Free Republic

It may shock readers to learn that the UN Human Rights Council has passed more anti-Israel resolutions than it has passed against all other countries combined? Take a look around at the rest of the world. The Syrian civil war has been raging since 2011 with close to 500,000 deaths by various estimates. Hizb’allah has built up an arsenal of 150,000 rockets in Southern Lebanon, which is in flagrant violations of UN resolution 1701. ISIS is terrorizing and murdering people in the Middle East and is responsible for numerous terror attacks in Europe and elsewhere. North Korea continues its rogue...

A September 2016 United Nations panel in Geneva decided the U.S. owed blacks reparations for a history of ‘racial terror.’ Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post notes: In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent. Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.This UN action, of course, was followed by last December’s resolution against...

When looking to “drain the swamp” of meddling bureaucrats and global do-gooders, there is perhaps no better place to start than on the banks of the East River in New York, home to the headquarters of the United Nations. And, with the United States’ newest U.N. Ambassador, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, sworn into office, there is no better time to start than now. Four years ago, then Secretary of State John Kerry signed the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), an international agreement regulating the sale, transfer, and export of conventional weapons, including “small arms and light weapons” – meaning...

A new sheriff arrived in town with the appointment of Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In her first speech, she indicated the disproportionate contribution by the United States -- 22% of the UN budget and 28% of UN peacekeeping operations -- to the world organization. The UN budget should be subject "strategic cutting," and sometimes withholding of dues. In picturesque language, Haley spoke of the need for a strong U.S. role at the UN. She had already made clear during her testimony on January 18, 2017, to the Senate Foreign Relations...

On December 23, 2016, the United Nations announced the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemns Israeli settlements east of the 1949 armistice line, that is, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (including the Old City with its ancient Jewish Quarter). Passage of this resolution was only possible because of the deliberate refusal of the U.S. to exercise the veto power it wields as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that in refusing to veto the resolution, the Obama administration was simply conforming to long-standing U.S. policy...

Last Thursday evening 342 out of the 435 total Members of the House of Representatives objected to last month’s United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel. In a chamber where the majority party rules, the vote was about as bipartisan as it gets. H.Res.11 was supported by most Democrats and all but four Republicans. But the House vote wasn’t entirely prompted by the anti-Israel resolution in the UN. Similar resolutions have been authored before. The House vote was prompted by the Obama Administration’s refusal to use its veto power to shoot down the UN resolution– thereby making it the first...

In his biting article in Commentary on February 1, 1981, Daniel P. Moynihan, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, 1975-76, was critical of his successor, Donald F. McHenry, for not voting against a U.N. Security Council resolution strongly critical of Israel. The United States had "joined the jackals." Moynihan remarked that for the U.S. to abstain on a UNSC resolution concerning Israel was the equivalent of acquiescing in it. Thirty-five years later, with the abstention of the U.S. in allowing UNSC Resolution 2334 to pass, the question must be posed: has the Obama administration in its final days joined...

Normally, when the U.N. Security Council passes a resolution, a vote is taken and the result recorded. Period. Something very unusual happened after the Security Council voted to declare Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria as Arab/Islamic land. The representatives of the nations applauded and celebrated what they had just done by giving themselves a standing ovation. They clapped not so much in behalf of what they gave to “Palestinians” but more so in declaring the Jewish tie to the Old City of Jerusalem as illegitimate and Israel’s attachment to the Temple Mount and Judea and Samaria as illegal. It was...

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the first prong of outgoing US President Barack Obama’s lame duck campaign against Israel. Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday was the second. On January 15, stage 3 will commence in Paris. At France’s lame duck President Francois Hollande’s international conference, the foreign ministers of some fifty states are expected to adopt as their own the anti-Israel principles Kerry set forth in his speech. The next day it will be Obama’s turn. Obama can be expected to use the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to present the Palestinian war to...

In his recent speech excoriating Israel for refusing to commit suicide by allowing a sworn enemy to have a state adjoining the Jewish state, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the U.S. government "did not draft or originate" the UN resolution critical of Israeli "settlements." Kerry said there were no American fingerprints on the resolution and that it was totally the idea of the Egyptians and Palestinians. Except that it wasn't, if one can believe Egyptian intelligence. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports on a story published in an Egyptian newspaper with close ties to Egyptian Intelligence. According...

Who is the real winner in the passing of U.N. Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli “settlements” in so-called Palestinian land? It is not the Arabs who live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, nor the leftist BDS movement, nor the world community which acted in usual blind lock-step in condemning Israel, or even the Obama administration which sacrificed American stature and credibility to express personal pique, though all appear to be gleefully rubbing grubby hands. The real winner is radical Islam, which the aforementioned parties claim to oppose. For all the talk of preserving a “two-state” solution between Israel and...

In June 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a stirring speech to AIPAC, making strong commitments to the Jewish people and Israel. In December 2016, President ObamaÂ’s Secretary of State John Kerry delivered an important policy speech that directly contradicted some of candidate ObamaÂ’s words. The contrast is striking, unnerving, and downright hypocritical.To be fair, there is some consistency between the speeches, as both advocate a two-state solution, among other parallels. And on a certain level, President Obama has kept some of the commitments he made to Israel, including massive defense contracts and military aid. And it is true that,...

When Secretary of State John Kerry delivered his comprehensive statement on the Arab-Israel conflict in front of a safe audience at the State Department, he took over an hour to defend the decision of the United States to in essence allow passage of the recent UN anti-Israel resolution by abstaining from it, rather than adhering to the longstanding policy of the U.S. to veto such resolutions. The general thrust of his message was to chastise Israel for building “settlements” on land defined as “occupied Palestinian territory,” as the main obstacle preventing a two-state solution. In addition to focusing attention on...

America should not withdraw from the United Nations without first ensuring that the organization cannot retaliate. “Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.” –Niccolò Machiavelli The recent actions of the Obama administration and the UN Security Council have renewed calls for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations....

The United Nations is a grand failure that has never worked and will never work. The idea of the U.N. was invented during the Second World War, when the term "United Nations" actually meant the wartime alliance of certain nations against other nations. From the very beginning, the fact that the "United Nations" included the Soviet Union, which had conspired with Nazi Germany to begin the Second World War and which engaged in aggressive war and genocide just like Nazi Germany, was a sick joke. Our Soviet "ally" let us fight Japan alone until the end of the war, and...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is joining the chorus of bipartisan criticism against President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and whoever else had a hand in the U.S. abstaining from this week's anti-Israel UN resolution, condemning settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.By neglecting to stand with Israel, the administration, Rubio said, is catering to "the demands of freedom’s enemies." Furthermore, our abstaining from the vote "undermines our moral standing in the world."Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said more of the same in multiple statements on Wednesday."These acts are shameful," Cruz said. "They are designed to secure a legacy, and indeed they...

Did the community organizer from Harvard Law just deliver some personal payback to the IDF commando? So it would seem. By abstaining on that Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal and invalid, raged Bibi Netanyahu, President Obama "failed to protect Israel in this gang-up at the UN, and colluded with it." Obama's people, charged Bibi, "initiated this resolution, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed." White House aide Ben Rhodes calls the charges "falsehoods." Hence, we have an Israeli leader all but castigating an American...

Netanyahu: "Israel has national pride. We do not turn the other cheek" NEW YORK - With President Barack Obama's direction, last Friday the United States departed from its long-held position of vetoing a United Nations resolution that condemned Israel's settlements. The action outraged lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly condemned the United Nations resolution and expressed disappointment that the United States abandoned its previous support. Monday he said "Israel has national pride. We do not turn the other cheek." He suggested over the weekend that Israel may consider pulling out of the U.N. U.S. Senator...

A "shameful" abstention by the U.S. in a United Nations Security Council vote Friday allowed passage of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. The resolution was put forward by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal after Egypt withdrew it Thursday under pressure from Israel and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. It was adopted with 14 votes in favor, to a round of applause, after U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power abstained. It is the first resolution the Security Council has adopted on Israel and the Palestinians in nearly eight years. Reaction from U.S. Republicans and Jewish leaders around...

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird. It's a plane. It's . . . the United Nation’s latest Honorary Ambassador – Wonder Woman. As death, destruction and mayhem continue to spread across the globe from Syria to Venezuela, the bureaucracy that is the United Nations has decided the best response to aggressive despots and global terrorism is placing their faith in a fictitious comic book hero. If one needed any further proof the U.N. has been reduced, quite literally, to a farce, this should remove all doubt. The U.N.’s attempt to appropriate a beloved (if somewhat dated) comic book...