Bloodthirsty Liberal

Ann Bayevsky of UN Watch thrown out; UN lies about it to media

What a weird, weird organization.

The United Nations detained an outspoken critic and booted her from its New York headquarters in what the woman, a human rights watchdog, is calling an effort to silence her opposition to the world body.

Anne Bayefsky claims that as retaliation for giving a two-minute impromptu speech defending Israel, her 25-year career of monitoring the U.N. is now in jeopardy — likely to be placed in the hands of a committee chaired by the genocidal regime in Sudan.

Bayefsky gets special access to U.N. meetings in her capacity as the director of a non-governmental organization, the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at New York’s Touro College.

But the longtime U.N. observer has found herself in what she calls a “Kafkaesque” gray zone, where the U.N. confiscated her credentials, then denied to reporters that her access had been blocked.

“This is no accident,” she told FoxNews.com, arguing that she is being denied access to vital meetings concerning her prime focus: defending Israel. “This is keeping [the U.N.’s] major critic absent during the heart of the year.”

Following a vote Nov. 5 at the U.N. General Assembly, a microphone was set up outside the UNGA chamber for delegates to tout their endorsement of the controversial Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes during its invasion of Gaza last winter.

Without an invitation, Bayefsky approached the empty podium to offer what she thought would be a counter-balance to speeches from the Libyan president of the UNGA and the Palestinian observer, who both supported the resolution.

“I didn’t expect that there would be a problem at all,” said Bayefsky, who noted that she and other NGOs have spoken there in the past without incident. (Archived U.N. video shows an official from the NGO Human Rights Watch speaking in praise of the U.N. at the same podium in May 2007.)

Bayefsky blasted the Goldstone Report and called the U.N. a “laughingstock” for singling out Israel and ignoring human rights violations committed by the terrorist organization Hamas against Israeli and Palestinian civilians during the three-week campaign in December and January.

“This is a resolution that purports to be evenhanded; it is anything but,” she said of the document approved by the UNGA. “It is a travesty — it calls for accountability, and in fact what we see instead is impunity for the Palestinian side.”

Soon after she finished speaking, Bayefsky was swarmed by four U.N. security guards, who brought her to their security office, confiscated her NGO pass and kicked her out of the building, she said.

But the U.N. told reporters a different story at a press conference Tuesday — claiming that there has been no change in status for Bayefsky, even as she continues to sit in limbo.

“The credentials of her organization are not changed at this stage,” said Farhan Haq, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “It’s possible in the future that there could be a review, but at this stage there’s been no removal of credentials from that NGO or from Ms. Bayefsky.”

U.N. security officials became angered with Bayefsky after they realized she had brought an assistant to the U.N. proceedings without getting him a personal pass — a breach of protocol that led to a full-fledged investigation by the security office.

But Bayefsky says that the content of her speech is what rubbed U.N. officials the wrong way. She says supporters of the Goldstone report “are going to do everything in their power to silence anyone who gets in their way.”

Following her speech, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, was informed that a pro-Israel NGO had spoken after him, and reportedly asked a member of the press, “Did we capture them?”

Later, as she pleaded her case before being forcibly removed from the General Assembly building, a security official told Bayefsky that “the Palestinian ambassador is very upset at the statement you made,” she told FoxNews.com.

U.N. officials denied that politics had anything to do with their handling of Bayefsky, and said it was purely an issue of protocol.

“She came to the microphone unannounced, unauthorized and unwarranted. It’s so simple,” said Jean-Victor Nkolo, a spokesman for the president of the General Assembly. “It’s nothing personal against Ms. Bayefsky at all. But it’s just that this cannot be allowed.”

Though her speech was broadcast live online, the footage was removed from the main proceedings made available by the U.N. on its Web site. Video of Bayefsky’s two-minute talk, which first streamed live, has been posted online on YouTube.

I deeply resent my tax dollars going to fund that wacko organization.

- Aggie

While this administration has an attack of the vapors every time a Jew builds a potting shed anywhere near Jerusalem, it might be worth recalling exactly what the UN said at the time the Israelis and the combined armies of the Arab nations ceased hostilities.

NB: I don’t give a [bleep] what the UN said—then, now, or ever—but since so many other people seem to put so much stock in what a pack of anti-Semitic tyrants has to say, we might as well see what the pack of anti-Semitic tyrants actually said:

Israel held that the withdrawal phrase in the Resolution was not meant to refer to a total withdrawal. Following are statements including the interpretations of various delegations to Resolution 242:

…

Lord Caradon, sponsor of the draft that was about to be adopted, stated, before the vote in the Security Council on Resolution 242:

“… the draft Resolution is a balanced whole. To add to it or to detract from it would destroy the balance and also destroy the wide measure of agreement we have achieved together. It must be considered as a whole as it stands.

…

It was not for us to lay down exactly where the border should be. I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border, it is where troops had to stop in 1947, just where they happened to be that night, that is not a permanent boundary… “

Mr. Michael Stewart, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, in a reply to a question in Parliament, 9 December 1969:

“As I have explained before, there is reference, in the vital United Nations Security Council Resolution, both to withdrawal from territories and to secure and recognized boundaries. As I have told the House previously, we believe that these two things should be read concurrently and that the omission of the word ‘all’ before the word ‘territories’ is deliberate.”

Mr. George Brown, British Foreign Secretary in 1967, on 19 January 1970:

“I have been asked over and over again to clarify, modify or improve the wording, but I do not intend to do that. The phrasing of the Resolution was very carefully worked out, and it was a difficult and complicated exercise to get it accepted by the UN Security Council. “I formulated the Security Council Resolution. Before we submitted it to the Council, we showed it to Arab leaders. The proposal said ‘Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied’, and not from ‘the’ territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories.”

…

Mr. Arthur Goldberg, US representative, in the Security Council in the course of the discussions which preceded the adoption of Resolution 242:

“To seek withdrawal without secure and recognized boundaries … would be just as fruitless as to seek secure and recognized boundaries without withdrawal. Historically, there have never been secure or recognized boundaries in the area. Neither the armistice lines of 1949 nor the cease-fire lines of 1967 have answered that description… such boundaries have yet to be agreed upon. An agreement on that point is an absolute essential to a just and lasting peace just as withdrawal is…”

President Lyndon Johnson, 10 September 1968:

“We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders. Some such lines must be agreed to by the neighbours involved.”

There’s reams more, none of it tyrannical or anti-Semitic, all documented, all genuine.

The demand that Israel return all land the stupid, [bleeping] Arabs lost after trying to ambush Israel is based on fiction.

FIC-TION.

Which makes the obsession by the Obama administration on ghettoizing the Jews either pure ignorance or pure something else—and we’d better pray for ignorance.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Israeli fencer Daria Strelnikov won the gold medal at the cadet’s fencing world championship in Austria Saturday night. However, as the 14-year-old athlete stood at the podium waiting to hear the Israeli national anthem, she was greeted by a disturbing quiet.

Strelnikov and a fellow teammate on the podium decided to fill in the silence by singing Hatikva themselves. They were joined by their coach, and other supporting voices in the crowd.

Shouldn’t the Austrians be ashamed? Shouldn’t they apologize?

Don’t hold your breath.

- Aggie

I’ve already posted this, but reader/commenter Chris was out sick that day, so here it is again:

Following are excerpts from an address by Egyptian cleric Amin Al-Ansari, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on October 12, 2009.

Earlier this year, Amin Al-Ansari appeared on Al-Rahma TV to show footage of torture and killing of Jews in Nazi concentration camps, stating, “This is what we hope will happen, but, Allah willing, at the hand of the Muslims.”

…

“Let’s see how the Jews are hated in the field of sports. They are abhorred. Let’s take a look.” … “This is a Jewish soccer player, who behaved unjustly even on the field. But Allah be praised… Let’s take another look.” … “Look at this Jew being kicked. People hate them. They don’t like them.

[…]

“We are not talking only about people. [The same goes] even for trees and animals. You know, there is rather peculiar footage, in which an Arab man who has a camel loves it and kisses it, and the camel kisses him back. Along comes a Jew and wants to kiss the camel, just like the Arab. What do you think the camel did? Let’s watch.”

…

“‘Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.’ The Muslims will kill the Jews. Be patient.”

The imam didn’t make that last bit up. He was quoting from one of the hadiths, the heart and soul of Islam.

So, Chris and your ilk, it’s not about the land (Jews have been dispossessed of more acres of land more times than there are grains of sand in all of Araby); it’s not about the settlements (an apartment block makes a pretty banal enemy); and it’s not about the Arabs (who are freer in Israel than in any other land, except America, where promote them to Major, arm them, and let them proselytise freely before they go on a murderous rampage, shouting “Allahu Akhbar” as they execute people at point blank range).

And yes, this will be on the test.

Remember the famous TV blooper about the reporter who instead of saying “high White House source” said “high white horse souse”?

Yeah, well that guy was Edward R. Murrow compared to this guy:

Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom was given a cold greeting in Dimona, where he attended the city’s annual International Conference on Communications on Monday.

Bostrom, who has been severely criticized for an article he wrote in the Swedish daily Aftonbladet alleging that Israeli soldiers had stolen body parts from dead Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, was greeted by a throng of protesters upon his entrance to the hall where the conference was held, and his keynote address was disrupted by catcalls from the audience.

During an interview with journalist and talk show host Yair Lapid, Bostrom defended his article, claiming everything he wrote was backed by evidence.

…

“If you had seen what I saw, you would have made the same claims I did. I promise you that the article contains no rumors or lies,” said Bostrom.

…

When asked where he got the evidence to make such serious accusations against Israeli soldiers, Bostrom said the fact was that Palestinian families had made the claims, not that the claims themselves were true. Lapid in turn accused Bostrom of being led on by Hamas and becoming part of their propaganda campaign.

I could make the claim that I am the father of Gisele Bündchen’s unborn baby, not Tom Brady, but that doesn’t make it true. (A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, but one too many caipirinhas, and, well, say no more.)

Let’s call this guy SECO, because he’s a Swedish tool.

Hard to know what to say when there isn’t much to say:

A gunman shot and wounded two men in the parking garage of a San Fernando Valley synagogue early Thursday and Jewish schools and temples were put on alert in case it was not an isolated attack.

Two men in their 40s were shot in the legs near the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Orthodox synagogue in North Hollywood, Deputy Police Chief Michel Moore said.

The men, both members of the synagogue, had arrived in separate cars for the morning service shortly before 6:30 a.m. when the gunman approached one and, without speaking, shot him and the other man, Moore said. The men were hospitalized in good condition.

Police later detained and handcuffed a man less than a mile from the synagogue.

The youth, believed to be about 17 years old, matched the “very loose” description of the attacker, who was described as a black man wearing a hoodie, Moore said.

…

“We have to assume, because it was a synagogue, it was a service (and) that there was no other apparent motive, we’re looking at it as a hate crime,” Lt. John Romero said.

The FBI also responded to the scene, and police alerted nearby Jewish schools and temples and put extra patrols in place. There are several synagogues in the area.

“We are being vigilant for any follow-ups that may occur,” Moore said.

…

The attack occurred 10 miles from Jewish community center where white supremacist Buford Furrow wounded three children, a teenager and an adult, in 1999. Furrow later killed a Filipino letter carrier on another street.

Furrow, who is serving a life sentence without chance of parole, told the Daily News of Los Angeles in a letter last month that he had renounced his racist views and regretted the pain he had caused.

I suppose that’s good news, and I wish him and his newly discovered conscience well in whatever dingy dungeon where he currently rots.

I’m going to let this guy have the floor for a few moments:

Jacques Attali, a French Jewish intellectual and economist, believes that “there is no problem of anti-Semitism in France.”

“Zero! None whatsoever. It’s a lie. It’s a pure lie. Not true. There are some well-known anti-Semites, but it is not a problem at the national level,” he said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in Paris.

“There are more important things to discuss than my view on a nonexistent problem,” he told me last week in an interview conducted in the headquarters of his consulting firm.

…

He said that all the talk about anti-Semitism in France “is dangerous if not altogether organized propaganda by Israel.”

When the Israeli journalist noted that there is a trend among French Jews to immigrate to Israel because of the anti-Semitic atmosphere, Attali reportedly responded: “I think it is not true. I think it is propaganda, Israeli propaganda.”

He added: “There are some French Jews who take a two-week holiday in Tel Aviv and then they are back to Paris or elsewhere. There are French Jews who buy apartments in Israel the same way the British buy apartments in the south of France: for vacations.”

Okay, contrary to what we thought and have reported ad nauseam, there is no anti-Semitism in France (just anti-Semites), and Jews aren’t staying away from the place in droves (just vacationing in Israel). And anyone who says otherwise is spreading Zionist propaganda.

Well, good, glad to hear it. I’m always happy to be educated. Did someone get a comment from Ilan Halimi, by the way?

But then, if he hadn’t stretched credulity already, he busted the thing wide open:

“France has the most modern Jewish community and the most modern Arab and Muslim community. It is absolutely crucial for there to be success in relations between Jews and Arabs in France. It’s crucial to Israel and to the whole world for the two communities to get along. These relations are of strategic importance: if they cannot live in harmony here, they cannot live in harmony anywhere.”

Attali doesn’t believe that there is a problem of anti-Semitism among the Muslim community in France.

“Absolutely not. They are absolutely adamant to avoid it, wherever and whenever. Of course they are against the Israeli policy in the territories. Of course you can’t say there is no problem at all. You can always find crazy people in every part of society. But it’s not a political problem; it is not growing, and in fact it does not exist. If you look at the numbers you cannot prove it.”

That’s because they’ve already burned all the cars.

But let him finish:

He also said that “the survival of Israel needs 200 million Jews around the world, which means it’s a question of conversion. This question is not really addressed. We should have a much broader definition of who is a Jew, and active conversion.”

Two-hundred million Jews: from his mouth to God’s ears. Would it be uncharitable to point out here that the world might have 200 million Jews if the Muslims and Christians hadn’t spent the last two millennia trying to kill them all off?

Don’t let me interrupt your reading of the Goldstone Report about Israeli war crimes in Gaza (I especially loved the part where the Jewish soldiers harvested the pancreases of an entire Palestinian elementary school—those are some crazy Jews!).

But if you haven’t read it yet, be sure to look for it in your local library or bookostore under fiction:

The former commander of British forces in Afghanistan said on Friday that the IDF took more precautions during Operation Cast Lead than any military in the history of warfare.

Col. Richard Kemp made the comment in an address to the president of the UN Human Rights Council, Alex Van Meeuwen of Belgium, at its special session on the Goldstone Report in Geneva. Kemp’s address is printed below:

I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK government’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizbullah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’s way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

And I say this again: The IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Yeah, yeah, we heard you. What are you, some kind of philo-semite?

Sweden has qualms about burning bunnies to heat Bjorn’s bungalow:

Residents in Stockholm are divided over reports that rabbits are being used to make biofuel.

The bodies of thousands of rabbits are fuelling a heating plant in central Sweden, local newspapers say.

The city of Stockholm has an annual cull of thousands of rabbits to protect the capital’s parks and green spaces.

The rabbits, not native to Sweden, are mainly the offspring of pets released by owners, and are said to be destroying parks in the capital.

Since they have no natural predators, the city administration of Stockholm employs hunters to kill the rabbits.

Tommy Tuvunger, one of the hunters, told Germany’s Spiegel website that 6,000 rabbits were culled last year, and another 3,000 this year.

“They are a very big problem,” he said. “Once culled, the rabbits are frozen and when we have enough, a contractor comes and takes them away.”

The frozen rabbits are then taken to a heating plant in Karlskoga which incinerates them to heat homes.

…

“In the town where they are burning them the reaction of the residents is quite relaxed,” Mr Savage told the BBC World Service. “But in Stockholm there’s the big city attitude of the rabbits being cute.

But they are quite all right with mistreating animals not quite as cute as bunnies, Jews:

No recent media infraction captures the dangers of abandoning journalistic standards as vividly as the August 17, 2009 Aftonbladet story alleging Israel plunders and trafficks Palestinian organs. Appearing in its Culture section, the account was a concoction of baseless innuendo, false charges and guilt-by-association conspiracy theory, weaving disconnected events from past and present. Within weeks, the claims metastisized in Middle East media into lurid variations on the old blood libel of Jews plundering organs and drinking the blood of non-Jews. Incendiary cartoons and fantastic stories of Jewish child-snatching appeared.

It’s one of the oldest libels in the storied tradition of anti-Semitism, and the Swedes have merely dusted it off and put a good dance beat underneath it. And they don’t seem bothered in the least to have done so.

Okay, fine. Here’s one Jew who’s cute as a bunny.

Our newest generation

My observation is that the more Leftist a campus is, the more likely that antisemitism will be openly tolerated.

The president of a private liberal-arts college in Portland and the student editors of a campus humor publication are apologizing for a fake article that said students at a nearby college killed all the Jews at their school.

The article, meant as a satire, appeared last week in The Pamphlette, a student-run newspaper at Reed College. It took aim at students at Lewis & Clark College, another private liberal-arts college in Portland. Anti-Semitism is a sensitive issue at Lewis & Clark, where swastika graffiti was found in the library bathroom a few weeks ago.

The article carried the headline “LC students kill Jewish people.”
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It begins: “In what is being called a ‘tragic, but all too predictable’ event, the staff of The Leaphlette, a student humor publication at Lewis & Clark College, have been accused of rounding up and gassing all of the Jews on their Portland, OR, campus.”

The phony article goes on to describe students asking the chemistry department for a chemical to conduct “Jewsperiments” and a “towering crematorium” where the library once stood.

The same edition of The Pamphlette had another article titled, “Getting ready for Black History Month.” The satirical list of preparations included: “Photoshop myself into other people’s Kwanzaa pictures and put them up around my house.”

Interestingly, there is an implicit comparison between joking about photoshopping oneself into Kwanzaa pictures and the holocaust. Isn’t that funny?

Reed President Colin Diver apologized to Lewis & Clark’s interim president, Jane Atkinson, last week. He also criticized The Pamphlette in an e-mail to campus for displaying a “remarkable insensitivity to the deeply held feelings engendered by some of the most horrific and painful episodes of our collective history.”

College leaders have no plans to censor the paper because it is against Reed’s principles to do so, Diver said.

Lewis & Clark spokeswoman Jodi Heintz said the article was “really disturbing.”

“And given what we’re trying to do as a community on our own campus around this issue, that definitely was not helpful to us,” she said.

Really? They never censor anything? Why I’ll bet a nickel that through their hiring practices alone, they have censored moderate and conservative voices.

- Aggie