Tag Archives: United Nations

Common Sense Has Arrived

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Hamas has worked very hard to turn public opinion against Israel despite the horrific attack of October 7th of last year. The United Nations has worked very hard to ignore the role that some employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) played in that attack. Well, justice may be coming for the victims of that attack.

On April 25th, Power Line Blog reported:

It would be easy to miss today’s good news, which comes via the Trump Department of Justice. The headline of the Jewish Chronicle spells it out: “US scraps Unrwa’s legal immunity in major reversal of Biden-era policy.” Subhead: “The decision could see the UN agency, which has been accused of employing Hamas operatives, hit with significant claims from the relatives of terror victims.”

…The X feed of Professor Eugene Kontorovich has helpful background and reflection on this change of policy. He comments: “UNRWA’s funding from primary donors Germany, France, EU, Sweden, Norway is going to dry up fast when they understand every cent is going to be needed to pay damages to Jewish victims.” So let it be written, so let it be done.

Professor Kontorovich also cites his own September 2024 New York Post column (with Mark Goldfeder) “Outrage as US DOJ defends UN staffers who collaborated in Hamas’ terror.”

Let the lawsuits begin! My only concern is that America funds a large portion of the United Nation’s budget–in 2023, America paid $13 billion to the United Nations (in my mind, that is one place spending could be cut totally). I don’t want to see American taxpayers having to pay the lawsuits against the United Nations. It would be nice to see the United Nations’ funding dry up completely. The have never been the instrument of peace that they supposedly set out to be.

What Hypocrisy?

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On Thursday, The Daily Caller posted an article about a judge who is listed as a fellow in Columbia University’s human rights program. The judge seems to have a limited understanding of human rights.

The article reports:

A British jury convicted United Nations Judge Lydia Mugambe on Thursday of forcing a Ugandan woman into domestic servitude after luring her to the U.K. under false pretenses.

Mugambe, who also serves as a high court judge in Uganda, brought the victim to Britain under the guise of securing her a job in a diplomatic household — only to make her work as an unpaid maid and nanny. She confiscated the victim’s passport and visa, leaving her trapped until she was able to contact a friend, who alerted authorities, according to a Thames Valley Police statement.

“Lydia Mugambe used her position to exploit a vulnerable young woman, controlling her freedom and making her work without payment,” Eran Clutliffe, an attorney for the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime Division, said.

The 49-year-old judge, who was studying for a doctorate at the University of Oxford at the time, according to her profile on the U.N.’s website, was found guilty on four charges, including forced labor, an immigration offense and conspiracy to intimidate a witness. Mugambe is also listed on Columbia University’s website as a fellow in their human rights program. Prosecutors argued she “exploited and abused” the victim’s lack of knowledge about her rights to keep her in a state of servitude.

Mugambe leveraged her connections within the Ugandan High Commission in London to secure a visa for the victim, presenting it as an official employment opportunity, according to court testimony. Instead of placing the woman in a diplomatic household, however, Mugambe brought her to her private residence and forced her to work without pay.

…Mugambe, who was appointed to a U.N. international court in May 2023, denied all charges. She is scheduled for sentencing May 2.

A United Nations judge guilty of having a slave. Wow! It really is time to get America out of the United Nations and get the United Nations out of America.

Speaking of hypocrisy at the United Nations, the United Nations has also appointed Saudi Arabia as the head of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69). I understand that the government of Saudi Arabia is moving to expand the rights of women in their country, but making Saudi Arabia the head of a commission on the status of women is like asking a fox to design a hen house.

This Makes My Blood Boil

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On Thursday, Hot Air posted an article about Hamas’ release of the bodies of four hostages. The fact that Israel is backed into a corner and is releasing live terrorists for dead hostages is bad enough, but Hamas used to occasion as propaganda. It was disgusting.

The article quotes The U.K. Daily Mail:

Hamas has been condemned for parading the coffins of hostages in Gaza, with the United Nations rights chief saying the ‘abhorrent’ treatment of the October 7 attack victims ‘flies in the face of international law.’

Israelis are mourning the youngest hostages – baby Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel – as well as their mother Shiri and elderly captive Oded Lifshitz, whose bodies are believed to have been inside the caskets.

The four coffins were displayed to crowds in front of disturbing propaganda posters before being handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by armed Hamas fighters. 

I admire Israel’s restraint. If it were up to me, Gaza would be a radioactive parking lot by now.

The article at Hot Air includes multiple pictures of the transfer of the bodies of the hostages.

The article at Hot Air includes the following screenshot from X:

I agree.

UPDATE:

The woman’s body that was returned is not the mother of the two murdered children.

 

The End Of The Scam?

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On Monday, Legal Insurrection posted an article about a two-day climate conference in Prague on November 12-13, 2024. At that conference, climate scientists declared that the “climate emergency” is over.

The article reports:

The declaration has 18 different point referencing climate science and facts that counter the narratives being pushed by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and those who want to push their green agendas. I have listed the first six below (which should be familiar to Legal Insurrection readers); there remainder can be found in the copy of the declaration.

1 The modest increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age has been net-beneficial to humanity.
2. Foreseeable future increases in greenhouse gases in the air will probably also prove net-beneficial.
3. The rate and amplitude of global warming have been and will continue to be appreciably less than climate scientists have long predicted.
4. The Sun, and not greenhouse gases, has contributed and will continue to contribute the overwhelming majority of global temperature.
5. Geological evidence compellingly suggests that the rate and amplitude of global warming during the industrial era are neither unprecedented nor unusual.
6. Climate models are inherently incapable of telling us anything about how much global warming there will be or about whether or to what extent the warming has a natural or anthropogenic cause.

Though I have to say, #17 is a favorite of mine:

Since wind and solar power are costly, intermittent and more environmentally destructive per TWh generated than any other energy source, governments should cease to subsidize or to prioritize them, and should instead expand coal, gas and, above, all nuclear generation.

But, perhaps most importantly, the conference attendees demand the end of persecution of those researchers doing real science who struggle to share their reasonable and reliable findings whenever the data counters the political narratives.

As I have reported multiple times (article here):

Christiana Figueres, one-time executive secretary of United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the climate activists’ agenda is not to protect the environment but to break capitalism. The task ahead, she said in 2015, is “to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

It was never really about the climate.

When The Powers That Be Don’t Like Your Definition

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about Alice Wairimu Nderitu, who has served as the United Nations Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide since 2020. Nderitu’s contract has expired. Normally, renewing that contract is routine. However, this time her contract was not renewed–she was essentially fired.

The article explains the reason:

Alice Wairimu Nderitu has served as the United Nations Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide since 2020. During that period, Nderitu has urged caution regarding the use of the term, telling the UN to only apply it when genocidal intent is both manifest and the only legitimate explanation, lest “genocide” get watered down into mere political fashion. That is especially true in clear counter-terrorism operations, Nderitu warned, specifically resisting the application of the term “genocide” in the war Hamas started.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

Her paper explains that the term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to describe massacres of entire ethnic groups with the intention of eliminating them. That definition, Ms. Nderitu has said, includes the Holocaust, the Hutus’ genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Serbian slaughter of Bosnian Muslims, and may include the ethnic killings now unfolding in Sudan. 

As a legal matter, establishing a pattern of violence as a genocide requires demonstrating intent. Israel’s campaign of self-defense doesn’t qualify. The war against Hamas has had many deaths, but Israel’s strategy is intended to dismantle a terrorist regime, not eliminate an ethnic group. The Jewish state has gone to great lengths to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, even as Hamas uses civilians as shields so their deaths can be used as propaganda.

That’s not what the anti-Israel cabal at the U.N. want to hear.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

To call this a genocide is absurd. The Israelis are taking far more care about protecting civilian populations than any of the belligerents in World War II did, the conflict that birthed the UN. They are the only army in history that is expected to feed the population that started a war with them while the war still rages, in population centers where belligerents still attack the Israelis from civilian infrastructure. 

Moreover, Hamas has made its genocidal intentions against the Israelis and Jews in general explicitly known and declared ever since its founding. After October 7, their representatives announced that Hamas would keep conducting such massacres and atrocities until they destroyed Israel and enslaved the Jews that managed to survive. IDF operations uncovered Hamas’ specific plans for the enslavement of the remnants.

There’s a genocide going on, all right. And the UN is siding with it. 

“Can anyone with integrity survive at the UN?” the WSJ editors wonder. Not for long, it seems. If they want to side with genocidal terrorism, what value is there in the United Nations, even as a debating society?

There is no equivalency between the violence of October 7, 2023, and Israel’s fight for its survival. The United Nations has become what it was founded to prevent–an organization acting in opposition to the defense of freedom.

The War On Women In Sports

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The political left has declared war on women in sports. They are supposed to share their locker rooms and their private spaces with men, and they are expected to compete with men in various sports. In some cases, competing with men has caused serious injuries to the women involved, but those pushing the transgender movement do not seem to be concerned about that. Seeing an Olympic competition where a man was actually hitting a women was totally offensive to me. The political left has chosen to ignore the basic differences between men and women. However, the statistics on athletic awards tell the story.

On Tuesday, BizPacReview reported:

Arguments about the rarity of men and boys stealing opportunities from women and girls crumbled as a United Nations report quantified the growing number of medals lost.

Too often, leftist claims of troubling matters being rare and of little consequence have proven to be neither. Now, according to the findings of U.N. special rapporteur Reem Alsalem, such was the case for gender ideology’s impact on sports as nearly 900 medals that would have been awarded to females had gone to males as of March 2024.

In the report initially published in August, Alsalem indicated, “The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals when competing against males.”

“According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports,” she continued marking the minimum number of incidents.

The article concludes:

As far as concerns regarding how to police the matter, Alsalem recognized the sensitivity of the issue for some and proposed, “In cases where the sex of an athlete is unknown or uncertain, a dignified, swift, non-invasive and accurate sex screening method (such as a cheek swab) or, where necessary for exceptional reasons, genetic testing should be applied to confirm the athlete’s sex. In non-professional sports spaces, the original birth certificate for verification may be appropriate. In some exceptional circumstances, such tests may need to be followed up by more complex tests.”

Most recently, bureaucratic decisions to allow men to compete with women found the University of Nevada-Reno volleyball team at odds with their own school as they became the fifth team to choose forfeiture over competing against San Jose State University with a male athlete as their star player.

While the rapporteur argued “the failure to protect the female category is one of the most egregious forms of violence against women and girls” Waggoner (Alliance Defending Freedom International CEO Kristen Waggoner) contended, “Our plea to the world is to learn from the mistakes that have been made — and that are now being corrected — so that your daughters can walk into a future of fair and safe sports.”

A man competing in women’s sports is not a whole lot different than a teenager playing on a kid’s t-ball team. They simply do not belong there.

Planning A Further Invasion Of America

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Pm Saturday, The American Thinker posted an article about the construction of a complex in southern Mexico for moving illegal migrants north into America.

The article reports:

The Center for Immigration Studies’ Todd Bensman, who’s done groundbreaking reporting on the border surge, has been in southern Mexico documenting what is going on there and in Central America as the election battles out in the U.S.

He found this:

This, despite his earlier reporting that migrants are anticipating a Trump victory in November, and making a rush towards the U.S., before the anticipated drawbridge will be pulled. Bensman reports that Trump is known as ‘el diablo‘ to the would-be illegal border crossers.

So the idea of building a huge permanent complex to house migrants, United Nations agencies, and NGOs would almost seem counterintuitive, given that migrants are unlikely to have it as good as they have had it under the Harris-Biden administration, with Border Patrol enforcers ordered to escort them on in, vetted or not.

The article concludes:

If they’re building a huge migrant gathering complex for the journey northward, it would seem they are attempting to institutionalize this phenomenon and have some kind of inside word that the fix is in and President Trump will lose the election. After that, they’ll rev up their migrant conveyor belt and make illegal, unvetted migration into the U.S, at the numbers they determine, the new normal. If Kamala Harris is elected, that’s exactly what will happen. If President Trump is elected, they may wait it out, they may flood the U.S. with international lawfare to force him to take all comers, or they may have word that he will never be ‘allowed’ to take office.

The plan of course, is to normalize illegal migration and effectively erase the U.S.’s legal borders. They’ll send the migrants in, and the U.S. taxpayers will pay for them — and pay, and pay, and pay. That’s all the better from their perspective, to have two dependent classes for the Democrats to minister to. After that, they’ll expand the operation to send even more migrants until the final end is clear, a complete change in the electorate.

It sounds like a terrible project that is overdue to be shut down. At a minimum, we need more information on this. But if Trump is elected, it will be a day-one task to deinstitutionalize the migrant surge, given the apparent masterplan to institutionalize illegal immigration into the U.S. for as long as it takes to change the electorate.

This is something to keep an eye on in the next three weeks.

When ‘Peacemakers’ Plant The Seeds Of War

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. The article reminds us that United Nations Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, was meant to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its stockpile of weapons aimed at Israel. Unfortunately, the Resolution was never implemented, and Hezbollah has been stockpiling weapons and digging tunnels ever since.

The article reports:

Since 2006, Iran is believed to have gathered some 160,000 long- and short-range rockets in position in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah has been firing them since Oct. 8 of last year, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis out of their homes in the north of the country.

On Sunday, I saw with my own eyes how this had happened. A short way inside Lebanon, the IDF showed me two Hezbollah tunnels — right near the Israeli border.

These had been built in the hope of carrying out a Hamas-style Oct. 7 attack on Israel. And also to store and fire rockets into northern Israel.

The ground in Lebanon is rocky — not sandy like Gaza — and these are serious, deep tunnels. But the tunnel shafts opened not much more than 100 meters away from a giant UN peacekeeping base and observation point.

How is it possible that the kind of heavy digging needed to create these tunnels could have happened literally right under the noses of the UN? Were they not looking? Did they even care?

The answer seems to be a very obvious “no.” They decided not to look. The international peacekeeping force has been a joke for years.

After all, what Irish or Sri Lankan soldier is going to put their lives at risk to enforce a mere UN resolution? Or do anything to protect the State of Israel from Iran-backed terrorists?

These tunnels go deep into the ground and connect with each other — just as Hamas’ terror tunnels do in Gaza. But these have an even more deadly potential.

The article also notes:

And in the middle of the forest we come across one of many Hezbollah hiding places, complete with arms dump.

The station has been recently abandoned, but it was an area that a cell of perhaps 10 Hezbollah terrorists were recently bunkering down in. They left much of their kit on the way out.

…This includes not just Hezbollah uniforms and vests, but all of the group’s other necessities. There are mines — including ones that are used to blow open walls.

Now that we know that Hezbollah was planning an Oct. 7-style attack from the north, it is clear that this was one of their ways to break into Israel, just like their friends in Hamas broke in from the south.

The Hezbollah terrorists who recently left this camp left other things behind, too: pipe bombs, other explosives, many rounds of bullets.

America paid for this lack of peacekeeping. It’s time for America to leave the United Nations and for the United Nations to leave America.

You Can Tell When Israel Is Winning–The United Nations Asks For A Cease Fire

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On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the continuing war between Israel and the terrorists that surround it. It is unfortunate that the rest of the world does not understand that in defending Israel they are fighting worldwide terrorism.

The article quotes The Wall Street Journal:

Israeli special forces have been carrying out small, targeted raids into southern Lebanon, gathering intelligence and probing ahead of an expected broader ground incursion, people familiar with the matter said.
***
The Biden administration expects an imminent Israeli invasion of Lebanon, U.S. officials said.
***
An Israeli official said that, if there were to be a broader ground operation, it would feature “localized, limited raids against Hezbollah targets along the border with the objective of destroying the capabilities of the Radwan Forces,” the militant group’s special-operations unit. Israeli forces assess that the group is making preparations for an attack, as Hamas did before Oct. 7, including positioning clothes, weapons and other materials along the border.

The difference is that October 7th was unprovoked and aimed at civilians. Israel’s attack has been provoked by the constant rocket fire on civilians in Northern Israel, and Israel’s attack is aimed at Hezbollah–a terrorist group.

The article at Power Line Blog concludes:

So, what is the Biden administration’s role in these events? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have remained true to their policy of being utterly irrelevant, when they are not actually destructive, on all foreign policy issues. Biden’s greatest fear, apparently, is that Israel might actually achieve victory in its battle to the death with Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies:

President Biden starkly instructed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to abandon reported plans for an imminent invasion of southern Lebanon to clear out Hezbollah-held areas days after the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah.

“Israel may now be launching a limited operation into Lebanon. Are you aware of that? Are you comfortable with their plan?” a journalist asked Biden at the White House.

“I’m more aware than you might know, and I’m comfortable with them stopping,” the president replied.

“We should have a cease-fire now,” he added.

There is a pattern here: whenever the Jews are winning, liberal Democrats want a cease fire to give the terrorists time to regroup and live to fight again another day. Happily, no one cares what they think.

If Mexico were firing rockets into Texas every day, would America want a cease-fire?

Another Terrorist Who Worked For UNRWA

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The United Nations is going to have a hard time recruiting workers in the Middle East if Israel keeps killing the ones who work as terrorists in their spare time. On Monday, Breitbart posted an article about the latest terrorist to be killed by Israel.

The article reports:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Security Agency (ISA) announced Monday that they had killed Fateh Sherif, who led Hamas in Lebanon. He was also a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) employee.

In a joint statement, the IDF and ISA said:

Overnight, during a joint IDF and ISA intelligence-based activity, the IAF struck and eliminated the terrorist Fateh Sherif, Head of the Lebanon Branch in the Hamas terrorist organization.

Sherif was responsible for coordinating Hamas’ terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives. He was also responsible for Hamas’ efforts in Lebanon to recruit operatives and acquire weapons.

He led the Hamas terrorist organization’s force build-up efforts in Lebanon and operated to advance Hamas’ interests in Lebanon, both politically and militarily.

The IDF and the ISA will to continue to operate against anyone who poses a threat to the civilians of the State of Israel.

UNRWA acknowledged that Fateh Sherif had been the principal of one of its schools, the Times of Israel reported:

Sherif was killed today in an airstrike on the al-Bass refugee camp in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, along with his wife and children. Reports indicate he had been the principal of the UNRWA-run Deir Yassin Secondary School in al-Bass.

“Fateh Al Sharif was an UNRWA employee who was put on administrative leave without pay in March, and was undergoing an investigation following allegations that UNRWA received about his political activities,” UNRWA says in response to a Times of Israel query.

The article concludes:

In a statement, the IDF and ISA said they had killed Nidal Abdel-Aal, head of the PFLP’s Lebanon branch, as well as Imad Odeh, the head of the PFLP’s military office in Lebanon. They added that Abdel-Aal had directed terror attacks on Israelis in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), including a bus bombing and a shooting attack, both in 2023.

Israel is make the entire world a safer place while minimizing the number of innocent civilians killed. We should all be celebrating.

Isn’t This Racist?

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On Wednesday, The Jewish News Syndicate reported that the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring Israeli presence to be illegal in any area over the 1949 armistice line. That’s interesting. Israel is one of the few countries in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have the same rights and are allowed to participate in the government of the nation. Why is the United Nations picking on the a non-racist country in the area rather than the countries where Jews are not allowed? Why–because there are now enough Muslim countries in the United Nations to begin to take over the organization and to align with the non-Muslim tyrants to attempt to make Sharia Law and Muslim dominance a feature of the United Nations.

The article reports:

More than 40 countries sponsored the resolution, which was the first that Palestinians filed after being granted unprecedented privileges, for a non-U.N. member, earlier this year.

The resolution calls on the Israel Defense Forces to withdraw completely from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip within 12 months, which means evacuating all Jewish communities beyond the armistice line, including Jerusalem’s Old City.

It also bans arms sales to the IDF of any equipment that would be expected reasonably to be used in the territory over the 1949 lines and calls for a boycott of all products produced by Jews in those areas.

The resolution text lacks any mention of Israeli security concerns, historic ties to the lands or Hamas’s terror attacks in Israel on Oct. 7.

Just for the record, this is the land given to Israel by the Balfour Declaration”

These are the borders for the Jewish state set up by the League of Nations:

The Arabs do not have a legitimate claim to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, or the Gaza Strip. Historically, all of these lands are Jewish and play a major role in both Jewish and Christian history.

The article at the Jewish News Syndicate concludes:

Arsen Ostrovsky and Nadav Steinman, CEO and board chair, respectively, of the International Legal Forum, stated that “today, simply put, the United Nations has become the diplomatic arm of Hamas” and that the resolution “is just the latest in a litany of obscenely one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. since Oct. 7.” 

“All it does is reward the murderers, rapists and abductors of Hamas while pouring further fuel on worldwide antisemitism and eroding whatever remaining credibility of the already problematic and politicized International Court of Justice, upon which this resolution is meant to be based,” they added. “Ultimately, peace will only prevail when Hamas is defeated and the hostages are released, not through tiresome antics and pyrrhic Palestinian ‘victories’ at the U.N.”

Giving land to terrorists has never worked in the past. There is no reason to believe that it will work in the future.

Caught!

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On September 18th, Hot Air posted an article about the Hezbollah pagers that exploded yesterday. There were some very interesting people who had those pagers.

The article quotes The New York Times:

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, lost one eye and severely injured his other eye when a pager he was carrying exploded in a simultaneous wave of blasts targeting wireless electronic devices, according to two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps briefed on the attack.

The Guards members, who had knowledge of the attacks and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Mr. Amini’s injuries were more serious than Iran initially reported and that he would be medevacked to Tehran for treatment.

Hossein Soleimani, the editor in chief of Mashregh, the main Revolutionary Guards news website, confirmed the extent of Mr. Amini’s injuries in a post on X. “Unfortunately the injuries sustained by Iran’s ambassador were extremely severe and in his eyes,” Mr. Soleimani wrote.

Why was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon carrying a Hezbollah pager?

John Hinderaker at Power Line reported on the news that on Thursday handheld radios were exploding.

The article at Power Line notes:

Apparently fires have broken out in seemingly random buildings, and loudspeakers are telling people to take the batteries out of their phones. I haven’t seen any reports, however, of exploding cell phones.

The usual suspects are up in arms over yesterday’s pager attack:

The United Nations Security Council will convene an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss Israel’s wave of attacks in Lebanon, according to Slovenia, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month.

How many emergency meetings have they held over Hezbollah’s rocket bombardment of Israel, which has gone on for months?

The United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, has criticized the pager attack as a violation of international law and called for those behind it to be held to account.

So, does sending thousands of rockets into Israel violate international law? What does the U.N. propose to do about it?

Nothing, of course. Hence the need for Israel to defend itself.

That is the current state of the United Nations.

 

What Global Warming Is Really About

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On Friday, Issues & Insights posted an article about global warming. The article includes a number of statements by people who claim to be alarmed at global warming that might cause you to question their motives.

The article reports those statements:

  • Christiana Figueres, one-time executive secretary of United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the climate activists’ agenda is not to protect the environment but to break capitalism. The task ahead, she said in 2015, is “to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”
  • The late Rajenda Pachauri was the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman until 2015. He openly conceded “the protection of planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems” was “more than a mission” to him. It was his “religion” and “dharma.”
  • Activist and influential author Naomi Klein once wondered if the fearmongering was “the best chance we’re ever going to get to build a better world?” The world must “change, or be changed,” she says, because an “economic system” — our free and open markets — has caused environmental “wreckage.”
  • Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said almost five years ago that Miami will not exist “in a few years” due to the effects of global warming. She of course had a plan, not to deal with the changes, but to pass Democratic Party policies. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” former Ocasio-Cortez chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti said, according to the Washington Post Magazine. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti asked an aide to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee while the pair met at a Washington, D.C. coffee shop in May. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

The free market will always provide a cleaner environment than government regulation. It should also be noted that many of those complaining about the carbon footprint of our cars are flying around the world in private jets. If they truly believed climate change was an existential crisis, would they be doing that?

 

 

The Link Between Hamas And The United Nations

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On Thursday, PJ Media reported the following:

The United Nations frenziedly condemned a new Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike as one of Israel’s “dramatic violations of international humanitarian law.” The problem is that the UN workers killed were also Hamas terrorists.

The UN and many other organizations and governments love to emphasize that the IDF strikes schools and “aid workers.” What they are not telling you is that Hamas jihadis have long used schools and other “civilian” buildings in Gaza as terrorist bases and that the “aid workers” almost always turn out to be active terrorists. That appears to be the case once again with the IDF strike this week, where at least three UNRWA “workers” killed were Hamas jihadis.

UNRWA is absolutely infested with Hamas operatives, according to international human rights lawyer Hillel Neuer. As JihadWatch has noted, terrorists specifically place military targets in humanitarian zones so that, if IDF strikes, they can immediately condemn Israel. So whenever the UN starts wailing that the IDF causelessly killed their humanitarian workers while they were operating a school or shelter, always fact-check that claim. It will almost certainly turn out to be false.

According to the state of Israel, which is a more reliable source on these topics than is the Hamas-loving UN, so far the confirmed casualties in the precision strike are terrorists — including at least three UNRWA “workers.”

As long as Hamas is using human shields, there will be ‘civilian’ casualties. However, a lot of these ‘civilians’ support Hamas. Private homes have tunnel entrances; Hamas members work for so-called humanitarian organizations to bring ‘aid’ into Gaza. It doesn’t seem to matter to those providing the aid that the money and supplies are used to strengthen Hamas and build more tunnels.

The United Nations began with a dream of world peace. Instead of working toward that dream, they have become a hotbed of corruption and and a supporter of terrorists and terrorism. It’s time to kick the United Nations out of New York City and turn their building into luxury apartments!

The American Military Is Not An Experiment

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On Friday, Breitbart reported the following:

Democrat vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz argued for using algae to power the United States Navy as part of his efforts to fight climate change, claiming that sustainable energy solutions are crucial for military resilience.

During a debate with his then-opponent, Republican Jim Hagedorn, in Winona, Minnesota, in 2016, Walz spoke of the growing recognition that climate change is a pressing concern that cannot be ignored.

While noting that the nation’s armed forces can adopt new eco-friendly resources, Walz insisted that “the Pentagon is not a bunch of green tree-huggers.”

According to Walz, the Pentagon sees climate change as a significant risk that impacts not only the environment but national security.

“The Pentagon understands it’s a risk to the climate, it’s a risk to the environment, and it’s a national security issue,” he declared. “They’re trying to create the Great Green Fleet, where we power our Navy using algae.”

Walz has consistently supported radical climate change initiatives, pushing policies like a carbon-free electric grid by 2040. 

The most reliable Internet site for real information about climate change is wattsupwiththat.com. Anyone advocating for drastic actions to prevent climate change should be forced to follow that site for a month (including the timeline of failed predictions). Climate is cyclical. The only thing to be gained by climate panic is more government control and more redistribution of wealth.

In 2016 I posted an article quoting Investor’s Business Daily. This is the quote:

If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures — they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.

Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

Tim Walz wants more government and more of your money.

I’m Shocked! Shocked!

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On Tuesday, The Jewish News Syndicate reported the following:

Close to three-fourths of the humanitarian aid transported from a new $320 million floating pier built by the U.S. military off the Gaza coast was stolen on Saturday en route to a U.N. warehouse, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

…The United Nations said that 10 truckloads of food aid from the pier arrived at the warehouse on Friday, its first day of operation. It was transported by U.N. contractors.

 “We need to make sure that the necessary security and logistical arrangements are in place before we proceed,” said the U.N. official.

According to Israeli estimates, Hamas has been stealing up to 60% of the aid entering the Gaza Strip, and a Channel 12 report last week revealed that the terrorist organization has made at least $500 million in profit off humanitarian aid since the start of the war on Oct. 7.

Considering the fact that the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees is largely staffed by Hamas, I don’t find these thefts at all surprising. At some point the Biden administration needs to realize that they are not working with honest partners when they call for a cease-fire. However, considering that the Biden administration has shown more support for Iran than Israel, this actually might be going according to plan.

The article notes:

USAID and the U.S. Department of Defense are leading the effort, alongside Cyprus, the United Nations and international donors, including the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Romania and the European Union, CENTCOM said. The aid is transported via sea from Cyprus where it is screened, and the United Nations receives the aid in Gaza and coordinates its distribution

Israel is also helping to facilitate the entry of aid via the pier.

Reuters also reported that “food and medicine for Palestinians in Gaza are piling up in Egypt because the Rafah crossing remains closed.”

Israel took operational control of the crossing weeks ago, but Cairo so far has refused to cooperate with Israeli authorities to facilitate the entry of aid through Rafah. The Israeli government wants to allow aid into Gaza through the crossing but is unable to do so without Egyptian cooperation.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz last week placed the responsibility for averting a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip squarely on the shoulders of Egypt.

Katz said he had spoken with his British and German counterparts “about the need to persuade Egypt to reopen the Rafah Crossing to allow the continued delivery of international humanitarian aid to Gaza.”

The Middle East is a mess of plots and sub-plots. It is a difficult place for diplomacy and positive action. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s actions have not furthered the cause of peace.

If The Biden Administration Wrote The Obituary For Hannibal Lecter, What Would It Look Like?

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The American State Department has released a statement on the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi — known as the “butcher of Tehran.” The statement released by Biden’s State Department makes me wonder how they would have handled Adolph Hitler’s death.

This is the statement the Biden administration released:

The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran. As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

We have done everything we could NOT to support their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms during the Biden and Obama administrations.

On Monday, Townhall reported:

The United Nations, unsurprisingly, was generally gutted to learn that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi — known as the “butcher of Tehran” — died in a helicopter crash over the weekend. In a Monday meeting of the U.N. Security Council, a “moment of silence” was held to mourn the dead murderer rather than his thousands of innocent victims.

Another reason to leave the United Nations.

The article also shared a quote from the Defense of Democracies website:

Raisi — the deputy prosecutor general of Tehran from 1985 to 1988 — facilitated the regime’s 1988 slaughter of thousands of jailed political dissidents by serving on a four-member panel known as a Death Commission, which decided who would live and who would die. The commission would conduct interviews of prisoners — often just a few minutes long — aimed at determining their loyalty to the Islamic Republic. Questions could include: “What is your political affiliation?” “Do you pray?” “Are you willing to clear minefields for the Islamic Republic?” The wrong answer meant death.

The executions were usually by hanging or by firing squad, and typically took place the same day as the interrogations. The commissions allowed neither lawyers nor appeals. Burials occurred in unmarked mass graves. The regime waited months before notifying the relatives of the victims, refused to tell them the locations of the bodies, and told them not to mourn in public. The victims included women and children as young as 13. Raisi has defended the killings, saying in 2018 that they were “one of the proud achievements of the system.”

Terrorists around the world are in mourning. It’s sad that America chose to join them.

Why There Are Civilian Casualties In Gaza

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On Tuesday, The Jewish News Syndicate reported that fifteen terrorists were killed on Tuesday in an Israeli air strike on a Hamas command center located in a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school in Nuseirat in central Gaza. Note that the command center was located in an UNRWA school. Hamas deliberately puts civilians at risk so that they can claim genocide by Israel.

The article reports:

Among those killed in the strike were members of Hamas’s Nukhba force who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The incident was yet another example of Hamas’s cynical use of Gaza’s civilians as human shields, according to the IDF.

“The Hamas terrorist organization systematically exploits international institutions and uses the civilian population as human shields in order to perpetrate terrorist attacks against the State of Israel,” said the military.

Throughout the war against Hamas, which is now in its seventh month, Israeli soldiers have found missiles and military gear hidden among U.N. relief supplies in Gaza.

Hamas’s use of UNRWA as cover has been known for a while.

The article notes:

In February, the IDF announced the discovery of a massive Hamas tunnel complex underneath UNRWA’s central headquarters in Gaza.

That same month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a visiting delegation of U.N. ambassadors that UNRWA had been “totally infiltrated” by the terrorist group.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told journalists in February that the Jewish state had intelligence showing that 30 UNRWA employees took part in the Oct. 7 terror attack.

The article concludes:

Netanyahu called for the U.N. agency to be replaced.

“I think it’s time that the international community and the United Nations itself understand that UNRWA’s mission has to end,” he said.

“It has been in the service of Hamas [in] its schools and in many other things. I say this with great regret because we hoped that there would be an objective and constructive body to offer aid. We need such a body today in Gaza. But UNRWA is not that body. It has to be replaced by some organization or organizations that will do that job,” he added.

I think it is time for the United Nations to be disbanded.

Betraying An Ally

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Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about the impact of the Biden administration’s decision not to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Thank God the United Nations never called for a ceasefire during World War II. Why hasn’t the United Nations called for a ceasefire in Ukraine?

The article reports:

Hamas is reportedly refusing to accept Israel’s terms for a hostage deal and digging in on its demands after the Biden administration refused to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution on Monday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The resolution did not require that Israeli hostages be released as a condition of a ceasefire — a requirement that the U.S. had made in previous proposals. Instead, the resolution simply mentioned the release of the remaining hostages.

Hamas saw that as a victory — as did nations like South Africa, which is currently pursuing a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, claiming that Israel is committing “genocide” in its war against Hamas.

Hamas praised the Security Council, and said that it was prepared to discuss the exchange of Israeli hostages (which it described as “prisoners”) for Palestinian terror convicts — but only after a ceasefire.

The Times of Israel reported: “Hamas says it has informed mediators that the terror group will stick to its original position on reaching a comprehensive ceasefire, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, a return of displaced Palestinians and a “real” exchange of prisoners.”

The article concludes:

A draft U.S. resolution, which was vetoed by Russia and China last Friday, made a ceasefire dependent on the release of the Israeli hostages — indeed, that was one of the reasons cited by opponents of the U.S. draft for voting against it.

The White House claimed Monday that its position had not changed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disagreed, canceling a meeting between his senior aides and President Joe Biden’s aides to discuss their differences.

Kirby said that the Biden administration was “perplexed” by Netanyahu’s decision, and claimed Netanyahu was overreacting to the resolution by “choosing to create a perception of daylight here when they don’t need to do that.”

The Biden administration’s decision to abstain from the resolution recalls a similar decision by the Obama White House in its last weeks in 2016, when the U.S. abstained from U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, which declared the Israeli presence across the 1949 armistice lines — including in the Old City of Jerusalem — illegal. The backlash against that decision led President Donald Trump to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Are we really sure that the hostages are still alive?

 

 

Now That They Know The Truth, Will It Matter?

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One of the lessons supposedly learned from the Holocaust was that it is easier to ignore the unthinkable than to deal with it. Unfortunately, the attack on Israel and the world’s response to that attack illustrate the fact that we have not learned that lesson.

On March 5th, CBN reported the following:

For the first time in nearly five months, a United Nations mission is recognizing Israel’s claims of Hamas brutality toward Israeli women and men on October 7th. Meanwhile, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah unleashed more rockets on northern Israel from southern Lebanon.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the U.N. report issued by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, acknowledging that Hamas and other terrorist organizations committed sexual crimes in the attack last October.

Posting on X, the mission stated, “The UN also recognizes that the crimes were committed simultaneously in different locations and point to a pattern of rape, torture and sexual abuse. The report also acknowledges the existence of ongoing sexual crimes against the Israeli women and men being held hostage by Hamas and calls for the immediate release of the hostages.”

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called on the Secretary-General and Security Council to join the mission in condemning Hamas.

He had earlier challenged the international body, saying, “In the future, you won’t be able to claim that you didn’t know, just as the world claimed after the Holocaust that you were not exposed to the suffering and horrors. Those who remain indifferent are complicit in the crimes themselves.”

Erdan held up a tablet and played testimonies of women brutalized by Hamas, charging the U.N. with apathy and indifference.

A spokesperson for one freed hostage on the tablet was telling of her ordeal, saying, “And she went into the shower and while she was there one of the terrorists went inside, took his clothes off, with a gun towards her head told her to do everything he wanted.”

The IDF also declassified a call it intercepted from a Hamas terrorist, who is also a UNWRA-employee, and U.N. elementary school teacher.

The article also notes:

In the U.S., the State Department defended its meeting with war cabinet minister Benny Gantz who was invited to Washington without the authorization of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Spokesman Matthew Miller stated, “He (Gantz) has a critical voice in the delivery of humanitarian assistance. He’s an important figure in the sitting government of Israel. And so that’s why we engage with him.”

Miller added, “Our goal is clear to establish a comprehensive aid strategy that includes air, land, and sea routes to maximize the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and ensure that aid is distributed to everyone in Gaza who needs it.”

This is an effort to undermine Israel’s war effort. The world has seen the horrors of Hamas and Hezbollah and their war on innocent civilians, yet it choses to criticize Israel for wanting to live in peace and safety.

Do We Really Want To Give Away American Sovereignty?

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On February 19th, American Greatness posted an article about the pandemic treaty the World Health Organization (WHO) is negotiating.

The article reports:

Despite the immense influence wielded by the United Nations, attention to its rumblings is typically rare outside the international crisis du jour. Breaking from this trend, the ongoing negotiation of a pandemic treaty at the World Health Organization has captured the global spotlight long before reaching its anticipated conclusion. Yet, despite this heightened attention, the public debate on how to head off future pandemic threats has largely overlooked the potential impact of the WHO Pandemic Agreement on fundamental freedoms, notably freedom of expression.

Underway since March 2023, the pandemic accord negotiations seek to establish legally binding rules to enhance international cooperation and to strengthen the role of the WHO in preventing, preparing for, and responding to future pandemics.

To purportedly achieve these objectives, the draft text currently under consideration would commit parties to “tackle” such things as misleading information, misinformation, or disinformation, without offering a definition for these terms or specifying how this would be done. It would also require the “management” of so-called “infodemics,” defined as “too much information, false or misleading information, in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak” causing “confusion” as well as “mistrust” in health authorities. These provisions cast a looming shadow of censorship that should alarm anyone who values open discourse and transparent governance.

America is blessed in that our Founding Fathers gave the power to sort out misinformation and truth to the citizens of our country. That sorting was not to be left to the government. We saw during the Covid pandemic that a disease could be used as a weapon to trample the rights supposedly guaranteed by our Constitution. Understand that these rights were not given by our Constitution–they were supposed to be protected by our Constitution. Also understand that the American Constitution was put in place to limit the power of the government–not the rights of the people. I am not willing to surrender those rights again.

The Border The News Is Ignoring

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Illegal immigration has been a problem for a long time. The problem was exacerbated when President Biden took office and undid the Executive Orders President Trump had put in place to stem the tide of illegals entering America through our porous southern border. The problem was further exacerbated when the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) realized they could get money from the United Nations (mainly funded by U.S. taxpayers) and the U.S. Government for providing resources for illegal immigrants. The invitations went out throughout South America. Now the invitations are going out throughout the world. The impact on America is obvious–our cities and states are struggling with housing and food for the illegal immigrants and the taxpayers are providing food, housing, and medical care while we can barely take care of our own. But now we also have a problem on our northern border.

On Sunday, The New York Post reported:

Unsettling Post footage and interviews with US residents along the Canadian border offer a rare glimpse into the thriving migrant smuggling operation that has taken hold up north in addition to the debacle to the south.

Residents of bucolic Swanton, Vt. — a town of about 6,500 people located just across Lake Champlain from New York and about a 10-minute drive from the Canadian border — have been getting a troubling firsthand look at the US’s northern illegal migrant crisis for months.

The town’s plentiful woods make the leafy hamlet an ideal spot for hunters — and also provide ample camouflage for smugglers, who have become so rampant that some locals are packing pistols to protect themselves and turning into amateur sleuths to help thwart them.

“Now I’ve got the Border Patrol guys on speed dial,” local Chris Feeley, 52, recently grimly acknowledged.

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, the number of migrants illegally entering the US at the northern border last year topped 12,200 — a 240% spike from 2022.

The article notes:

Feeley told The Post he has been hunting in the area since he was a teenager, with his favorite vantage point a tree stand about 18 feet above the ground on the property of a local farm.

The elevated perch not only provides a bird’s-eye view of any approaching white-tailed deer but also the area around the Canadian border, which sits just 250 yards from his lookout.

He said that in the past, it was not unusual for him to go an entire day of hunting without encountering another person. But that all changed around three years ago.

Feeley recalled being in his tree stand one morning when a startled group of deer unexpectedly ran by — followed by two men “of Mexican descent” with backpacks and walking sticks, one of whom was looking intently at the screen of his smartphone.

At least the Border Patrol is free to protect our northern border.

 

The Next Big Climate Scare

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In America (and in some other places) we just aren’t paying enough attention to our impending doom due to global warming, global cooling, or whatever climate change is currently fashionable. Therefore, it is time to raise the stakes to get our attention. Brace yourself, we are about to start hearing about deaths due to climate change. How you actually calculate that is a mystery, but that hasn’t stopped the propagandists yet.

On Thursday, wattsupwiththat reported:

The next big climate scare is on the way. Advocates of measures to control the climate now propose that we begin counting deaths from climate change. They appear to believe that if people see a daily announcement of climate deaths, they will be more inclined to accept climate change policies. But it’s not even clear that the current gentle rise in global temperatures is causing more people to die.

In December, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at COP28, the 28th United Nations Climate Conference, and mentioned climate-related deaths.

“We are seeing and beginning to pay attention and to count and record the deaths that are related to climate,” she said. “And by far the biggest killer is extreme heat.”

According to Ms. Clinton, Europe recorded 61,000 deaths from extreme heat in 2023, and she estimated that about 500,000 people died from heat across the world last year.

Global temperatures have been gently rising for the last 300 years. Temperature metrics from NASA, NOAA, and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom estimate that Earth’s surface temperatures have risen a little more than one degree Celsius, or about two degrees Fahrenheit, over the last 140 years. But are these warmer temperatures harmful to people?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most cases of influenza occur during December to March, the cold months in the United States. Influenza season in the southern hemisphere takes place during the cold months there, April through September. The peak months for COVID-19 infections tended to be the cold periods of the year. More people usually get sick during cold months than in warm months.

More people also die during winter months than summer months, according to many peer-reviewed studies. For example, Dr. Matthew Falagas of the Alfa Institute of Medical Sciences and five other researchers studied seasonal mortality in 11 nations. The research showed that the average number of deaths peaked in the coldest months of the year in all of them.

It’s easier to stay healthy when the weather is warm–the sun provides Vitamin D, and as long as you don’t overdue it, fresh air and sunshine are healthy.

Please follow the link to the article. It includes some very interesting charts, including the one below:

 

Numbers don’t lie.

Misled Again

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about the continued funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Evidently things are not what they seem.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is continuing to build a disappointing track record of weak responses to foreign affairs crises and deceptive promotion of its own efforts at home. The latest example comes on the heels of the explosive revelations that at least a dozen members of the United Nations’ Palestinian relief agency, the UNRWA, took part in the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7. In response, the White House claimed that they had reinstituted a freeze on funding for the UNRWA that had already been in place under Trump but was lifted by Joe Biden. That seemed like a step in the right direction at the time, but now we’ve learned that a very important detail was left out of the announcement. As Guy Benson reports at Townhall, the “freeze” in funding only applies to new, additional funding requests. Previously approved funds will continue to flow to them as usual.

  • That really does not solve the problem. We have all seen the pictures of Hamas hijacking the aid trucks that come into Gaza and stealing the supplies. How much of what we send actually goes to people in need rather than terrorists?

The article concludes:

Guy Benson correctly points out that this sleight of hand from Biden’s team is part of a larger pattern. You will recall that when Biden grudgingly agreed to add the Houthis back to the list of designated terror groups, he did assign them a designation, but it was a toothless classification compared to the position they occupied on the Foreign Terror Organization (FTO) watchlist under Donald Trump. That’s basically what he’s doing with the UNRWA. He’s giving someone a slap on the wrist when what they really need is a punch in the nose.

Joe Biden’s incompetent policies both at home and abroad aren’t simply embarrassing on the world stage, though that’s clearly true also. They are dangerous. They pose a threat to our own troops as we recently saw yet again and they put our allies at risk. He seems unwilling to do anything of substance that could be seen as too contrary to the wishes of Iran. You really have to ask yourself why.

Does the Biden administration support America?