It's Almost Supernatural

UN Subsidises Attacks on Israel

The largest fraud in human history is larger than previously thought, pegged now at $21 Billion.

Some of the money has gone to weapons purchases, the very same weapons used by the insurgents in Iraq today. Some of the money was also used by Saddam to pay the families of Palestinian terrorists. Keep this in mind the next time Kofi Annan--the man ultimately responsible for this fraud--starts moralizing to the evil West.

Saddam Hussein diverted money from the U.N. oil-for-food program to pay millions of dollars to families of Palestinian suicide bombers who carried out attacks on Israel, say congressional investigators who uncovered evidence of the money trail.

A large portion of the oil for food money was used to investigate the fraud into the misuse of that money.

UN Terror Allegations

Soon after this post where I distanced myself from claims that a Kassam was loaded into the UN ambulance, Israel has conceded that it may in fact have been a stretcher.

In my opinion, the context of the event and not the specifics, is the issue.

While the images published by the IDF this week may or may not depict a man loading a Kassam rocket onto a UN vehicle, both IDF staff and some UN workers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, agree that members of terrorist groups work in and sometimes exploit UN agencies.

At a recent press conferece in Tel Aviv, Israel showed an extended clip of the video as well as other videos depicting Palestinians laying mines for Israeli tanks.

The army said the mines were big enough to destroy tanks. At the same time the frame showed video images of a UN vehicle standing nearby the Palestinians laying the mines. "The UN vans are providing cover for combatants planting bombs," Ziv said. In addition, the IDF suspects that the Palestinians were using UN assets as shields. The estimated length of Kassam rockets varies widely and their weight can go anywhere from 7kg up to 30 kg. Previous surveillance video shows men running with these rockets. At issue are two smudges on the grainy image, one at the fore and the other at the back of the oblong object carried under the arm of a man in the image. UNRWA has claimed that the smudges are flaps of a stretcher, the IDF that they are rocket fins. A tight-lipped IDF released a one-sentence statement saying that "the IDF is reviewing the analysis of the footage in which UNRWA vehicles are seen involved in suspicious activity in the combat zone in Gaza."

Just last year a similar IAF drone filmed four masked gunmen jumping out of UN ambulances during an IDF incursion into Gaza.

Terrorist Employment Equity

After again scrutinising the video footage of the UN ambulance saga, I now doubt that the it was a Kassam that was loaded into the ambulance.

An interesting spin-off from this story developed when Peter Hansen, commisioner general of the UNRWA was interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hansen did all the work for the anti-UN crowd saying

I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime... we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.

Hansen added

whatever their political persuasion is members of his staff are required to behave in accordance with UN standards and norms for neutrality.

Ok. I'm sure that a Hamas member can be neutral on the Israel Palstine issue. Yes, and this just in...pigs can now fly.

Honest Reporting has all you need to know about the UNRWA's terror enabling practices.

The UN: Your Friendly Neighbourhood Terrorist Enablers

Alot happened during the recent Yom Tov period.

Palestinian rocket kills 2 Israeli toddlers
IDF moves into Northern Gaza
Woman, and two IDF soldiers gunned down in Gaza

During the resultant fighting from the above events, an Israeli unmanned droned captured amazing footage of the UN openly siding with Palestinian terrorists. The video, which was shown on CNN, shows what seems to be a terrorist loading a Kassam rocket into a UN ambulance.

Peter Hansen, commisioner-general of UNRWA (the body set up to deal with Palestinian refugees - all other refugees in the world fall under the separate collective UNHCR body) is fiercely clutching at straws and unconvincingly mumbling that the object was a folded up stretcher. Hansen claims that Kassam rockets are too heavy to be held in one hand, but as the IDF web site points out

According to the IDF website, the Kassam 1 rocket is about 2 meters long and weighs on average 5.5 KG. The Kassam 2 weighs an estimated 32KG, and the Kassam 3 weighs roughly 90 KG.

Read more about this at this Israellycool post.

You can see the video of the incident at this IDF link.




UPDATE
More at IsraPundit

US Seeks the Impossible

The US are seeking to limit the number of one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly. They are also trying to win approval of a resolution condemning anti-Semitism. The resolution condemning anti-Semitism failed to pass last year.

Lagon said the last General Assembly adopted 21 resolutions concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many of which implied "that only Israel has obligations and responsibilities to make peace." The resolutions did not mention suicide attacks against Israel, he noted. And he said, "they pressed the case of the Palestinians, but failed to present a complete picture of the situation on the ground, condemn all acts of terrorism, and recognize the legitimate security concerns of the Israeli people." Lagon said too that the US would also advocate for the abolition of a special UN General Assembly committee directed to investigate Israeli practices and other bodies "that are biased against Israel." It is not clear, given the makeup of the 191-member body, including the powerful Arab bloc, how successful the US will be in its bid to block anti-Israel resolutions.

The Enemy

The Harvard Israel Review has a comprehensive 6 page article on Israel's relationship with the UN. There are too many good points to highlight so I will just post a link. Go and read it all.

The United Nations: Dividing Israelis and Arabs for Over 50 Years

Un Resolution on Anti-Semitism Blocked by Arabs

Arab states have told Europe that they will block a UN resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Read about it here and here.

As Dennis Prager says "The UN is the greatest stumbling block to goodness and decency in this world."

By the Time You Get Through the UN, Everyone's Dead

(Via WriterMOM at LGF.)

Mark Steyn at the telegraph (in a most excellent article) says that Sudan is getting away with murder.

A few highlightes:

For the umpteenth time, he (John Mann, the Presbyterian minister of Pollak in Glasgow - ed) denounced the "unnecessary, unjust war" in Iraq and said that, if he were Tony Blair, "I don't know how I could live with myself".

If I'd ipso facto supported the continuation in office of a psychopathic dictator, I don't know how I could live with myself. But each to his own.

The point is that today's humanitarians are too busy for Sudan. Ask Barbra Streisand and she'd say, "Sudan Hussein? Bush lied!!!" As for Kipling, if he were around today, he'd be tied up with the big Not In Our Name march with fellow versifiers Harold Pinter and Andrew Motion. Or possibly he'd be preening with Ashley Judd and Rupert Everett and other experts at the big world Aids conference in Bangkok, and getting his photo taken next to an effigy of George W Bush smeared with blood. America spends more money combating Aids than the rest of the world combined, but why let some petty number-crunching spoil your fun?

Speaking about getting the go ahead from the UN for the US to take action...

The Americans could probably make a difference in Sudan, too. The USAF could target and bomb the Janjaweed as effectively as they did the Taliban. But then John Mann and Harold Pinter and Rupert Everett would get their knickers in a twist, and everyone from John Kerry to Polly Toynbee would complain that it's "illegitimate" unless it's authorised by the UN. The problem is, by the time you've gone through the UN, everyone's dead.

The UN system is broken beyond repair. In May, even as its proxies were getting stuck into their ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission. This isn't an aberration: Zimbabwe is also a member. The very structure of the organisation, under which countries vote in regional blocs, encourages such affronts to decency.

The Sudanese representative, by the way, immediately professed himself concerned by human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Multilateralism at its worst...

Today, British charities are launching a campaign to save Darfur, which they describe as the "world's worst humanitarian crisis". If we were serious about the plight of Sudan, we'd stop using that dully evasive word "humanitarian". It's fine for a hurricane or a drought, but not a genocide.

The death and dislocation in Sudan is a political crisis every step up the chain - from the blood-drenched militia to their patrons in Khartoum to their buddies in the African Union to the schemers and cynics at the UN. It's "multilateralism" that magnifies some nickel 'n' dime murder gangs into a global player.

We've tossed out the Maxim gun for daisycutters and cruise missiles. In Darfur, meanwhile, the Janjaweed on their horses are no better armed than the dervishes were. But we're powerless against them because we've fetishised poseur-multilateralism as the only legitimate form of intervention. Who needs a "Kipling of today" when the old one works perfectly well:

The whole article Must. Be. Read.

Worth Reading Today

General Assembly to vote on anti-fence resolution.

The United Nations General Assembly is slated to vote Monday on a resolution demanding Israeli compliance with an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that deemed the security fence illegal and called on Israel to tear down portions built beyond the Green Line.

The vote, scheduled for Monday afternoon, will take place after a weekend of intensive lobbying by Palestinian UN observer Nasser al-Kidwa for a resolution demanding that Israel adhere to the ICJ ruling, and Israeli appeals to disregard the court's non-binding opinion.

---

Yad Vashem urges action to stop Sudan slaughter

"Yad Vashem urges world leaders to take immediate concerted action to halt the tragedy in Darfur before it devolves further, to provide effective humanitarian aid to the region and to punish the perpetrators of the heinous crimes that are being committed there," a press release issued Sunday read.

Tens of thousands of black Africans have died in more than a year of violence that has turned into a systematic slaughter carried out by Arab militiamen in Darfur, a vast and remote region in western Sudan the size of Iraq.

The Dissenting Judge

American judge Thomas Buergenthal dissented against the ICJ's finding in the case against Israel's right to have security. Buergenthal argues that the court should have declined to hear the case since the court did not have the "requisite factual bases for its sweeping findings."

Buergenthal’s main basis for repeatedly dissenting is a lack of information to support the court’s sweeping conclusions. The court did not have all relevant facts bearing directly on Israel’s legitimate right of self defence, military necessity and security needs. Buergenthal says that the cross-Green Line attacks and their impact on Israel are never seriously considered by the court.

Buergenthal supports his dissent by referring to various International Law articles. Article 21 for example, declares “The wrongfulness of an act of a state is precluded if the act constitutes a lawful measure of self defence taken in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.”

This means that the court needs to decide whether the barrier is a lawful measure of self defence. The answer to that question depends on an “examination of the nature and scope of the deadly terrorist attacks to which Israel proper is being subjected from across the Green Line and the extent to which the construction of the barrier is a necessary and proportionate response to the attacks”. Facts bearing on these issues regarding the specific segments of the barrier, their defensive needs, and related topographical considerations were never put before the court, and therefore to conclude the inapplicability of the right to an inherent self defence is legally dubious.

Article 51 of the Charter mentions every member’s inherent right to self defence. The court ruled as follows:

“Article 51 of the Charter . . . recognizes the existence of an inherent right of self defence in the case of armed attack by one State against another State. However, Israel does not claim that the attacks against it are imputable to a foreign State."

The problem with this is that the article does not make its exrcise dependant upon an armed attack by another State. Article 51 states that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations . . .” Buergenthal also refers to UN resolutions 1368 and 13 73 pointing out that neither of the resolutions “limits their application to terrorist attacks by State actors only.”

In sum, the court lacked an overwhelming amount of evidence for it to come to any legally legitimate ruling. The court failed to address any facts specifically rebutting Israel’s claims of military requirements for national security. Instead the court relied on material describing only the armful aspects of the barrier on Palestinian life. “Lacking is an examination of the facts that might show why the alleged defences of military exigencies, national security or public order are not applicable to the wall as a whole or to the individual segments of its route.” The court said it was not convinced with Israeli justifications, but Buergenthal points out that the court failed to demonstrate why they were not convinced.

Following is the entire text of Judge Buergenthal's Declaration