US may make UN funds conditional on Israel's treatment

Jerusalem Post
HILARY LEILA KRIEGER 

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ros-Lehtinen: Support for world body must serve US interests and reflect American values.

Talkbacks (54)   WASHINGTON – Members of Congress threatened to withhold US funding for the UN unless it increased transparency, countered a culture of corruption and reformed its Human Rights Council.

Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which held a hearing on “The United Nations: Urgent Problems that Need Congressional Action” on Tuesday, took the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to task for singling out Israel and allowing major human rights abusing nations off the hook.

“US policy on the United Nations should be based on three fundamental questions: Are we advancing American interests? Are we upholding American values? And are we being responsible stewards of American taxpayer dollars? Unfortunately, right now, the answer to all three questions is ‘No,’” committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) said in her opening statement, read in absentia as a family emergency kept her out of town.

“In the past, Congress has gone along by willingly paying what successive administrations asked for – without enough oversight,” she said.

Ros-Lehtinen announced she would be reintroducing legislation that would make American contributions to the UN budget – which now comprise about 20 percent of the total – voluntary.

The US now contributes more than $6 billion a year to the UN, and Republicans have been keen to cut the budget deficit in a time of financial crisis. Several have pointed to international assistance as a key target.

Ros-Lehtinen particularly objected to the US “paying onefifth of the bills for the UN’s anti- Israel activities, including the UN Human Rights Council, a rogues’ gallery dominated by human rights violators who use it to ignore real abuses and instead attack democratic Israel relentlessly.”

Committee ranking member Howard Berman (D-California) agreed that he was “repelled by these examples of corruption, mismanagement and bias” at the UN, including the rights council’s “obsession with and biased treatment of Israel.”

But he defended the organization for also addressing issues important to US interests, including providing peace-keeping missions, humanitarian aid and sanctions resolutions against Iran.

Berman pushed for engagement with rather than defunding of the UN, and similarly pressed the US to make strong use of its position of the rights council rather than walk away, noting its achievements such as keeping Iran out of the body.

He pressed Hillel Neuer, the head of UN Watch and one of the witnesses at the hearing, on whether the US should leave and defund the UN.

Neuer said that his organization supported the US paying all its dues and taking advantage ofits position on the rights council rather than ignoring it. However, he also criticized the US for not doing more.

Though he said that it can’t stop the deluge of resolutions against Israel, despite its best efforts, he did think that it could use the bully pulpit of the council to draw more attention to abuses.

Arab League to seek full UN membership for Palestinian state

Ugly Truth

Reuters

An Arab League committee decided on Saturday to seek full UN membership for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital, it said in a statement.

The Arab League’s peace process follow-up committee said it would request membership for the state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly’s meeting in New York in September.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani speaks as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (L) listens on during the opening of the Arab League Monitoring Committee in Doha on May 28, 2011.

“The committee decided to go to the United Nations to request full membership for Palestine on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” it said in a statement.

Earlier on Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said there were “no shared foundations” for peace talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seeking UN recognition of Palestinian statehood was his only option.

Abbas expressed concern that taking the diplomatic step opposed by the United States and Israel could result in financial sanctions and urged Arab states to fill any gap.

While he left room for a compromise, saying a resumption of peace talks on terms acceptable to the Palestinians would avoid the UN move, the remarks were some of Abbas’s bleakest yet on the likelihood of more negotiations.

Palestinian leaders have said Netanyahu’s ideas for peace with the Palestinians, outlined in a speech to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, put more obstacles in the path of an already moribund peace process.

“We see from the conditions that Netanyahu laid out that there are no shared foundations … for negotiations. Our fundamental option is to go to the United Nations,” Abbas said in his opening remarks.

“This is no secret, we have said it to the Americans and the Europeans and the Israelis, our only option is to go to the United Nations,” he said.

Israeli Minister: Shouting "Anti-Semite" is just a trick to avoid the facts.

Israel links EU support for Palestinians to anti-Semitism

Andrew Rettman
EUObserver

Israeli Settlements

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Israeli finance minister Yuval Steinitz has said that select EU countries' support for Palestine's plan to seek full UN membership is linked to ancient anti-Semitism.

Speaking to EUobserver in Brussels on Tuesday (23 May) at an event to mark the 63rd anniversary of the creation of Israel, the minister said there is a tendency in Europe to blame the failure of the peace process on the Jewish side only.

"It's very easy to put all the blame in the world on the Jewish state. As Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister once put it in Israel, he said 'I cannot ignore the fact there is an old European tradition of 2,000 years to blame the Jews.' So maybe some of the animosity toward the state of Israel is a disguised [form of this], is coming from this tradition."

Palestinian diplomats say around 10 European countries, including Greece, Ireland, France, Spain and Sweden, as well as non-EU member Norway, will back the UN bid, which is planned to take place in September.

The initiative to create an independent Palestine outside the framework of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks comes amid a long-standing deadlock in the negotiations.

It also comes after the moderate Fatah movement, which controls the Israeli-occupied West Bank, created a new unity governent with the militant Hamas group, which controls Gaza and which is listed by the EU as a terrorist entity because it advocates armed resistance against Israel.

Steinitz denied that Israeli settlement-building on occupied Palestinian land is the main obstacle to peace.

"Once it will be clear that the Arab people, including the Palestinians, really recognise Israel's right to exist as it was established as a Jewish state, then I think it will be possible to achieve an agreement," he said.
The minister described the UN plan as a "challenge to Israel's very existance" because it would bypass deal-making on questions such as the right of return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees driven out by Israeli soldiers in the 1940s.

The finance chief threatened to permanently block transfers of Palestinian tax income to the Palestinian authorities if they stick with the Hamas pact. He said Israel's confiscation of tax income this month is "temporary, a warning sign."

He added: "If they will co-operate with this terrorist organisation ... we will have to reconsider whether we can co-operate with them, whether we can deliver money they might misuse to fund terrorist organisations or terrorist acts."

Steinitz' anniversary speech in Brussels celebrated Israeli military victories over Arab forces and described the nuclear-armed regional superpower as a "tiny, minscule" entity. It also spoke of Israel as a "Western" country with advanced democratic standards and a high-tech economy in contrast to its Arab neighbours.

About 400 EU diplomats, MEPs and senior officials, such as European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso's chief of staff, Johannes Laitenberger, came to the event.

The Israeli celebration stands in contrast to a similar party hosted by the Iranian ambassador in February, which attracted a trickle of mostly Arab, African and Asian diplomats, as well some EU parliament offiials wary of being seen by press.

The strong turnout for Steinitz on Tuesday masks the fact that EU-Israel relations are at a low point. Several EU countries are continuing to block a planned 'upgrade' in diplomatic contacts with Israel and EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton has refused to join the US in condemning the Fatah-Hamas pact.

"We call on our friends in Europe to stay beside us, to secure Israel, to secure the peace process," Steinitz told EUobserver. "I hope Europe will stay beside us."

Israel PM says international anti-Semitism spreading

Editor's Note:  See next article "Anti-semitic incidents dropped 46 per cent in 2010, report finds"


XinHuan

JERUSALEM, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that anti-Semitism is once again manifesting throughout the world, as lessons of the Holocaust " have not been learned."

"A renewed anti-Semitism is spreading," Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting, according to a government press release.

"Various forces are joining together and flooding the world with anti-Semitism. The hatred of Jews and the denial of their existence have turned into hatred of the Jewish State and denial of its existence," he added.

The prime minister's comments came hours before the official state ceremony in Jerusalem that marks the beginning of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day.

The Israeli cabinet on Sunday unanimously voted to establish an umbrella organization that will represent Holocaust survivors in Israel and promote awarding them financial benefits, in a bid to assist thousands that live in poverty.

In a separate decision, a budget of 25 million shekels (about 7. 5 million U.S. dollars) was approved for the renovation of pavilion 27, the main Jewish exhibition at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, whose inauguration is expected in the summer of 2012.

Meanwhile, Israel's Yad Vashem (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority) on Sunday launched a national campaign encouraging citizens to donate personal Holocaust-period items.

The Prime Minister's Bureau, Education Ministry and Senior Citizens Ministry are also part of the project, which aims to preserve historical evidence of the annihilation of six million European Jews at the hands of the Nazis in World War II.

The project is launched amid fresh data on the dwindling numbers of Holocaust survivors living in Israel.

According to official figures released by the Jerusalem-based Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, 13,000 of them passed away over the past year -- around 1,000 every month. Of the 208,000 survivors currently alive, about two thirds are expected to still be around by 2015.

Orwellian "Global Anti-Semitism Review Act" makes it a crime in America to tell the truth about Zionism

judeofascism

ZIONISM UNMASKED: 'Anti-Semitic' - the Label that Stops Criticism
(Salem-News.com ) -- Dr. Paul Balles

...In 2004, the US Congress passed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. The Act defines a person as being anti-Semitic for holding any of a number of beliefs. My comments follow each of the 14 items supposedly revealing anti-Semitism.

1. Any assertion, “that the Jewish community controls government, the media, international business and the financial world.”

According to this, it doesn’t matter whether the assertion is true or not. Truth is not an issue. Simply making such a statement violates the Act. In itself, that fact provides strong evidence of control of the US government.

2. The expression of “Strong anti-Israel sentiment.”

Any criticism of Israel can thus be considered anti-Semitic. Israel can mangle Gaza and get away with it.

3. Expressing “Virulent criticism” of Israel’s leaders, past or present.

Menachem Begin may have led the Irgun in the slaughter and dispossession of thousands of Palestinians, but it’s anti-Semitic to say so.

4. Any criticism of the Jewish religion or its religious leaders with its emphasis on the Talmud and Kabbala.

It’s perfectly acceptable, as free speech, to vilify Islam, but any criticism of Judaism violates the Act.

5. Any criticism of the United States Government and Congress for being under the undue influence by the Jewish-Zionist community, which would include Jewish organizations such as AIPAC.

Truth matters not to the ridiculous legislators who passed this ludicrous act.

6. Any criticism of the Jewish-Zionist community for promoting globalism or what some call the “New World Order.”

When you can’t criticise a propaganda machine for its promotions, both free speech and democracy are dead.

7. Placing any blame on Jewish leaders and their followers for inciting the Roman crucifixion of Christ.

In order to accommodate the anti-Semitism label, simply rewrite history.

8. Citing any facts that could in any way diminish the “six million” figure of Jewish holocaust victims.

I violate the act simply by citing the fact that five million non-Jews died at the hands of the Nazis. This goes beyond stifling free speech.

9. Claiming that Israel is a racist state.

That’s not a claim. It’s a fact. Israel is full of racist laws. It insists on preserving its racist character and its right to impose apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza.

10. Making any claim that there is a “Zionist Conspiracy.”

A rational provision for such a claim would insist on evidence as proof of its validity. To disallow making such a claim is existentially (Israelis love that word) dictatorial.

11. Offering proof that Jews and their leaders created Communism and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

It just became illegal to offer proof. Minds are made up. Don’t confuse them with the facts.

12. Making derogatory statements about Jewish persons.

Why limit it to Jewish persons?

13. Asserting that spiritually disobedient Jews do not have the Biblical right to re-occupy Palestine.

Why limit it to the spiritually disobedient?

14. Making any allegations of Mossad involvement in the 9/11 attack.

I just did in a column published a week ago.

The Act passed by the US Congress makes me anti-Semitic. It’s an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. I’m a critic of Israel when they commit wrongs and a critic of America when it does wrong. Despite Congress, that’s not anti-Semitic...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

Draconian laws against "anti-Semitism," (which more often than not is actually opposition to racist, institutionalized Jewish supremacism and opposition to murderous Jewish ethnic-racketeering, e.g. Zionism) seems to be a characteristic of countries succumbing to Judeofascist-instigaed totalitarianism.

Here's a passage from an article by Mark Weber of IHR.org about similar laws against "anti-Semitism" in Bolshevik-occupied Soviet Russia:

As an expression of its radically anti-nationalist character, the fledgling Soviet government issued a decree a few months after taking power that made anti-Semitism a crime in Russia. The new Communist regime thus became the first in the world to severely punish all expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment.17 Soviet officials apparently regarded such measures as indispensable. Based on careful observation during a lengthy stay in Russia, American-Jewish scholar Frank Golder reported in 1925 that "because so many of the Soviet leaders are Jews anti-Semitism is gaining [in Russia], particularly in the army [and] among the old and new intelligentsia who are being crowded for positions by the sons of Israel."18

Historians' Views
Summing up the situation at that time, Israeli historian Louis Rapoport writes:19

'Immediately after the [Bolshevik] Revolution, many Jews were euphoric over their high representation in the new government. Lenin's first Politburo was dominated by men of Jewish origins

'Under Lenin, Jews became involved in all aspects of the Revolution, including its dirtiest work. Despite the Communists' vows to eradicate anti-Semitism, it spread rapidly after the Revolution -- partly because of the prominence of so many Jews in the Soviet administration, as well as in the traumatic, inhuman Sovietization drives that followed. Historian Salo Baron has noted that an immensely disproportionate number of Jews joined the new Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka And many of those who fell afoul of the Cheka would be shot by Jewish investigators.

'The collective leadership that emerged in Lenin's dying days was headed by the Jew Zinoviev, a loquacious, mean-spirited, curly-haired Adonis whose vanity knew no bounds.'

"Anyone who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Cheka," wrote Jewish historian Leonard Schapiro, "stood a very good chance of finding himself confronted with, and possibly shot by, a Jewish investigator."20 In Ukraine, "Jews made up nearly 80 percent of the rank-and-file Cheka agents," reports W. Bruce Lincoln, an American professor of Russian history.21 (Beginning as the Cheka, or Vecheka) the Soviet secret police was later known as the GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MVD and KGB.)

And this murderous Jewish totalitarianism, not some abstract hatred of Jews for being Jewish, was one of Hitler's main motives for the Holocaust -- which was patterned upon the State instigated and implimented mass murder that took place in the Soviet Union.

So when Zionists say "Never Again," what they should really be referring to is their own Jewish acquiescence to the Judeofascist impulse for totalitarian control. But because it suits their Jewish supremacist purposes, they feign ignorance of Jewish Bolshevism and other epic and murderous Judeo-swindles, and pretend that the Holocaust and all anti-Jewish pogroms through the course of history came out of the clear blue due to irrational anti-Semitism, just as American Jewish Zionists and their collaborators like to maintain that the 9/11 attacks came out of the clear blue and had nothing whatsoever to due with U.S. blank-check support for murderous Israeli Zionism.

Because of the power of Jewish Zionism insinuated into American power centers, in combination with its stubborn refusal to take responsibility and accountability for its own history and behavior, and in conjunction with unprincipled Gentile graspers on both the Left and Right willing to sell their souls in order to enter into Faustian bargains with it in exchange for power and money, this country is being driven to ruin.

This never could have happened without government worship and money worship displacing Christianity in America; indeed, that's why Judeofascist-influenced elements of organized Jewry despise authentic Christianity so, and devise elaborate plans and means of eradicating it: Christianity stands in the way of their homicidal designs, and always has.