Joseph A. Klein is the author of Pompeo Pounds the ICC and its Defenders Fight Back
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Friday new U.S. visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation of U.S. personnel in connection with U.S. and allied military and intelligence activities in Afghanistan. The ICC prosecutor had previously requested approval from the ICC’s judges to launch a formal investigation into what the prosecutor called the “situation in Afghanistan.” That request is still pending.
Secretary Pompeo warned all those working for the ICC that “if you’re responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of U.S. personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan, you should not assume that you will still have or will get a visa, or that you will be permitted to enter the United States.”
- Monday, March 18, 2019
The Palestinians have weaponized the International Criminal Court (ICC). Leveraging the decision of the United Nations General Assembly to bestow Palestine with the title “Non-Member Observer State,” the Palestinian leaders decided to join the ICC, which accepted its application with open arms. Then, on May 15, 2018, the Palestinians exercised their “right as a State Party to the Rome Statute to refer the Situation of Palestine for immediate investigation” to the ICC prosecutor, who had previously opened an informal “preliminary examination” on her own initiative.
The Palestinian leadership continues to avoid direct negotiations with Israel, preferring to use the United Nations as a tool to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state. Their latest gambit was an attempt to initiate a Palestinian-sponsored official visit by the UN Security Council to the Palestinian Authority's stomping ground. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, knew that the Palestinians were looking to exploit the Security Council’s presence for propaganda purposes. He objected to Equatorial Guinea's ambassador to the UN, Anatolio Ndong Mba, who is currently president of the UN Security Council. Israel would be willing to host individual visits by UN ambassadors, he told Ambassador Mba, but not as part of a Palestinian initiative aimed at exploiting the Security Council visit for more propaganda fusillades aimed against Israel.
The United Nations Security Council met on Saturday to discuss the crisis in Venezuela, after overcoming a procedural vote demanded by Russia. The Putin regime claimed that the economic, political and humanitarian crisis wrought by the catastrophic actions of the Maduro regime was not a proper agenda item for the Security Council to consider.
Venezuela, an oil-rich country that was once amongst the most prosperous countries in the Latin American region, is now in a state of economic and political chaos. Venezuela’s socialist leaders – first, Hugo Chávez and then his successor, Nicolas Maduro - have turned the country into an economic basket case because of their gross mismanagement, corruption and destructive economic policies.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday took over as chairman of the United Nations’ Group of 77 and China, a coalition of 134 developing nations which often votes in unison. He could only do so because of the UN’s complicity in treating Palestine as if it were an actual state.
The United Nations Security Council held a special session on Wednesday, requested by the United States and Israel, to discuss Hezbollah's underground attack tunnels that penetrated the Blue Line, the border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel. The tunnels were recently discovered by the Israeli Defense Force. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) independently verified the presence of the tunnels, two of which it said had crossed the Blue Line into Israel.
The United Nations General Assembly affirmed what is called the “Global Compact on Refugees” on Monday. There were 181 UN member states voting in favor of approving the compact, with the United States and Hungary voting against and the Dominican Republic, Eritrea and Libya abstaining.
In his remarks observing the seventieth anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres declared that “the Genocide Convention is preventive at its core, and punishes specific acts that are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.
Beginning in 1977, the United Nations has observed the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" every year on November 29th. This is the date in 1947 when the UN General Assembly approved its partition resolution envisaging the establishment of two states – an independent state of Palestine and an independent Jewish state of Israel.
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting at Ukraine’s request on Monday to discuss Sunday’s maritime confrontation between vessels from Ukraine and Russia off the coast of the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Members of the first of several Central American migrant "caravans" have already arrived at the U.S. border with Mexico. Some of the migrants scaled or crawled through barrier fences, attempting to move onto U.S. soil illegally.
The United Nations General Assembly once again singled out the United States, by far the UN’s largest financial contributor, for condemnation. This time, the issue was the U.S. embargo against Cuba, an issue that the General Assembly considers and votes upon as an annual ritual that has been going on for 27 years.
The United States Mission to the United Nations convened a meeting on October 16th at the UN headquarters' Economic and Social Council chamber regarding the plight of political prisoners in Cuba and Cuba’s abysmal human rights record. More than a dozen representatives from Cuba's Mission to the UN tried to disrupt the meeting by constantly shouting and pounding on the table in front of them.
Double standards may not be enough to describe what has become of the United Nations. In some ways, it has no standards at all. This was demonstrated very clearly by last week’s UN General Assembly vote for new members to join the inaptly named Human Rights Council.
President Trump confirmed on Tuesday that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is resigning from that post and leaving the Trump administration at the end of this year. He praised Ambassador Haley as a “very special” person who had helped him solve "a lot of problems.”
The last thing that will deter President Trump from following through with his sanctions program against the Iranian regime is a bogus ruling by an unaccountable globalist governance body based on a treaty that is no longer valid
President Donald Trump delivered his second speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 25th. Its overarching theme was the primacy of national sovereignty as the best organizing principle to help foster prosperity, peace and freedom in the world.
The new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has unfortunately continued the one-sided anti-Israel narrative that her anti-Semitic predecessor, Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, propagated whenever he got a chance. In her first speech to the UN Human Rights Council on September 10, 2018, Ms. Bachelet blamed Israel’s so-called “blockade” and its alleged “excessive use of force” for all the problems suffered by the Palestinians in Hamas-run Gaza.
U.S. national security advisor John Bolton condemned the International Criminal Court (ICC) “as a free-wheeling global organization claiming jurisdiction over individuals without their consent.” He announced in a major speech to the Federalist Society earlier this week that the Trump administration would consider strong steps to protect the American people if the ICC oversteps its bounds, such as imposing sanctions on any ICC judges and prosecutors who bring legal action against Americans and even pursuing prosecution in U.S. courts against such ICC judges and prosecutors.