On Tuesday, Feb. 23, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor addressed the U.N. Security Council, which was meeting to congratulate itself and “reaffirm” its international commitment to the principles outlined in the UN Charter.

Prosor could not permit the occasion to pass without drawing attention to the ways in which the institution falls far short of the grand ideals which, 70 years ago, drove representatives of 50 nations to draw up the Charter upon which the U.N. was created.

The U.N. Charter enshrined several fundamental principles:

first, to maintain international peace and security and take effective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to peace; second, to advance relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights; third, to promote and encourage respect for human rights; and fourth, to be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations. Prosor deftly excised the verbiage to reveal the myriad ways in which the U.N. undermines those lofty ideals, replacing them, instead, with cowardice and appeasement towards those who most betray the U.N. principles, and discrimination and vilification of at least one nation committed to upholding those principles: Israel.

The Israeli ambassador explained that the greatest threat to global security comes from the terrorist radical Islamist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram. He described their battle against the civilized world as one “between civility and barbarism, between pluralistic and totalitarian society, between tyranny and freedom.”

Those extremists are destabilizing communities, nations and entire regions of the world, yet the U.N. has “been reluctant to take decisive action,” Prosor said, and on occasion, the U.N. has “surrendered to those nations that harbor, fund and support terrorist groups.”

Hezbollah, in particular, was held out by Prosor as an example of the U.N.’s inclination to coddle, not curb, terrorism, pointing out that the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group has held Lebanon hostage for nearly three decades, while it continues its “reign of terror.”

The U.N. has also failed in its stated dedication to the principle of equal rights, with member nations that impose the death penalty for loving the “wrong” people or believing in the “wrong” faiths. Prosor pointed to the recent beheadings by ISIS of 21 Coptic Christians as merely the latest in a decades-long process of badgering and discriminating against Middle Eastern Christians, until their number has dwindled to small minorities.

Prosor also pointed an accusatory finger at various member nations who sit on the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, such as Venezuela, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Algeria. The lack of a free judiciary and a free press in those countries makes their membership a mockery of the Council.

Last year Iran was elected to serve as Vice Chair of the U.N.’s legal committee. Prosor pointed out the absurdity of making such a choice when Iranian citizens are denied due process and fair trials, and they are not even permitted to participate in Iranian national affairs.

Prosor told the Council:

The fact of the matter is that this institution has been hijacked. The ruthless autocracies that jail journalists rush to lecture us on the virtues of a free press. The repressive dictatorships that persecute political opponents filibuster on the sanctity of free and fair elections. And the mass-murdering tyrannical regimes preach to us about human rights.

Finally the Israeli ambassador addressed the treatment of the tiny country he represents at the hands of the U.N. Prosor patiently recounted just some of the ways in which Israel has been treated as a pariah nation by the U.N.

For example, last year alone the General Assembly adopted 20 resolutions singling out Israel for condemnation. All other nations were reprimanded by punitive resolutions a total of three times. In 2014, the Syrian civil war raged with chemical weapons and barrel bombs directed at its own citizens, Boko Haram slaughtered thousands, Russia invaded Crimea, North Korea continued its totalitarian regime oppressing its citizens, and Saudi Arabia executed dozens of its citizens, yet Israel was singled out for criticism time and again.

Since 2006, more than half of all resolutions adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council in criticism of a particular country have been directed at Israel. This isn’t logical, it isn’t moral – it is simply prejudice.

media credit: Israel Mission to the UN, New York

Prosor then took the occasion to link the proceedings in the U.N. with last night’s Academy Awards. He suggested what would happen if the U.N. decided to give out Oscars for “Maintenance of International Peace and Security.”

Media Credit: Israel Mission to the UN, New York

The U.N. would give the Best Actor award “for acting like a peace loving country while developing nuclear capabilities, denying the Holocaust, and threatening the destruction of another member state to…..Iran.”

Prosor suggested the U.N. would give the Best Supporting Actor award to Hezbollah for its “unrelenting support to the Assad Regime in killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.”

The Israeli ambassador had several other predictions for winners in the U.N.’s version of the Academy awards. To watch him deliver them, watch the video of his speech, below.

Released for publication:

On January 15, the Shabak – Israel’s General Security Service, in a joint operation with the IDF, captured a Hamas terror cell operating in Hebron.

The terror cell planned to commit a variety of terror attacks, including suicide bombings. The Hamas terror cell actually attempted to implement one of their plans in December.

Weapons and explosives were also confiscated during the operation, in which eleven Hamas terrorists were captured.

Two of the chief terrorists in the cell, Sahaib Mamun Saltan, 20, from Hebron, and his cousin Salam Abbas Saltan, 28, admitted they tried to commit an attack this past December in Hebron’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood against IDF troops. The attack failed when their bomb did not go off.

The cell planned to commit their attacks in Hebron and Jerusalem and had scouted out target locations to attack.

Among the 80 groups and countries invited to this week’s White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism were Qatar, which finances Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority, which includes Hamas.

Also invited were Hamas, another enthusiast of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood; and Lebanon, which is dominated by Hezbollah; and the Arab League, a collection of Middle East countries from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan that live and breathe by the sword.

As previously reported here by The Jewish Press, President Barack Obama said the United States is not at war against Islam. The enemy is not “radical Islam” because if Muslims are violent and extremists, they aren’t true Muslims.

Just imagine how people would behave according to that philosophy. If you are violent in the name of homosexuality, you are not a true homosexual because same-sex relations are all about peace and love.

And if you are violent for the sake of liberalism, or right-wing causes, you can’t possibly be a true left-winger or right-winger because they stand for peace.

It is not far from Catholicism, by which one can sin 24/6, confess on Sunday and go back for another round.

It is a philosophy of “Judge me by whom I am and by what I do.”

That is why not much is expected from Obama’s White House summit, especially when Muslim leaders in the United States and all over the world are not standing on the soap box to denounce their own radical Muslim preachers who espouse violence, all in the name of peace.

Even worse, they insist that Muslims are radicalized because of their economic and social situation, an attitude being accepted by the Obama, as reported here by The Jewish Press.

Marwan Muasher, a Jordanian politician who oversees research on the Middle East at the US-based Carnegie Endowment, told the London Guardian:

This is not the administration’s war, any administration’s war. It is not equipped to do it; it cannot do it.

The Arab world needs to take the lead on this. The Americans can lead on the military front; they cannot lead on the ideological front. They are not capable of doing so and the region does not want them to do so. The question is, is the region capable of taking the lead ideologically.

The answer so far is “no” for exactly the reason he stated – Middle East Muslim countries do not want the American government making the world safe from radical Islam.

As for his question whether the Muslim world can take “the lead ideologically,” the answer until today has been a resounding “no.”

The Muslim world is in the midst of a war between Sunnis and Shi’ites. The war is being fought on the battlefield and not just by the Islamic State but in virtually every country. It is a war that left Egypt on the brink of anarchy, a situation that continues in Lebanon.

It is a war of who controls oil fields, but above all, it is a war of whose Islam rules, and in order to win, ideology is not a convincing weapon. Their weapon is violence.

The Obama administration’s insistence on not mentioning “radical Islam” in its war on terror makes it impossible to root out violent extremism.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the House Armed Services Committee in remarks concerning the war against the Islamic State:

We are at war with violent and extreme Islamists (both Sunni and Shiite) and we must accept and face this reality. We must engage the violent Islamists wherever they are, drive them from their safe havens and kill them.”

President Obama has put his administration in a Catch-22 situation.

He cannot Lt. Gen. Flynn’s thinking because it is politically incorrect.

Otherwise, Muslim countries would not have attended the summit, but because he won’t mention “radical Islam,” nothing will happen.

Originally posted at Jewish Business News

Gazans stranded in Egypt have called on PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the PA ambassador to Egypt Jamal al-Shubaki to appeal to Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza strip, the Alresalah website reported.

Dozens of Gazan families, have been stuck in the Cairo International Airport for 20 days so far, waiting for the crossing to open, an eyewitness said.

The Egyptian government has accused Gaza’s Hamas rulers of collaboration with the ISIS-related terrorists in the Sinai, which have been clashing with Egyptian forces—hence the closing of the border crossing and the suspension in Egypt of Gazans wishing to return to Gaza.

The stranded passengers are demanding that al-Shubaki intervene, expressing their anger over the silence of the Palestinian Authority embassy in Cairo.

Naturally, the PA embassy is owned and operated by Hamas’ enemies in Ramallah, who are less than eager to make life easier for their nemesis. So the Gazan passengers stay stranded.

The sane Gazan passengers have also “expressed their trust in Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi,” and “praise his role in supporting the Palestinian people and their just Cause,” Alresalah reported.

Because, let’s face it, they’re in al-Sisi’s dog house right now, so they must behave.

The Navy and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) intercepted a boat last January that was on its way to Gaza with materials for manufacturing rockets and mortar shells, according to military spokesmen after a gag order on the counter-terrorist operation was lifted on Wednesday.

The vessel was being used to smuggle liquid fiberglass for building weapons to be launched on Israel. The boat was sailing from off the Sinai Peninsula to a Gaza port. Israel has placed a maritime embargo on Hamas-controlled Gaza to prevent the smuggling of weapons and materials for weapons.

Security officials arrested three Arabs who confessed to planning to smuggle the liquid fiberglass for Hamas.

The three suspects were identified as Machmed Bechar, Ahmed Zaidi and Awad Zaidi.

​They gave investigators detailed information on previous weapon smuggling activities and told them how Hamas intended to utilize fisherman and smugglers for future smuggling attempts.

That explains why the Navy often fires on those supposedly innocent “fishing boats” that foreign media report were manned by poor Gaza Arabs who can’t make a decent living fishing because the big bad Israeli Navy thinks fishermen are enemies.

They are enemies because they are not fishermen. They are terrorists.

The gag order on the operation was lifted when the men were indicted in a Be’er Sheva court today for involvement in crimes endangering the security of the country.

“The IDF is determined to prevent unlawful attempts to ship weapons and raw materials that may jeopardize the well being of Israelis,” said Lt. Colonel Peter Lerner, IDF Spokesman. “This shipment highlights that when Hamas chose to smuggle materials for rockets and mortars, it chose not to invest in the rehabilitation for the people of Gaza.”​​

The IDF has destroyed “the remains” of a terrorist tunnel that led from Gaza into southern Israel, apparently discovered during last summer’s Operation Protective Edge.

The tunnel “penetrated into Israel from the Gaza Strip,” the IDF Spokesperson revealed this morning, Feb. 9 in a statement sent by SMS to media. “During the activity, forces discovered a cache of weapons and explosives,” the statement continued.

This indicates — at least to this writer — that either the tunnel was not completely destroyed at the time it was discovered last summer, or more likely, it has since been rebuilt and re-activated by its terrorist builders. That is a very ominous sign.

However, the IDF remained on Israel’s side of the Gaza border, according to the statement. “The tunnel, which was exposed during Operation Protective Edge, was demolished in order to prevent its rehabilitation in order to safeguard the security of the civilians of southern Israel,” the IDF Spokesman added.

Clearly that was done last summer as well; upon their departure from Gaza, IDF commanders stated clearly that all tunnels had been completely disabled before leaving.

Are we feeling safe yet? Wait — we’re not finished.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, head of the Independent Media Review and Analysis watchdog group, had similar questions about the curt statement issued by the IDF – and the information obviously left out.

Lerner sent back a question asking whether the terror tunnel “may remain intact one meter within Gaza beyond the Israeli side?”

In reply, the IDF Spokesperson clarified: “We are only reporting about the tunnel on the Israeli side. If you want to know about tunnels on the Gaza side, ask in Gaza.”

So there you have it. Israel no longer sees to it that terror tunnels in Gaza are completely destroyed when they are discovered. Hamas has received the message that it is free to build whatever underground terrorist network that it likes, as long as it does not cross the border into Israel, even beneath the boundary.

Perhaps that’s got to do with the international community shaking its virtual finger at the Israeli government, with its “Nu Nu Nu.” All those warnings about how it is “absolutely essential” to move forward immediately with the “economic rehabilitation” of Gaza.

How lovely; more money for tunnels and better photo ops for Hamas with the “poor, forgotten refugees from the Gaza war.”

Um … Are southern Israelis still feeling safe?

Terrorists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) operating in Gaza have united with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah faction to silence Palestinian journalists, Arab affairs journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes in an article for the Gatestone Institute.

Over the past few days, a number of Palestinian journalists have received death threats from the “Gaza branch” of ISIS and were accused of publishing “lies” about ISIS in particular and about Islam in general.

The threats were sent via social media and messages to the journalists’ mobile phones.

“Islamic State warns the journalist and media people against their continued and constant attacks on us,” reads the text of one message sent. “We in Islamic State affirm that we will execute the rule of the Shari’a [Islamic law] against these apostates, who are sowing discord among Muslims.”

Many Palestinian journalists were already being targeted by Hamas in Gaza and the PA in Judea and Samaria. Those threats were reported last summer and confirmed by international journalists after they once they escaped from Gaza and reached their home countries, where they were free from the danger of being killed by Hamas and its terrorist allies.

The latest threats have only ratcheted up the pressure on these reporters, who are taking the threats seriously and are increasing their vigilance and their self-censorship.

“Of course we are afraid,” a veteran journalist in Gaza told Toameh. “You never know who is hiding behind the mask. It could be someone from ISIS or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or even Fatah. It is not safe to be a journalist living in the West Bank or Gaza.”

“The threats against Palestinian journalists are important because this is no longer a ‘local’ issue or an internal Palestinian affair,” Toameh writes. “Those who are seeking to silence the Palestinian journalists are also trying to prevent the international media from learning about what is really happening in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“A Palestinian journalist working with international news agencies and newspapers is not going to report truthfully and honestly, when he or she is facing daily threats from so many parties. The only stories these journalists are going to offer the international media are ones that depict Israel in a negative manner. The Palestinian journalists know that at the end of the day they need to go back to their families in Ramallah and Gaza without having to worry about masked men knocking on their doors at night.

“The threats against Palestinian journalists are worrying, and should be exposed and brought to the attention of human rights groups around the world. More disturbing is that many of the international journalists operating in the region are willing to turn a blind eye to the dangers facing their Palestinian colleagues and employees. The international media outlets and their representatives are prepared to take almost any story offered to them by Palestinian reporters, especially if the story consists of anti-Israel statements,” Toameh writes.

The above is especially important to consider in light of the current investigation into last summer’s Operation Protective Edge, being carried out by the United Nations Human Rights Council. As they did with depositions taken for the notorious and inaccurate Goldstone Report, the investigators are taking at face value anything said to them by Gaza residents they interview. They fail to understand the nature of the threat under which the average citizen lives his or her life in Gaza – nor do most “outsiders” realize how many so-called “civilians” are ancillary members or supporters of terror groups as well.

As a result, the evidence gathered is skewed from the start, though the investigators are wholly unaware of it, or worse, could care less.

International media by and large relies on news reports that have been self-censored by on-the-scene Palestinian stringers who are frankly afraid for their lives.
Threats by ISIS will now only raise the heat in the area.