Obama's UN Spin

The spin we can expect from Obama at the UN
By Anne Bayefsky
Published September 24, 2012
FoxNews.com

President Obama is fond of boasting about his foreign policy prowess and is anxious to use his UN General Assembly address on September 25 to amplify that claim. His competence took a hit this past week after he pontificated on CBS – less than 24 hours after the murder of our Libyan ambassador – that as president he’d “learned” you have “to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts.” It turned out that he didn’t have the facts, but he and his officials kept yakking anyway.

One of those sent out to face the fire, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, will be front and center at the American desk in the Assembly Hall as the president makes his UN pitch. Rice’s implacable insistence that the ‘video-done-it’ has been widely ridiculed, and is now disputed by the White House itself. In fact, the administration’s video-fixated apologies appear to have been fueling the flames.

So last Friday, during a television appearance Daily Beast columnist and Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers asked the right question: “Why was Susan Rice lying?”

The answer will be clearer after hearing the president’s speech, but the answer – to borrow a word from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney – is self-evident. She was taking her cue from the top.

For over three years, the president has burnished his international affairs credentials via a steady stream of misinformation, much of it generated from his diplomatic corps. Bogus UN “success” stories can therefore be expected to factor into tomorrow’s oration.

Here are some possible chestnuts.

There’s the one about the glories of the UN Human Rights Council – which 2012 state department fact sheets say is an “effective and credible multilateral forum for promoting and protecting human rights.”

Given that the UN’s top human rights body counts Cuba, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia among its members, and starting in 2013, Venezuela, Pakistan and Kazakhstan, it isn’t obvious to Americans how this move promotes or protects their values.

Enter Esther Brimmer, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations and storyteller extraordinaire. Addressing a crowd in Washington, D.C. on September 18, 2012, she said: “[S]ince 2009, the United States and our partners on the Human Rights Council have expanded international mechanisms to monitor and protect core human rights, including freedom of expression…”

Actually, the Council has ceased adopting a substantive resolution on freedom of opinion and expression altogether. While the Canadians shepherded such a resolution through the UN Human Rights Commission (the Council’s predecessor) for twelve successive years to 2004, team Obama agreed to set aside the detailed free speech resolution after October 2009 and turn its attention to a new annual UN standard-bearer.

The name of today’s American-backed paradigm? “Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief.” Needless, to say, Obama officials cut that raw deal with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Many months later in 2011, Obama diplomats begged none other than the Egyptian government to help them resurrect a substantive freedom of opinion and expression resolution. Egypt refused.

Another tale concerns Israel, and the Human Rights Council’s ongoing attempt to delegitimize the Jewish state. With an agenda reserving one item on Israel and one item on the remaining 192 UN states, 40% of all condemnations directed at Israel alone, and a new witch hunt (aka “fact-finding mission”) launched last March, Israel ceased all cooperation with the Council this year and asked the Obama administration to stop validating the institution.

Instead, the administration decided to run for a second three-year term while dispatching Susan Rice and her state department colleagues during election season to Jewish venues in Florida. Clearly a pro at her game, here’s Ambassador Rice last spring: “Not a day goes by — not one — when my colleagues and I don’t work hard to defend Israel’s security and legitimacy at the United Nations.”

Then there’s the success story about UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, reappointed in May with the approval of the Obama administration. Opening the Council’s latest session on September 10, 2012 she discussed stoning in Iran in the same paragraph as executions in the United States. The woman who questioned the legality of killing Usama bin Laden, went on to tell the world “I am distressed by recent executions carried out in Belarus, China,… Saudi Arabia and the United States.”

One more foreign policy charade which is sure to make its way into the President’s General Assembly speech – more finger-wagging at Iran. Be prepared for the familiar lingo about “strongest sanctions ever” – albeit that beefy Security Council hasn’t imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran in over two years. We might also hear a variation of this oft-repeated formula for getting tough on Iran: “nuclear weapons are really really bad, but the door is still open if Ahmadinejad should take my hand and walk through it.”

President Obama will also remind the nuclear weapon have-nots in the crowd that he has consistently placed the nuclear disarmament of the United States and other democracies on a par with the evils of nuclear proliferation by genocidal dictators. So why did Susan Rice lie? Because President Obama fully intends to appear before the UN General Assembly and tell the world his priorities are: preserving American values like free speech not undermining it, educating merely misinformed Muslim rioters not appeasing them, strengthening alliances not weakening our allies, protecting American security not disabling our defenses, and assuring American voters that our “tiny” enemies are on the run and we’re now well-loved notwithstanding a spontaneous murder here and there.

In other words, she is not alone.

Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/24/spin-can-expect-from-obama-at-un/#ixzz27ULYtEtX

Self Defense Is Not A Crime ...

Friday, October 16, 2009
UN: Self defense is not a crime of war unless you are Jewish

Colonel Richard Kemp is right. Self defense is not a crime of war unless you are Jewish and the accusers are Islamic (or in the case of the UN, the OIC -- the 56 state (plus Gaza) bloc of Muslim nations).

Kudos to Kemp.
Self-Defense is not a Crime of War

UN Watch Oral Statement
Delivered by Colonel Richard Kemp, 16 October 2009

UN Human Rights Council: 12th Special Session

Thank you, Mr. President.

I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Posted by Pamela Geller on Friday, October 16, 2009

Aid For Sale

Aid for sale in Hamas' Gaza
by Asaf Romirowsky and Nicole Brackman
Philadelphia Daily News
March 4, 2009

There was a bit of head-scratching going on recently in the hallowed halls of the UN.

After weeks of rebuking Israel for preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, UN officials were forced to cancel deliveries of aid into the Hamas-controlled territory after terrorists broke into a UN Relief and Works Agency warehouse and made off with 800 tons of blankets, food and other basic commodities to sell them to the highest bidders.

Israeli officials have been saying all along that Hamas routinely diverts humanitarian aid. In April, fuel trucks destined for UNRWA warehouses were overtaken. It was reported in August that Hamas gunmen had hijacked more than 10 trucks destined for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society full of food and medical supplies.

All that is only more ironic given the worldwide castigation of Israel for allegedly preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza during the military operation.

And the criticism wasn't limited to the issue of aid. The UN (and the international community) was quick to condemn Israel for allegedly targeting an UNRWA-run school, despite widespread acknowledgement that Hamas routinely employs such facilities as "civilian shields" in an attempt to draw Israeli fire.

The incident where IDF fire hit an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza is indeed tragic. At the time, UNRWA insisted there were no terrorists in the school compound and the Israelis were "careless," with UNRWA Operations Director John Ging claiming that mortars had hit the school, killing dozens and wounding more.

Just days ago, though, UN officials admitted that Israel had not hit the school at all, but an area outside it. Ging admitted that his original claims were wrong.

It may have taken the embarrassment over such a glaring error to get the UN to acknowledge what the Israelis have been saying all along: that Hamas' callous use of civilians as shields is itself a humanitarian crisis.

Despite the new information, it's worth taking a close look at the historical ties between UNRWA and Hamas. UNRWA has long been a major employer for Hamas members, and has lent its facilities to Hamas and other terror organizations for weapons-related purposes.

For example, in May, we learned that Awad al-Qiq, who was targeted by the Israeli military, was a U.N. employee and headmaster of a top prep school in Gaza. Al-Qiq, a science teacher, was also in the rocket business while at the same time educating Palestinian youth.

Since Hamas' takeover of Gaza in 2006 after Israel's unilateral withdrawal in August 2005, UNRWA hasn't raised explicit objections to the brutal Hamas violence that enabled the terrorist group to take the Gaza Strip by force.

UNRWA appears to be chiefly concerned with its own survival and continued funding. As Karen AbuZayd, the commissioner general of UNRWA, said after the Hamas takeover, "We are not scared. Donor countries have not in any way said they will stop their aid to UNRWA.

"On the contrary, we were approached by many of these countries, even Israel, asking us to continue our services to Palestinian refugees and perhaps even extend these services to do things we haven't done before."

To be perfectly blunt, the theft of humanitarian aid by Hamas (not to mention its ruthless use of its own people as targets as well as shields) only proves the point: Dead civilians are not Israel's goal but Hamas'.

According to Hamas' thinking, the more Palestinian victims there are, the more the international community will try to pressure Israel to avoid any further military operations.

Now that the shooting has stopped, the Obama administration has pledged to provide some $900 million to help rebuild Gaza. Governments and NGOs serious about assisting Palestinian Gazan society must insist on accountability whereby that reconstruction funding is allocated independently and transparently.

When it comes to doling out the money, UNRWA and Hamas - both of whom seem to be more focused on empty rhetoric rather than working towards a peaceful Palestinian civil society - should be bypassed.

Asaf Romirowsky is an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum and manager of Israel and Middle East affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Nicole Brackman is a former Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.