What Goes for UNESCO Goes also for the UN

By Alan Baker  November 2, 2017

http://www.jpost.com/opinion/what-goes-for-unesco-goes-also-for-the-un-513215 

The entire UN human-rights assistance machinery has now been formally and officially recruited and financed to streamline the harassment and persecution of Israel.

Citing “the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO,” the US State Department notified UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova on October 12 of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the organization, effective December 31, 2018.

This decision stemmed from repeated Israel-bashing by UNESCO, notably since 2011, when the Palestinian Authority sought and won admission to UNESCO as a full member-state, despite the fact that there exists no sovereign Palestinian state. The State Department saw this as “regrettable, premature” and harmful to “our shared goal to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”

Indeed, Washington cut off US funding for UNESCO under a law that prohibits the US government from funding any UN agency that admits a non-state as a member. American funding, once accounting for more than one-fifth of UNESCO’s budget, hasn’t been restored since 2011.

As reported in The Washington Post on October 12, Haley said the United States will evaluate all UN agencies “through the same lens.” Logically then, the conclusion could only be that the UN organization itself – decayed, flawed, manipulated and abused even more so than UNESCO – should be the next in line for a mass withdrawal by responsible states.

More than 20 annual Israel- bashing resolutions specifically singling out and condemning Israel are adopted by an automatic majority of Muslim and Arab states, often with the support of other states, including Europeans.

While the UN may be the “only club in town,” no one can doubt that it has veered far from the noble intentions of its founding fathers. The manner in which Israel is treated in the UN and in its various specialized agencies and other UN bodies is the very antithesis of such purposes and principles. Isolating Israel and preventing its full involvement in the UN organs (including the Security Council and International Court of Justice, where Israel has never been elected to serve) is in clear violation of the first principle of the UN Charter declaring the “sovereign equality of all its Members.”

Perhaps the straw that is breaking the camel’s back is an amazing, recent joint UN-Palestinian project for the years 2018-2022, the title of which conceals its true intentions: “UN Development Assistant Framework – State of Palestine.”

The UN has committed to channel no less than $1.3 billion into various UN agency signatories to the framework, in order to assist the Palestinian leadership in advancing its diplomatic warfare against Israel.

The project aims to finance “training, capacity-building and technical advice” with a view to assisting “Palestinian victims” to exploit international accountability mechanisms and to prosecute “Israeli violations of international law.”

In other words, the entire UN human-rights assistance machinery has now been formally and officially recruited and financed to streamline the harassment and persecution of Israel.

Logic would assume that the US, Israel and the major European powers should now take decisive action to halt this deterioration.

First and foremost, they should each dock $1.3b. from their membership fees as a demonstration of their disgust at the UN’s official policy of Israel-bashing. What is good for UNESCO should be all the more relevant to the UN itself.

IDF Warns World of Iran’s Growing Cyber Threat

As Iran’s technological capabilities improve, the Israeli military is warning of the looming dangers posed by the Islamic Republic’s agents in cyberspace.

The head of Israel’s military command, control, computer, communications and intelligence (C4I) plus cyber division runs one of the most crucial forces in the IDF, one that works 24/7 to defend the country from all attacks through cyberspace.

At the Reuters Cyber Security Summit held in Tel Aviv recently,  the head of the C41 division stated outright that the IDF faces thousands of cyber attacks a day, many of which are orchestrated by Iran, with the help of proxies like the terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

Just five or six years ago, many of the attacks against IDF servers, and Israeli networks in general, were DDOS (denial of service) attacks, where hackers try by sheer quantity of Internet connections to slow or halt operations on systems. Another common tactic was phishing — deceitful attempts to obtain personal information. The threats today are much more sophisticated.

“They are not the state-of-the-art, they are not the strongest superpower in the cyber dimension, but they are getting better and better,” said.the division head

On the other hand, he also said that “Nobody has been able to penetrate our operational systems,” although he did qualify the statement with the words, “as far as we know.”

The C4I division was established in 2015, with the goal of bringing all units dealing with cyber threats under one roof, with a single command structure. It protects systems that control everything, from communications to Iron Dome rockets, all of which communicate with servers that remain hackers’ targets.

This would seem to point to C4I being essentially defensive in nature, it was made clear that responsibilities did not include offensive cyber tactics. However, it is commonly accepted that Israel, working secretly with the United States, developed the Stuxnet virus in 2010 that targeted machines controlling centrifuges in Iran that were being used to enrich uranium for Iran’s nuclear program.

Historical Significance of the Balfour Declaration

The following points regarding the significance of ther Balfour declation were compiled by Dore Gold, the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs since 2000. In June 2015, he was appointed Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he served until October 2016.

On July 24, 1922, the British pledge to help build the Jewish National Home was explicitly incorporated into the text of the League of Nations Mandate, which called for "putting into effect” its terms. The Balfour Declaration thus was transformed into a binding obligation under international law. Moreover, it was approved unanimously by the Council of the League of Nations, made up of 51 member states. The Balfour Declaration is important because it recognizes the historical bond of the Jewish People to the Holy Land, a bond which existed long before the declaration. What was significant was its public and formal recognition and its incorporation into international law. In his testimony before the Peel Commission on Jan. 7, 1937, David Ben-Gurion noted: "I say on behalf of the Jews that the Bible is our Mandate, the Bible which was written by us, in our own language, in Hebrew in this very country. That is our Mandate. It is only recognition of this right which was expressed in the Balfour Declaration.” Thus, the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, upon which it was based, did not create Jewish historical rights, but rather recognized a pre-existing right. The historic Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel is the real claim to statehood. The tendency to justify Zionism on the basis of the Holocaust is totally misconceived. Not only was Zionism a thriving and successful movement prior to this tragedy, but the Holocaust destroyed its largest human reservoir and severely set it back. The Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine contributed large numbers of volunteers and committed its manpower, agriculture, manufacturing and expertise to the Allied cause. Unfortunately, this contribution was soon forgotten. When the State of Israel was born in 1948, it was invaded by a coalition of Arab armies which received their training and weapons from the main colonial powers: Britain and France. Ironically, the rise of Israel was an anti-colonial development accelerating the demise of European colonial empires. Israel's enemies seek to misrepresent and falsify the historical facts. They try to portray modern Israel as a product of European colonialism, with no roots in the land and no historical rights. Modern Israel is the heir and successor to ancient Israel. The Balfour Declaration recognized this bond.

Hamas Promises Blood for Blood

The following is from a letter from a friend commenting on the media coverage of Israel's blowing up a tunnel which was reaching inside Israel

As I'm sure is well known, the military effort of Hamas since our last clash with them, which has continued full steam since then, has concentrated on building tunnels into Israeli territory, through which to launch attacks on farms, villages, etc.

Prior to the last clash they had planned a huge coordinated attack through the tunnels, as a major military strike intended to disrupt life here totally. This must have been trimmed to smaller isolated attacks now since a lot of that infrastructure was damaged.

However, the object of the exercise remains clearly military strikes at civilian centres as part of their war to the death.

Such a tunnel was discovered in the last day or two, having reached 2 km. from an Israeli centre. It was blown up.

So here is one of today's headlines:

Hamas promises ‘blood for blood’ after tunnel bombing…….

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday said the terror group intends to respond with violence to the deaths of seven Gaza terrorists Monday after Israel blew up an attack tunnel that stretched into Israeli territory………

 

Do you see what madness/sickness we are  up against day in and day out? And what as incredible achievement it is by the intelligence and defence authorities, that we can live full daily lives completely normally, relaxed, feeling just as safe if not safer than in many countries in the world.

UN Pumps Millions into anti Israel Agencies

The initiative represents a “collusion between UN agencies and radical anti-peace NGOs for political warfare.”

Numerous organizations targeting Israel will soon be receiving millions of dollars from a UN agency to bolster activities intended to “hold Israel accountable for its obligations under international law,” according to a fresh report published by a Jerusalem-based organization.

The 73-page document, entitled “United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) State of Palestine 2018-2022” details the various Palestinian causes to which funds will be allocated as part of an agreement signed with the Palestinian Authority (PA).

As part of the “Strategic Programming Framework” designed to “support Palestine’s path to independence” and other “pillars of the government’s National Policy Agenda,” the agreement lays out UN plans to dedicate $18 million to “support Palestinian institutions.”

It states that it will help these institutions to “effectively access international accountability mechanisms in order to hold Israel accountable for its violations under international law.”

Moreover, the report outlines that the purpose of the cash will be to augment efforts to “actively monitor, advocate and mobilize on human rights violations” in reference to Israel. (No reference to the human rights violations by the Palestinians or the incessant incitement in flagrant violation of signed agreements)

Indicating that the document’s raison d’être is itself hypocritical and anti-Israel, the watchdog group NGO Monitor, which published its findings on the report, highlighted, “There is no parallel support for ‘monitoring, advocating and mobilizing’ in response to Palestinian violations under the human rights treaties the Palestinian Authority has signed.”

In addition to the organizations that will be eligible to receive the streams of cash, the report sets out budgetary plans for other UN organizations which will provide support for “Palestine’s path to independence.”

Among those appearing on the list to promote that goal is UNESCO, from which Israel recently announced its decision to withdraw, along with the US, following a string of anti-Israel resolutions, including ignoring Jewish ties to Jerusalem and designating Hebron a “Palestinian World Heritage Site.”

According to NGO Monitor’s report, these “massive amounts of money (for these same organizations and UN agencies) for their ongoing anti-Israel political warfare campaigns… will do nothing to revitalize the ‘stalled peace process’ or the creation of a ‘peaceful and just Palestinian society.’”

Such UN initiatives, NGO Monitor added, only exemplify the “longstanding collusion between UN agencies and radical anti-peace NGOs for political warfare…Many of these organizations promote antisemitism, rejectionism, and BDS.”

Israel has long taken issue with international bodies such as the UN and the EU for pumping money into groups it believes have a political motive, often undermining the Israel Defense Forces and presenting a negative image of the country abroad.

Israel Arabs Prefer to Live Under Israeli Administration

 Palestinian leaders often claim that they would like to take a less confrontational stance against Israel but are afraid of “losing” the “Palestinian street.”

A new interview with a local Palestinian politician in an eastern Jerusalem Arab neighborhood indicates the opposite to be true: The average Palestinian wants to come home from work and eat dinner with his or her family rather than hearing that their child has become a “martyr” in a violent attack against Israelis.

It is the Palestinian leaders who destroy the chances for peace with non-stop incitement of Palestinian youth, diversion of funds to terror and a resultant lack of economic growth in Palestinian-controlled areas.

Jerusalem village head Ramadan Dabbash goes as far as to say that living under Israeli rule is preferable to living under the Palestinian Authority. Listen to what he says!

Christian Media Summit in Israel

Over 130 Christian media broadcasters from 30 countries and 5 continents met in Israel last week. These broadcasters are reaching over 1 billion people around the world.

The 4 day conference opened with a gala event attended by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who said “Israel has no better friends – I mean that – no better friends in the world than the Christian communities around the world. And Israel is the one country in a vast region where Christians not only survive, they thrive.”

“You know the truth about Israel's history and the truth about our commitment to freedom. Freedom is under a challenge all the time and I think it scored a big victory the other day. I want to thank President Trump for his courageous speech outlining a new course against Iran, the enemy of our free civilization.”

During the course of the conference, the Christian journalists had a unique opportunity to see, hear and interact with major Israeli politicians, academicians and other noted Israelis, who took part in various panel discussions.

The summit also featured personal encounters with members of Jerusalem’s bustling high-tech start-up world, as well as noted leaders within the city’s civic, cultural and religious community.

The summit coincided with the 50^th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel. In this spirit of unity, the summit’s goal aimed to foster a better understanding and strengthen the friendship between Christians worldwide and the State of Israel.