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.

AIPAC: 'Thou shalt not recognize Palestine State'

Palestinian Cry

Here is the latest case of the power of Israel Lobby (AIPAC). Last week the US lawmakers passed ‘unanimously’ Resolution 1765 – condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state. Incidently, the democratically elected Hamas government has not declared an ‘Islamic State of Palestine’, but Bolivia along with Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela has recognized Palestine as a “free and independent state within its pre-war (1967) geographical status”.

According to former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and intelligence adviser, Philip Giraldi PhD, Resolution 1765 was drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and sponsored by Congressman Howard Berman, currently Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There were 53 co-sponsors.

Benji Netanyahu government is notorious in rubbing Ben Obama administration, from insulting Zionist Vice-presiden Joe Biden to telling Obama to shove-off his 20 F-35 stealth military planes and plus – in return for stopping illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank for 90 days. Obama’s top Middle East adviser, half-Jewish Dennis Ross, and certainly AIPAC and the Democratic campaign committee must be behind this new bribe or “pretty please, with a cherry on top” as MJ Rosenberg called.

“Why would the Palestinians agree to negotiations under these conditions? They can’t. Or maybe they would for $3.5 billion, which they can sure use but would never be offered. Thanks to the Anthony Weiners, Steny Hoyers, Ileana Ros-Lehtinens, Eliot Engels and Brad Shermans of the world, what we invariably offer the Palestinians is not $3.5 billion but, to use a wonderful Yiddish term, bupkes — absolutely nothing or so little as to be an insult,” says MJ Rosenberg, senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matter Actions.

“Israelis and Palestinians need an “honest broker,” but that is not the role the Obama administration has decided to play. (Check out any speech on the Middle East by Vice President Joseph Biden, who always says, over and over, that there must be “no daylight, no daylight” between US and Israeli positions. Some honest broker!)”, wrote Rosenberg.

“If Obama is Israel’s friend, he’ll tell AIPAC and its cutouts in Congress that he will do what’s right for Israel, which, not so incidentally, is what is right for the United States,” says Rosenberg. However, what’s right for the future generations of the Jews, Muslims and Christians living in the Middle East And United States, would be a single democratic State of Palestine.