “Finkelstein’s Slander Against Israel”) has apparently brought the haters of the Jewish state of Israel out from under their rocks. And I mean that literally, since the terrorist organization Hamas, which they so zealously defend, still has its founding Charter in force which quotes the prophet Mohammed:

Hamas apologist Norman Finkelstein attacks Israel again

Norman Finkelstein, the professional Israel basher, appeared before the United Nations Correspondents Association in New York on April 7th to hawk his newest diatribe against Israel entitled ‘This Time We Went Too Far.’ Finkelstein claimed in his book that he was providing “an accurate record” of the “suffering” that the Gazan population “endured” as a result of the “merciless Israeli assault.” He urged the UN correspondents to publicize his message about what he called the “bloodletting in Gaza.”

U.N. hypocrisy on women’s rights

The United Nations has been busy this week celebrating International Women’s Day and convening a conference at UN headquarters in New York of the Commission on the Status of Women. The purpose of the conference is to undertake a fifteen-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. A key focus of the Commission for the period 2010 to 2014, according to the website of the UN’s Division for the Advancement of Women, is “sharing of experiences and good practices with a view to overcoming remaining obstacles and new challenges.”

Israel investigates while the Palestinians stonewall

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has now issued his report following up on the General Assembly resolution calling for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to submit the results of their domestic investigations of the Goldstone Report’s allegations of international humanitarian and human rights law violations during the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict.

The UN’s Legacy of Appeasement

If Senator Barack Obama thinks that the lessons of World War II have nothing to teach him about the dangers of appeasing the enemies of democracy, he need only look at how the United Nations is making the world a more dangerous place today by coddling Islamic extremists. However, it does not look like Obama is opening his eyes to appeasement at the UN any more than he is willing to learn from history.

The Islamists’ Best Friend at the UN

Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, will be presiding over Durban II - the UN's 2009 follow-up to its controversial 2001 ‘anti-racism’ hatefest in Durban, South Africa.

UN Gag Order

The Islamic propaganda machine has turned Western democratic values inside out to the Islamists’ advantage.