UN Launches 'Unprecedented' $1.3 billion Legal Campaign Against Israel - By Adam Abrams - http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=1733#SPIwMzQ3xJdVZW5S.99
The United Nations has earmarked some $1.3 billion to fund Palestinian legal campaigns against Israel and to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state, in what experts are calling an unprecedented act singling out the Jewish state at the world body.
A document that was recently signed between the U.N. and the Palestinians outlines a "strategic programming framework" in the disputed territories from 2018-2022, and states that the U.N. will work to advise the Palestinian Authority on how to exploit "international accountability mechanisms" in order to hold Israel accountable for alleged violations of international law. The document is set to come into effect Jan. 1, 2018.
The document makes no references to Palestinian violations of international law and human rights, nor does it specify that the $1.3 billion in funding should be applied to humanitarian assistance. Rather, the U.N. document states that the money should be used for developing programs that support "Palestine's path to independence."
"The funding of this unprecedented and prejudicial aggression against a member state by the U.N. is clear evidence that the international body's goal and solution is for a single Palestinian state to replace Israel," Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of the Tel Aviv-based civil rights organization Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center, told JNS.org.
"It's a new form of anti-Semitic aggression and terror by other means, and it plainly violates the U.N.'s own charter," she said.
Sixteen U.N. agencies appear as signatories in the document, including the OHCHR human rights office, the UNESCO cultural body and the UNRWA refugee agency. In signing the document, the agencies pledged to hold Israel accountable for its alleged violations and to document the purported abuses while simultaneously strengthening Palestinian groups' "ability to advocate effectively for rights to be respected."
In the document, the U.N. also pledged to monitor "the impact of Israeli violations" as well as how purported Israeli "breaches of international law" hinder the development of "Palestine."
"There is no other example or precedent of the U.N. funding, training and advising one side of a conflict to pursue legal advocacy against another side," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of Geneva-based UN Watch, a group whose stated mission is to "monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own charter."
"For some reason, however, when it comes to Israel, the U.N. development agencies cross the bright red line from humanitarian assistance to political advocacy," he said.
Although the amount of funding allocated by the U.N. towards overtly anti-Israel initiatives is unprecedented, Shurat Hadin's Darshan-Leitner said the world body's singling out of Israel and misuse of funds were "no big surprise."
"The U.N. is misappropriating, once again, its donors' funds and directing them into projects that help the PLO target and attack the Jewish state, instead of for humanitarian causes," said Darshan-Leitner.
"After all, it's the U.N.'s raison d'etre at this point," she added. "We have seen a massive increase in these baseless lawfare suits being filed without any merit in the American federal courts in the past few years.
The unilateral encouragement of these frivolous harassment suits against Israelis and Jewish individuals, which are obviously being funded and fanned on by foreign bodies, is a new Palestinian strategy to try to bedevil and deter support for Israel."
Darshan-Leitner underscored that the U.N. "does not care one iota about justice for the so-called 'victims' it's pretending to assist," and that it uses Palestinian initiatives as a vehicle for turning Israel into an international pariah.
"It's policies like this that display so clearly why the United States was moved to quit UNESCO, and is considering resigning [from] and defunding other U.N. agencies," she said.
Prof. Avi Bell, a member of the faculty of law at Israel's Bar-Ilan University and a senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum think tank, voiced similar sentiments, telling JNS.org that the U.N.'s newly revealed strategic document "highlights the degree to which many organs of the United Nations are actively involved in diplomatic, legal and financial warfare against the state of Israel."
"We often fail to appreciate the degree to which the U.N, supports, or even directs, anti-Israel propaganda and political activity," said Bell. "This kind of activity obviously violates the U.N. Charter by infringing upon Israeli sovereignty and denying Israel the right of sovereign equality."
Bell added that these actions "undermine international institutions by subordinating their legal roles to a political agenda [and] corrupting them in the name of anti-Zionist ideology....Unfortunately, the U.N.'s decades-long war on Israel is nowhere near ending."
News, politics, entertainment--A prophetic cleansing of America - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com
The Mueller Special Counsel handed down indictments of two former campaign staffers of President Donald Trump. None of the counts were about Russia, but rather about business dealings in Ukraine. The political world in our nation's Capitol is very nervous. So much so that Tony Podesta, brother of former campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton and big-time Democratic lobbyist and donor, has stepped down from his company because of ties to the very same entities in Ukraine at the center of the indictments. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, dozens of women and some men are coming forward with sexual harassment or rape charges against entertainment industry moguls. The same is happening in the news industry.
In politics, news, and entertainment, there is a massive exposure of vile and distasteful events that appear to be systemic in those cultures. Money laundering, tax evasion, bribery, influence peddling are all being exposed in the political arena. We are seeing both Democrats and Republicans participating in the most scandalous and corrupt practices in recent history. When President Trump said he wanted to drain the swamp, no one knew the extent of vile corruption that would be exposed. We are seeing a little bit of it. Many people are angry about the Mueller investigations, but as bad as they are, and as politically motivated as they are, they are exposing unthinkable dishonesty to the American people.
Hollywood has similar problems. It long has been common knowledge about the casting couch-how upcoming stars sleep their way to the top. It's cliché. And many of those stars don't have any problem with depictions of sex and nudity in the movies they make. Yet, America is finding out how deep the sexual perversion and immorality is in the entertainment industry. We are even seeing the same sexual harassment charges bubbling up from the button down veneer of the news industry where several news organizations have had to fire people because of sexual harassment accusations. Fox, NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC are all interrelated with various people coming forward with claims of sexual harassment.
The news media, politics and the entertainment business mainstays in American culture are interwoven in political agreement as well as corruption, scandal and immorality. Immoral Hollywood supports corrupt politicians and unethical and immoral news hounds revel in their relationships with these depraved people. Now they are being exposed. And they are nervous as to who will be uncovered next. This represents a prophetic cleansing of America. In Matthew 10:26, Jesus says, "Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known." Given enough time, evil self-destructs. But we, as Christians, must fill this darkness with the light of Christ.
America the laughingstock - Caroline B. Glick -
As we mark one year since Trump's stunning electoral victory, the time has come to try something new.
The United States has a credibility problem. Put plainly, aside from Israel, no one in the Middle East appears to take the Americans seriously. Let's start with the Palestinians.
In the wake of last month's unity deal concluded between US-backed Fatah and Iran-backed Hamas, US President Donald Trump's special Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt announced, "Any Palestinian government must unambiguously and explicitly commit to nonviolence, recognize the State of Israel, accept previous agreements and obligations between the parties - including to disarm terrorists - and commit to peaceful negotiations."
On Wednesday, the unity deal passed its first test of implementation.
Hamas permitted the US-funded, Fatah-controlled PA to take charge of Gaza's border crossings with Israel and Egypt. In exchange Fatah is renewing its monthly payments to Hamas - underwritten by US taxpayers to the tune of nearly $500 million a year.
Greenblatt's statement was stomped on by Fatah leaders. They have spent the better part of the past month attacking Britain for issuing the Balfour Declaration a hundred years ago.
Clearly, the US's "moderate" Fatah faction isn't willing to recognize Israel. As for the terrorists, they also spit in Greenblatt's face.
As Hamas terrorists were allowing Fatah personnel to deploy to Gaza's border crossings with Israel and Egypt, Hamas's top leadership was in Lebanon pledging allegiance to the Iranian regime and to Israel's destruction.
Salah al-Arouri, the deputy leader of Hamas, embraced Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and thanked him for the Iranian proxy's support.
Arouri is a resident of Hezbollah's Beirut stronghold in the city's Dahia quarter.
While Arouri was hugging Nasrallah, his boss, Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh, was giving a speech nearby at a terror conference.
Haniyeh indicated that the deal with Fatah was just a means to Hamas's goal of destroying Israel. Hamas, he said, will never concede "one clot of land in Palestine," and will never recognize Israel.
Hamas and Fatah are right to feel contempt for the US. As events this week proved yet again, there is nothing they can do that will cause the Americans to rethink their support for the PLO and whomever they are in bed with.
Citing US pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided on Tuesday to postpone indefinitely Knesset consideration of a government bill that would expand the boundaries of Jerusalem to include some outlying communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Israel, he explained, has no interest in getting on the wrong side of the Americans just before they present their peace plan.
So while Hamas and Fatah implement their unity deal, embrace Iran and restate their commitment to Israel's destruction, Netanyahu is concerned that the Americans will be mad at his government if it dares to advance a plan that would strengthen Israel's control over land that no Israeli government will ever concede.
As bad as the US position vis-�-vis the Palestinians is, America's position in Iraq is even more distressing.
Israel fights its own wars. More than 4,400 US servicemen died fighting in Iraq. Nearly 32,000 were wounded. And today, Iraq is more dangerous to the US and its allies than it was in 2003 when the US-led coalition invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein's murderous Ba'athist regime.
In 2003, the Iraqi military was a shadow of its former self. Under a UN sanctions regime, the Iraqi military was short on training and equipment, and implacably hostile to Iran.
Today, thanks to the US, the Iraqi military is well-trained and well-armed with advanced US weapons. And thanks to former president Barack Obama, the well-armed and well-trained US supported Iraqi military is controlled by Iran.
And as such, it poses a threat to the US, to US allies and to the region that far exceeds the threat Saddam posed in 2003.
The very fact that the Iraqi government and military, which owe their existence to the US, are willing to collaborate with Iran is in itself proof that the US is perceived as at best a paper tiger.
But two stories reported over the past few days show just how brazen their contempt for America has become.
On Tuesday the Iraqi parliament unanimously passed a law requiring law enforcement bodies to pursue criminal charges against "those who promote Zionist symbols in public rallies in any form, including the hoisting of the Zionist flag."
The measure was introduced by the Iranian- controlled Shi'ite Supreme Islamic Council parliamentary bloc.
The new law means that 14 years after the US invaded Iraq with the declared purpose of bringing freedom to the state that had known nothing but tyranny, demonstrating support for Israel is officially a crime.
The Americans are apparently fine with Iraqi Jew-hatred. Recently the Trump administration announced it will implement the Obama administration's pledge to return the archive of the Jewish community of Iraq to the Iraqi government. It doesn't matter to the State Department that the documents were stolen from the Iraqi Jews by regime agents who forced them to flee the county, thus ending 2,600 years of continuous Jewish settlement in Iraq.
Iraq's new anti-Israeli flag law was directed against the Kurds - the US's only reliable ally in Iraq.
Owing both to their longstanding warm ties with Israel and to the fact that Israel is the only state that openly backs Kurdish independence and supported the Kurdish independence referendum which 91% of Iraqi Kurds voted for in September, the Kurds are not shy about their love for America's strongest Middle East ally.
Israel's flag featured prominently in pro-independence demonstrations throughout Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Kurds are now under assault from the government in Baghdad. And the Baghdad government's operations against the Kurds are being directed in large part by the Iranians.
On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported on documents secured by Republican lawmakers that show just how powerful a force Iran and its terror armies have become in Iraq.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, a veteran of the war in Iraq, showed a photograph of Shi'ite militiamen operating US M1 Abrams tanks draped in a Hezbollah flag. Another photo showed IRGC Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani with US-backed Iraqi militia leaders.
Hunter noted that the US-backed Iraqi militias whose commanders were photographed with Soleimani participated in last month's offensive against the Kurds.
Michale Pregent, a former senior intelligence officer who served in Iraq, told the Free Beacon that the photograph of the Hezbollah draped Abrams tank proves US forces have trained Hezbollah forces to use the advanced battle tank.
"Any soldier who has driven a tank before knows that you can't just pick one up on the battlefield and learn to drive it. You have to be trained by an American adviser to do it. And the only way you get that training is if you're wearing an Iraqi uniform, and these [Iranian controlled] militia brag they can wear any uniform in the Iraqi forces and they're doing so."
Hunter said the photos show "we're equipping and training the wrong people. The State Department is going to lose us Iraq again, in one of the worst ways.
"At best, the State Department has been derelict in their duties," he said.
"And at the worst," Hunter said, "they've been complicit with helping the Iranians take back what I and my brothers in arms fought for."
The Trump administration's complicity with the Iranian takeover of Iraq, like its complicity with Palestinian support for Israel's destruction, indicates that in the Middle East, the Trump administration has not abandoned the Obama administration's policies.
Indeed, even in areas where the Trump administration has sought to distance itself from its predecessor, its policies on the ground are still by and large a continuation of Obama's.
For instance, this week the Trump administration released hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that US special forces seized when they killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011. Despite repeated requests from lawmakers and researchers, the Obama administration refused to release the documents.
As long suspected, the now-public documents reveal that Iran effectively serves as al-Qaida's state sponsor.
And yet, like its predecessor, the Trump administration pretends that since Iran is Shi'ite and al-Qaida and its successor Islamic State are Sunni, the Iranians can be trusted to work with the US in defeating them. This is why, for instance, the Pentagon had US forces in Lebanon fighting Islamic State and al-Qaida-aligned forces with the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese Armed Forces in a joint Hezbollah-LAF operation.
This is why the US continues to arm and train the Iranian-Hezbollah controlled LAF with advanced weapons just as it arms and trains the Iranian-controlled Iraqi military and its allied Iranian-controlled militia.
It is hard to know whether Trump will ever appoint emissaries who support his desire to base US policy in the Middle East on the realities of the region. But even if he does replace Obama-era holdovers like Brett McGurk, the pro-Iranian US envoy for operations against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, there is no guarantee that Trump's envoys will change the trajectory of US Middle East policy.
After all, Greenblatt and Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner are Trump loyalists. And the only thing they have changed in US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians is the tone of US statements. From a substantive perspective, the US continues to kowtow to the PLO and put the squeeze on Israel not to secure its interests lest doing so harm the nonexistent prospects for a deal between Israel and Hamas's partner.
Winston Churchill famously said, "You can always trust the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else."
It would seem that in the face of the Hamas-Fatah unity deal, the Iranian takeover of Iraq and the campaign against the US's Kurdish allies being carried out by the Iraqi government at Iran's direction, that the US has finally exhausted "everything else" in the Middle East.
As we mark one year since Trump's stunning electoral victory, the time has come to try something new. The time has come for the Americans to do the right thing in the Middle East.
The Mueller bait and switch - Bill Wilson -
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He has handed down indictments of two of President Donald Trump's former campaign officials-Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, former Trump advisor and partner of Manafort. According to the indictment, these men laundered money, failed to register as foreign agents, evaded taxes, and misled the Department of Justice. Interesting though, that these 12 counts of indictments are only for dealings with the Ukranian pro-Russian political Party, the party of Regions, and the Ukraine government. The indictment indicates that Manafort and Gates are big time crooks, but Mueller is quite off topic.
These counts are related specifically to these two men's dealings with Ukraine, not about Russia meddling in the 2016 elections. The indictment mentions "Russia" only in the following context: "In 2005, Manafort and another partner created Davis Manafort Partners, Inc. (DMP) to engage principally in political consulting. DMP had staff in the United States, Ukraine, and Russia...The Party of Regions was a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine...In 2010, its candidate for President, Yanukovych, was elected President of Ukraine. In 2014, Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia in the wake of popular protests of widespread governmental corruption."
Mueller also announced that former Trump campaign aid George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about the timing and detail of his attempts to line up meetings between Russian government officials and the Trump campaign. According to AP, "The plea by George Papadopoulos marked the first criminal charges that cite interactions between Trump campaign associates and Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign...In court papers, he admitted to lying about the nature of his interactions with "foreign nationals" who he thought had close connections to senior Russian government officials." To date, there are no allegations of Trump and Russia coordinating efforts to influence the elections.
To me, this is very interesting considering there are mountains of evidence that the Democratic National Committee and the Clintons had intimate business dealings specifically with Russia and Russian agents. The Special Counsel, however, hands down indictments on crooked dealings from work with Ukraine that doesn't appear directly related to Russia or to Trump. Jesus' words in Luke 8:17 come to mind with all this: For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither anything hid, that shall not be known and come to light." Did Russia meddle in the US elections? As in elections past, Russia probably tried. With whom did Russia conspire with and were they successful? The plot thickens as the light hits the darkness.
Report: Saudis Pushed U.S. to Pressure Israel into Delaying Jerusalem Bill - by Deborah Danan -
Saudi Arabia pushed the U.S. into pressuring Israel to delay the "Greater Jerusalem" bill that would see the connection of satellite settlements to the capital, the Hebrew news site Ynet reported Tuesday.
According to the report, which cited the Al-Watan newspaper, a senior White House source said that Saudi officials had raised the issue during talks surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday postponed the initial vote on the bill that would annex 19 settlements surrounding Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Post quoted sources saying that the legislation needed "diplomatic preparation and has therefore been rejected for the moment." Israel's Army Radio quoted David Bitan (Likud) stating that the vote was delayed because of "American pressure claiming it is an annexation."
According to a report by Haaretz, Netanyahu said at Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, "The Americans turned to us and inquired what the bill was about. As we have been coordinating with them until now, it is worth (continuing) talking and coordinating with them. We are working to promote and develop the settlement enterprise."
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert on Thursday said that while she wouldn't comment on the internal politics surrounding the vote, the U.S. would "continue to encourage both sides to take appropriate actions to ease tensions and build an environment that would support concluding a conflict-ending peace agreement."
The bill, authored by MK Yoav Kisch (Likud), would give some 150,000 residents of those communities - termed "daughter municipalities" - the right to vote in Jerusalem's municipal elections.
While Likud and the Jewish Home party have been strong proponents of the bill, several coalition parties have opposed it - in particular, the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism, which have concerns that the bill's passage will weaken their voting bloc in the capital.
"We have to be very wary of it and not approve it so quickly," MK Uri Maklev (UTJ) said last week.
MK Rachel Azaria (Kulanu) accused lawmakers of using the bill as a political tool.
"This bill might look good on paper, but it's bad in reality," she said. "Who wants to live in a city where people from the outside can vote for your mayor?" She said there were better ways to strengthen the city.
The 19 satellite settlements include Ma'aleh Adumim, Givat Ze'ev, Betar Illit, Efrat and the communities belonging to the Gush Etzion Regional Council.
The legislation would also connect Kafr Akab, Shuafat and Anata, the three Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem that are outside the security barrier and together comprise some 100,000 people, and turn them into sub-municipalities of the city.
The truth hurts, even kills - Bill Wilson -
The Democratic politicians and news media are jumping on President Donald Trump over the terrorist attack by an Islamic immigrant in New York City that left eight dead and more than a dozen wounded. The narrative is that Trump attacked the political policy of how Sayfullo Saipov legally emigrated from Uzbekistan in 2010 through the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. Democrats and the media are angry Trump is pointing to policy instead of focusing on condolences and sympathy to the victims. In actuality, the very first official act of the President was to offer his thoughts and prayers to the victims. Once again the Democrat-leftist-oriented media sought to change the narrative from the truth to a lie.
President Trump issued a statement from the White House saying, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of today's terrorist attack in New York City and their families. My Administration will provide its full support to the New York City Police Department, including through a joint investigation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We offer our thanks to the first responders who stopped the suspect and rendered immediate aid to the victims of this cowardly attack. These brave men and women embody the true American spirit of resilience and courage. I will continue to follow developments closely." Yet, the media and pro-open borders people are trying to change the narrative.
The Immigration Act of 1990 established the Diversity Visa program (pushed by current Senator Chuck Schumer, D-NY) that uses a lottery for selecting immigrants to become permanent citizens. The program, overseen by the US State Department, accepts immigrants from around the world, including terrorist-sponsoring states. The 29 year old Saipov came from a predominantly Sunni Muslim that has thousands of supporters of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Trump is trying to protect Americans by blocking entry of people from these areas without first vetting them properly. He is being fought by the Democrats, the activist courts, and the media.
The immediate past "president" accelerated Islamic immigration into the US, allowing an unknown number of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers into the nation. Pew Research projects that by 2040 the Muslim population in the US will be larger than the Jewish population, and will be the second most predominant religion. Jeremiah 51:14 describes a similar situation that led to the destruction of Babylon: "Surely I will fill you with men, as with locusts; and they shall lift up a battle cry against you." The truth is that policies of liberal US leaders have aided the infiltration of terrorists into the US. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslim. The truth hurts and sometimes it kills.
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