United Nations Cartoons

Beyond 'apartheid'--U.N. commission pushes legal and propaganda offensive against Israel

Amb. Haley: Some fat can be trimmed at the U.N.

A just-published United Nations report that claims to find Israel guilty of the “crime of apartheid,”  is only one element  of a broader legal and propaganda offensive being pushed by  an obscure  U.N. regional commission to stigmatize America’s close ally and build support for the Palestinian cause, according to documents examined by Fox News.
The offensive has been gestating for at least two years within the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA), whose entire membership are Arab states, and is timed to this year’s 50^th anniversary of the 1967 war between Arab states and Israel, which resulted in Israel’s control of the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
At least one additional report commissioned by ESCWA, attempting to create an “innovative” and  “scientific” methodology for estimated the cost of Israel’s 50-year control of the territories,  is still in the works,  with the aim of demanding billions in reparations for Palestinians.
A third aspect  of the strategy  is an elaborate proposed propaganda campaign against the Israeli occupation, making use of U.N. institutions and a variety of diplomatic and media channels,  to create a new , sympathetic “brand” for Palestinians as victims  “that would cause a snowball effect, thus altering public opinion globally in record time,” as an ESCWA background paper puts it.
All three elements, including the now-notorious apartheid report,  were given a thorough airing at the biennial  high level meeting of ESCWA’s 18 members, one of them being the State of Palestine, held in Doha from December 13 to 15, 2016.
ESCWA is ostensibly a forum for regional economic coordination and development; the meeting was touted largely as an occasion to examine the U.N.’s ponderous Sustainable Development Goals.
Nonetheless, a preliminary version of the apartheid report, containing much of its final wording, was one of the documents circulated at the session, and a resolution passed at the end of the meeting called on ESCWA’s secretariat to publicize the explosive apartheid study as much as possible.
The resolution also called for an “ESCWA media and communications strategy aimed at increasing global awareness,” of, among other things, “Israeli violations of Palestinian rights and international law,” and orders the bureaucracy to “increase activities on Palestine and organize special activities to mark” the 1967 anniversary.
The apartheid report caused an eruption of outrage from U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley when it was officially published under U.N. auspices on March 15. She noted it came “from a body whose membership nearly universally does not recognize Israel,” and demanded the U.N. officially “withdraw” the report from circulation.
Haley heaped additional scorn on the co-author of the 306-page document:  Richard Falk, a notoriously anti-Israel academic who often provoked U.S. irritation for his anti-Semitic statements and anti-U.S. diatribes during a six-year term as U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of the Palestinian people.
Falk has, among other things, cast doubt on the “official version” of the 9/11 attacks as the work of Islamic terrorists and after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings remarked that the “American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.”
In her counter-blast against the ESCWA-sponsored report, U.S. Ambassador Haley called him “a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories.”
Falk stepped down from his U.N. job in May, 2014, but has kept up his anti-Israel agitation as a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has made frequent references to the Israel-apartheid theme.
For his part, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres distanced himself from the document, and an official close to him asserted he was blind-sided by its appearance.
A U.N. official pointed the finger of blame for the publication at ESCWA’s Executive Secretary, Rima Khalaf, a Jordanian and longtime U.N. bureaucrat who was appointed to her job by former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2010.
Khalaf was slated to step down within weeks as part of Guterres’ initial management shuffle, but instead abruptly resigned on March 17 after Guterres asked that the report be removed from ESDWA’s website.
At a Beirut press conference, an unrepentant Khalaf reportedly hailed the report as the “first of  its kind” from a U.N. agency to condemn Israel, and added, “It was expected that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the United Nations secretary general to renounce the report."
The U.N. official observed that Khalaf “was in New York recently and did not mention [the apartheid report] to anyone.”
“One of the responsibilities of U.N. economic commissioners,” the official noted, “is to move information up the chain of command” to avoid such problems.
That may well be so. But an official summary of the Doha session is also available on the ESCWA website, accessible to all.
Among other things, it notes the elements of the ESCWA 50^th anniversary actions, issuing broadside condemnations of Israel’s actions in the territories without reference to acts of terrorism or other assaults on Israelis, and calling for creation of a “specialized unit on issues related to Palestine and its people,” including further monitoring of “Israeli violations of the Palestinian people’s rights and of international law.”
Along with ESCWA members and officials, the report notes, representatives of at least 15 other U.N. offices and agencies were present. One of them was the Office of the U.N.  Special Coordinator of the Middle East Peace Process, although only a lower-level official was listed in attendance.
Questions emailed to ESCWA by Fox News about the apartheid report and the other elements in the organization’s anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian campaign, including some of its future plans, were acknowledged but not answered before this story was published.
Guterres’ claim of ignorance about the Falk report is made more credible by the fact that he has only been in the U.N.’s job since January 1 -–less than three months.
But the ESCWA campaign also offers a smudged window into the maze of bureaucracies, agencies and free-floating organizations that make up the  sprawling  U.N. system—and their lurking biases and often invisible channels of influence.
Their topmost official of each is usually appointed by the U.N. Secretary General, and their supervision by U.N. member states—their nominal bosses—is often cursory at best.
There are more than 30 funds, agencies and programs alongside the bulky U.N. Secretariat, plus a flotilla of regional commissions (including ESCWA), research and training institutes, facilitating networks, and a bewildering array of other entities, spread around the globe, often with overlapping mandates and spheres of influence.
ESCWA, for example, is a $70 million body ostensibly concerned with social and economic coordination and development in the Middle East. Its biennial budget is part of the U.N.’s regular budget, meaning that 22 per cent of the total is paid by the U.S.
Yet alongside its regional work, ESCWA is also the author of a report issued by the U.N. Secretary General himself, on the living conditions of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories.
The report focuses contributions from a wide variety of other U.N. and U.N.-supported organizations in a 20-page  condemnation of allegedly illegal Israeli practices, ranging from illegal detention and displacement of civiians to possible “sustained extensive soil damage, including the removal and destruction of topsoil,” during a 2014 Israeli anti-terrorism offensive in Gaza.
Among other things, the report adds: “According to UNEP [the U.N. Environmental Program], the 2014 offensive may also have resulted in loss of wildlife and native plants.” The document offers no specific evidence at all for the extremely hypothetical claim.
ESCWA’s most recent compendium of Israel crimes was published in July, 2016—as a Note from then-Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Hillary Clinton says she's 'ready to come out of the woods'

SCRANTON, Pa. –  Hillary Clinton said Friday she's "ready to come out of the woods" and help Americans find common ground.
Clinton's gradual return to the public spotlight following her presidential election loss continued with a St. Patrick's Day speech in her late father's Pennsylvania hometown of Scranton.
"I'm like a lot of my friends right now, I have a hard time watching the news," Clinton told an Irish women's group.
But she urged a divided country to work together to solve problems, recalling how, as first lady, she met with female leaders working to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
"What can we do to try to bring people together and to try to find that common ground, even higher ground, sister, so that we listen to each other again and we know that we can make a difference? I'm not sure it will come out of Washington yet, but I think it can come out of Scranton. Let's find ways to do that," she told the Society of Irish Women.
"I am ready to come out of the woods and to help shine a light on what is already happening around kitchen tables, at dinners like this, to help draw strength that will enable everybody to keep going," said Clinton, who was spotted taking a walk in the woods around her hometown of Chappaqua, New York, two days after losing the election to Donald Trump.
Friday night's speech is one of several she is to deliver in the coming months, including a May 26 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The Democrat also is working on a book of personal essays that will include some reflections on her loss to Donald Trump.
Clinton was received warmly in Scranton, where her grandfather worked in a lace mill. Her father left Scranton for Chicago in search of work during the Great Depression, but returned often. Hillary Clinton spent summers at the family's cottage on nearby Lake Winola.
She fondly recalled watching movies stretched across a bedsheet in a neighbor's yard, and told of how the cottage had a toilet but no shower or tub.
"Don't tell anybody this, but we'd go down to the lake," she quipped.

Trump talks Alec Baldwin, CNN's Jeff Zucker and Sen. Chuck Schumer on Watters' World

President Donald Trump had nothing good to say about Alec Baldwin, CNN's president Jeff Zucker and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer in an interview with Jesse Watters to be broadcast this weekend.
During the 'Watters' World' interview to be broadcast at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Trump would not say who he would fire out of the three men.
"Chuck I'm very disappointed in, because he's a guy who should make deals for the people. Not as a Democrat or Republican," said Trump.
Trump stated that he got Jeff Zucker his job at CNN and described the cable news network as "fake news."
"I think the Alec Baldwin situation is not good," Trump said. "The portrayal of me is ridiculous."
On the subject of whether he believes that former President Obama wants him to succeed, Trump said:
"Well, you know, he's been very nice to me personally. But his people haven't been nice and there's great animosity out there. There's great anger. Leaking is just one example of it. ... So, while he's nice personally there doesn't seem to be a lot of nice things happening behind the scenes. And that's unfortunate."

President Trump no longer safe in White House: Former Secret Service agent

The president is no longer safe on the White House grounds, according to former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, who once guarded presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Bongino made the stunning assessment in an interview Friday with Fox News. It followed an incident last Friday night when a man jumped the White House fence and may have roamed the property for as long as 15 minutes before he was stopped by the Secret Service.
Jonathan Tran, who carried two cans of mace, set off multiple alarms, Bongino said, and was even spotted by Secret Service officers, but was still able to come within “close proximity” of the White House and even reportedly “jiggled the door” to the executive mansion.
“The intruder set off multiple alarms, alarms that clearly showed someone breached the property, and he was seen by officers who didn't think anything of it. This is a big story,” Bongino told Fox News.

Expand / Contract

President Donald Trump (AP)

“That just shows the president is not safe there - in the White House. The Secret Service does not have the assets, they don't have personnel on the ground they need to keep him safe.”
Should a group of terrorists decide to storm the White House, the Secret Service would not be able to protect Trump, Bongino predicted.
“The Secret Service cannot even keep one person off the grounds - what will they do if 40 terrorists charge the White House?” he asked. “And believe me the terrorists are already thinking about that.”
According to the Secret Service, Tran was charged with entering a restricted building and carrying a dangerous weapon.
Trump, who was on the property, has praised the Secret Service for doing a “fantastic job” and said the suspect was “troubled.”
But Bongino said the current Secret Service management “sucks.”
“The Secret Service is stuck in their ways and don't want to redo and upgrade the White House security plan. President Trump won't be safe there until they do,” Bongino said.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, also blasted the latest incident and said “this keeps happening.” Chaffetz’s panel oversees the Secret Service.
He added, “Our information is incomplete at best.”
In a letter to acting Secret Service Director Bill Callahan, Chaffetz said Tran “may have attempted entry into the building. If true, these allegations raise questions about whether the agency’s security protocols are adequate.”
Chaffetz suggested there may have been alarms that were ignored by the Secret Service.
Chaffetz wants a briefing by the end of next week. He also is asking for all video from the White House grounds that night as well as logs from the Joint Operations Center and information about “alarms” at the White House.
The episode recalled another in September 2014, when Omar Gonzales penetrated the White House grounds and actually made it inside. Then-Secret Service Director Julia Pierson afterward conceded “mistakes were made.” But the Secret Service was found to have publicly lied about how far Gonzales made it into the White House.
It cost Pierson her job.
They later found the White House alarms had been muted in the Gonzales incident.