Don’t miss these two segments. Oreilly interviews Palin and Palin answers really hard questions with knowledge, passion and intelligence.

The Union of Reform Judaism- the URJ- recently completed a major gathering, a Biennial, in Toronto. Rabbi Eric H. Joffie gave a speech and resolutions were passed unanimously.

Michael Diamond is a member of the largest Reform Temple in Toronto and is a strong Zionist. He constantly writes in support of Israel and visits it often. He writes,

In the case of those who lead the reform movement, it is very clear that that viewpoint is focused on a two state solution and the elimination of whatever barriers may exist to prevent that result. Other areas of focus include equity among all citizens of Israel. The reasons for the former position are not hard to fathom- a one state solution would put in danger the Jewish majority, and perhaps eliminate it. I know that there are various views about the demographics of the region- specifically the number of Palestinians- but there is little doubt in my mind that if you add several million more Palestinians to the mix, on top of the over 1 million existing Israeli Arabs, you are not going to make the situation within a redefined Israel any easier to manage.

What is also clear is that there are only a couple of alternatives to the demographic time bomb associated with a one state solution. One of those is some form of a two state solution. Another is a solution where portions of the West Bank occupied by Arabs become part of Jordan, Gaza becomes Egypt’s problem, and Israel carries on. But since neither Jordan nor Egypt are going to accept the latter option, there is really only one option- the two state solution- which will reduce the constant pressure on Israel and in the region, pressure which is growing and threatens to envelope Israel in a number of existential ways.

But lets be careful with our throwing out the words “Two State Solution” - because there are various versions of such a solution and only some will allow Israel to be safe and secure.

And lets us also not forget the fact that a whole slew of Israel’s enemies are committed to her destruction- not to a peace solution. That much is also clear.

That’s clear enough. After commenting on the lastest moves by Obama and Abbas he writes

So against that backdrop, what does Israel need from the leaders of the largest Jewish community in the Diaspora? The answer is: unequivocal support for a two state solution that is rational, that takes into account the Islamist nature of the Palestinians, and/or the danger of the creeping Islamism that has infected most of the Arab world; that appreciates that Israel has made concessions in the past, and that Israel has offered peace many times, only to be rebuffed with violence; that includes an undivided Jerusalem as its capital; and that acknowledges that the ENTIRE Arab world, including the very Palestinians who are demanding a state of their own, does not yet accept the right of the Jewish people to have its own State in Israel.

So what should the URJ be hearing from its leader in such a situation? What resolutions should hit the floor of the assembly for discussion?

The answer is NOT to present a resolution which calls on Israel to follow its own findings. What kind of arrogance is this from a group of Americans and Canadians safely sitting in North America chastising those who struggle to survive in another country about its treatment of one of its minorities? Has anyone compared the treatment and condition of the First Nations of Canada or the US with that accorded to the Israeli Arabs, or compared the condition of the Israeli Arabs with ANY OTHER GROUP of Arabs in the world? [..]

And Israel and the Jewish people do not need to hear how the presence- already in place, nothing you can easily do about it- of 100,000 Jews in the West Bank is anti-Zionist.

He concludes with what he would have recommended.

1. There will be no resolutions which do not offer strategic support for Israel, having regard to the campaign to delegitimize Israel internationally. The Israeli Arabs will have to wait. So will our own Reform movement in Israel, which is treated with disdain by the Orthodox Rabbis who rule the roost in Israel. So will the secular Israelis who have to marry outside Israel because their marriages do not satisfy the wishes of those same Orthodox Rabbis. I have no patience for those people, for their ideology gets in the way of their morality. But that is an internal problem for Israelis, and they will ultimately solve it because they will have to in order to survive. And they do not need another group of Jews to remind them of the problems they have yet to overcome. Nor do they appreciate the largest movement in the Diaspora advertising to our enemies why Israel ought to be considered illegitimate. That simply makes no strategic sense. So we are going to be strategic here- we are going to focus on being stronger in our synagogues, on dealing with our own issues relative to intermarriage, and loss of interest in Judaism. And we are going to say and do that which helps Israel, and does not hurt her. And we are going to assume that our views relative to the presence of Jews in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, are understood already in Israel.

2. What there will be is a series of speeches, and resolutions, that destroy the bogus claims of our enemies as to the legitimacy of Israel, that bring into focus the reality of the Islamist expansion in this world which has Israel in its sights as an initial target, and that collectively make it clear that Israel has the right to exist as a safe and secure Jewish State. WE will make it clear that we, the Reform Jews of North America, support that right without question, regardless of whether Israeli Arabs or Reform Jews or secular Jews or Christians are treated as well as “observant” Jews in Israel, and regardless of whether there are 100,000, 200,000, or 10,000 Jews living in what may become a Palestinian State when the time is right. We will make it clear that, unless and until the Palestinians, and those who support them, acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, that they cannot expect to have their own state. And we will make it clear and remind people that Israel has consistently offered the Palestinians a state, with only one material condition- that they accept Israel as a Jewish state, and live in peace. We will draw our line in the sand, we will be unambiguous, and we will be strategic. And we will not give in to our tendency, as liberal democrats, to tell others, particularly our own people, how to be better people and a better People. And finally, we will repeat, over and over again, that Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, and that Jerusalem is the capital of that homeland.

But the Reform movement missed an opportunity here to stand up for Israel and for the Jewish people at a time when doing so would have been noticed and important and strategic at such a difficult time (alas, again) in our history.

Diamond is right to chastise the Reform Movement and is right in recommending UJR the right course.

I will not quibble over the fact that he placed “only one material condition- that they accept Israel as a Jewish state, and live in peace” because elsewhere in his remarks he stressed “that Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, and that Jerusalem is the capital of that homeland.

During a recent speaking tour in Canada, MK Nahman Shai (Kadima) shocked some of his hosts when he said that his primary goal in politics today is to bring down the Netanyahu government. Although indelicate, Shai’s comment was not surprising. Kadima is in the opposition. And like all opposition parties in all parliamentary democracies, the primary goal of its members is to bring down the government so that they can take power.

Given that this is the case, it is unsurprising that until this week, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni tried to blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for US President Barack Obama’s hostility towards Israel. Far more newsworthy than her criticism of Netanyahu was her public rebuke of Obama this week for his attempt to strong-arm Israel into barring Jewish construction in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood.

On Wednesday Livni said, “Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus… and it is important to understand this for all discussions of borders in any future agreement.”

Indeed. There is an Israeli consensus. The Israeli consensus regarding Jerusalem is based among other things on the understanding that no nation can give up its capital city and survive.

Livni wants to be prime minister one day. For that to happen, Israel must survive until she wins an election. And Israel will not long survive if it surrenders its right to its capital.

One might have thought that American Jews could be counted on to stand by Israel on this issue. But then, one would be wrong.

FOR THE past six years, Republican Senator Sam Brownback has repeatedly submitted a bill to the US Senate that, if passed into law, would revoke the presidential waiver that has allowed successive presidents to refuse to implement the 1995 law requiring the State Department to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. This year Brownback co-sponsored his bill with Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman. As luck would have it, the Brownback-Lieberman bill was submitted two weeks before Obama launched his latest campaign against Jewish building in Jerusalem.

In the 1980s and 1990s, American Jews lobbied hard to get the embassy moved to Jerusalem. But now some American Jewish leaders recoil at the very notion. In response to the Brownback-Lieberman Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 2009, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle published an editorial last Friday titled, “Bad move, Senator Brownback.”

The newspaper’s editors condemned their retiring senator and called his bill, “a cheap, grandstanding move by a conservative Republican on his way out the door, playing to Jews and Christian Zionists while trying to throw a monkey wrench into President Obama’s diplomatic spokes.”

According to Sen. Brownback’s office, the paper never had any criticism of the same bill when he submitted it during president George W. Bush’s tenure in office. But now, as Israel’s government and opposition stand shoulder to shoulder protecting Israeli control over Jerusalem from assaults by Obama, Kansas City’s Jewish newspaper’s editorial board willingly bucked what it acknowledged are the wishes of “Jews and Christian Zionists,” in order to stand by their man in the Oval Office.

Some of Israel’s most high-profile supporters in the US are conservative talk radio and television hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. But rather than thank them for their support, the Anti-Defamation League, which is supposed to be dedicated first and foremost to defending Jews from anti-Semitism, published a special report this week where it insinuated that they cultivate a climate of hatred and paranoia which could endanger Jews among others.

The ADL report, “Rage Grows in America: Anti-Government Conspiracies,” dubbed Beck the “fearmonger-in-chief,” for his opposition to Obama’s domestic and foreign policies. It similarly castigated the so-called “tea party” movement which has attracted millions of Americans opposed to high taxes, and the townhall meetings this past summer where millions of Americans peacefully argued against Obama’s healthcare policies.

The ADL’s decision to issue a special report attacking Obama’s political opponents and insinuating that Americans who oppose him cultivate an environment in which paranoid and dangerous fringe groups feel comfortable operating is strange given that the ADL never put out a similar report against parallel anti-Bush movements. As Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin noted this week, the ADL was more likely to see overt and vicious anti-Semitic statements and placards being waved around at anti-Iraq war rallies than at anti-Obama healthcare and tax policy demonstrations.

Ironically, the ADL has a specific institutional interest in combating leftist paranoia. A recent movie attacking the ADL called Defamation, by leftist, anti-Israel Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, is currently hitting the film festival circuit in the US and Europe. A major hit among anti-Israel activists and regular anti-Semites on the Left and Right, Defamation accuses the ADL of exaggerating the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to justify what Shamir views as its nefarious aims. Apparently, tribal loyalty to the Left trumps the institutional interests of the ADL.

It certainly trumps the interests of New York University’s Hillel director Rabbi Yehuda Sarna. As James Taranto reported on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, this week Sarna called for NYU’s Jewish community to join NYU Muslims at a rally that both commemorated the massacre at Ft. Hood and denounced NYU professor Tunku Varadarajan for writing a column in Forbes magazine. In his article, Varadarajan committed the crime of stating the obvious fact that Ft. Hood terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was motivated by his Islamic beliefs when he shouted Allahu Akbar and shot some 40 people, killing 13.

Given that people and groups like al-Qaida and Hamas that share Hasan’s views assert that all Jews should be killed, it would seem that the good rabbi would not feel the need to attack professors who point out that Hasan’s views are dangerous. But then, it is no longer strange to see Hillels on American university campuses behaving in a manner that is not in line with what might be considered the interests of either the American Jewish community or the Jewish people as a whole.

Take UC Berkeley’s Hillel center, for example. Since Ken Kramarz, Hillel’s regional director for Northern California, started his job in June 2007, Berkeley’s Hillel has adopted a hostile view towards Judaism and Israel. As pro-Israel community activist Natan Nestel notes, in the past year alone, Hillel held a dance party on Yom Hashoah, and it held a Cinco de Mayo barbecue on Remembrance Day for Fallen IDF Soldiers. It has also failed to hold community Seders for the past two years. Instead, last year, its members hung signs in the Hillel building declaring, “Matza sucks.”

Beyond its derogatory treatment of Jewish and Israeli holidays, Berkeley’s Hillel has allowed an extremist group called Students for Justice for Palestine to participate in its organizational meetings.

SJP calls for Israel’s destruction through unlimited Arab immigration. It also advocates for UC Berkeley to divest from Israel. Edgar Bronfman, Hillel’s International Chairman, has characterized SJP umbrella organization as “anti-Israel… anti-Semitic [and] alarming…”

No doubt owing in part to Berkeley Hillel’s decision to permit SJP members to spread their propaganda at its organizational meetings, Hillel’s student leaders and members participated in SJP’s Israel Apartheid Week this past March.

The student meeting that SJP participated in at Berkeley’s Hillel was sponsored by a group called “Kesher Enoshi.”

This group describes itself as “a progressive Jewish community that engages directly with Israeli civil society. We do this by educating ourselves and others about the day-to-day struggles of people in Israel by making direct connections with human rights/social change organizations in Israel, linking their struggles with those on campus and in the wider community, and building a community of active participants in social change in Israel.”

This mission statement, which says nothing about Zionism, sounds an awful lot like the goal of the New Israel Fund. This month, three Arab “civil society” groups supported to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars by the NIF published a poster depicting an IDF soldier touching the breast of an Arab woman with the caption, “Her husband needs a permit to touch her, the occupation penetrates her life every day.”

The poster was issued to publicize a conference in Haifa called “My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall,” whose purpose was to demonize Israel using post-modern jargon.

Unlike Hillel, NIF is widely recognized as a far-left fringe group. But as Arab Israeli NGOs use the dollars of American Jewish NIF donors to advance their “civil society” programs aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist, the Reform Movement - which is not a fringe group - decided unanimously two weeks ago to criticize and pressure Israel for what its leadership views as Israel’s unfair treatment of its Arab citizens.

As this column goes to press, if its board members don’t cancel their meeting, the San Francisco Jewish Federation will be grudgingly voting on a resolution that would prohibit it from sponsoring events that denigrate or demonize Israel or supporting organizations that partner with organizations that call for divestment, sanctions or boycotts against Israel.

The resolution follows the Jewish Federation of San Francisco’s decision to co-sponsor the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival last summer. That festival featured Shamir’s Defamation, and the egregiously anti-Israel film Rachel, about the late pro-terror activist Rachel Corrie. The film festival was also sponsored by the anti-Zionist Jewish Voices for Peace group, the American Friends Service Committee, which hosted a dinner for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York last year, the Rachel Corrie Foundation and other radical anti-Israel groups.

If the vote takes place, it will be a great victory for a small group of local Jewish activists. These individual Jews have banded together because they are deeply disturbed by the federation’s willingness to use community funds to advance events whose basic message is that Israel should be destroyed.

KADIMA’S INTERESTS as a political party place it at loggerheads with the government on almost every issue. But its leaders this week were rational enough to recognize that they must support Israel’s sovereign rights in Jerusalem despite the fact that doing so placed it on the government’s side. Their display of sanity is a clear indication that Israeli society today is healthy and capable of meeting the challenges it faces.

It is clear that most American Jews believe that it is in their interests to support the Democratic Party and the Left. But like the anti-establishment Jewish activists in San Francisco, American Jews ought to realize that on issues like Israel’s survival and their own survival as Jews they ought to stand by their interests even when they seem to clash with their leftist and Democratic loyalties. And they ought to stand by their friends on these issues, even when their friends are conservative Republicans.

It can only be hoped that the San Francisco pro-Israel upstarts’ campaign against the federation was successful yesterday. Then, too, if the American Jewish community is to long survive, these San Francisco Jewish activists’ demand that their community support Israel’s right to exist must be joined by their fellow American Jews throughout the country.

AtlasShrugs posted Depraved Dhimmitude at Princeton: The Silence of the Lambs

Its all about the disgraceful cancellation by Princeton of Nonie Darwish’s speaking engagement.

Even more disgraceful was the letter of apology sent by Lerner, the head of Tigers for Israel.

Lerner sent an e-mail to the members of the Muslim Students Association apologizing for the initial decision to invite Darwish to campus and explaining that the event had been canceled.

“I sincerely apologize for offending any person or group on campus, especially the Muslim community, Tigers for Israel deeply regrets the initial sponsorship, and we do not in any way endorse [Darwish’s] views.”

I have know Nonie Darwish for six years now and fully endorse her views.

Diana West calls them Paper Tigers in a devasttaing article..

West is the author of the much acclaimed book The Death of the Grown Up

Rabbi Hausman writes What lies behind Princeton Jewish student self-censorship?

I was stunned by the cancellation of Nonie Darwish’s talk at Princeton as both a Jew and a Rabbi. I am appalled by the outcome, disappointed at the lack of courage shown by Princeton’s Tigers for Israel and the American Whig-Cliosophic Club. However, I think that the problem borders on a politically correct stupor or psychosis. In an attempt not to offend Muslims or anything Islamic, the campus is silent on Islam. There is neither critical academic exploration into the totality of Islamic doctrine nor on how such doctrine has been put into practice in the 14 centuries since Muhammad and the ‘Ummah burst upon the historic scene from its Arabian Peninsula birthplace. Are the rigors of higher criticism of the Bible (an exercise Rabbis had undertaken 1800 years before Wellhausen’s founding of Higher Biblical Criticism, much of it couched in anti-Semitic jargon) not to be applied to Islam’s foundational sources (Qur’an, Hadith, Sira) for fear of offending? If so, when did the First Amendment’s guarantee of Freedom of Speech include under its umbrella the right not to be offended? This was the argument provided during this most recent Princeton ruckus.

When did it become de rigueur to enforce a code of silence in academia, by professors and students, regarding Islam’s dealings with the kaffir, honor killings, and the like? It seems that Jews, Jewish students and the Jewish professorate, religious leaders such as Princeton’s Director of the Center for Jewish Life, in particular, suffer the pain of cultural and moral relativism. “We have to understand the cultural context/milieu as truth is multifaceted.” In so doing, the forces of decency and reason will wither and die. We Jews and Americans, by our hand, will shirk from robustly defending ourselves, our way of life, our American values and our Jewish identities. The result is self-censorship, a classic dhimmi behavior. The Islamists will only have to threaten the charge of libel and slander, or categorize as an Islamophobe anyone who examines and speaks about the essence of textual Islam. An Islam with its Qur’anic mandated treatment of women as chattel, Islam’s supersessionist and supremacist theology, second class treatment of non-Muslims, death penalty for apostasy, the forced payment of the jizya for non-Muslims, and the inhumanely segregated sexual roles which channel energy into Jihad, etc.

This is a direct result of Jewish leaders who have replaced a thorough grounding in Jewish knowledge and parochial concerns with the myth of universal utopianism, wherein leaders and educators have raised two or more generations of Jews with a complete absence of traditional Jewish values. The demands of mitzvot observance have been replaced with a misplaced emphasis solely on the emotional and spiritual dimensions of life. As a result, so-called secular progressive norms have filled the vacuum. We now have a situation wherein universal truths are no longer taught by our leaders and the space has been filled with “understanding the cultural norms of the other,” multicultural and moral relativism, and an emphasis on liberal politics so pliable that such a worldview can fit any construct.

The result is that we have sent generations of Jewish students to the college campus unable to defend themselves against the slightest anti-Jewish provocations, disconnected from the corpus of Jewish identity fostered by our common texts and history, uninterested or ashamed or embarrassed by Israel’s existence or actions taken by her in her own defense. As Rabbis, we learned that Rabbinic aphorism chutzpha k’lapei shamayim. We have the nerve to challenge the Almighty in contrast to the absolutism of Islam. However, our Campus Rabbis refuse to defend our students or teach them to defend themselves in debate and action. Where is the Campus Rabbinic leadership?

This has been a complete abdication of moral and intellectual leadership by our Jewish leaders in order to appear reasonable. The Islamists know western weakness well. The post-modern, global West does not want to be cast as intolerant. So, we give away the store, strip ourselves of our defenses and hope that we will be left alone. We will lose instead.

The Wall Street Journal November 20, 2009.

As part of our public-service reports on the workings of your favorite world body, allow us to introduce you to Anne Bayefsky. The Toronto native is an expert on human-rights law and an accredited United Nations observer. She is also a friend of Israel, which makes her persona non grata as far as the folks at Turtle Bay are concerned.

Ms. Bayefsky’s sin was a two-minute talk she delivered at the U.N. earlier this month after the General Assembly had issued a resolution endorsing the Goldstone Report, which levels war crimes charges at Israel for defending itself in the face of Hamas’s rockets. “The resolution doesn’t mention the word Hamas,” she said. “This is a resolution that purports to be even-handed; it is anything but.”

Ms. Bayefsky’s comments were the only note of criticism on a day otherwise marked by much U.N. jubilation. Whereupon she was summarily stripped of her U.N. badge and evicted from the premises. “The Palestinian ambassador is very upset by your statement,” Ms. Bayefsky says the U.N. security chief told her. Journalist Matthew Russell Lee tells us that he heard the ambassador asking whether U.N. security had “captured” Ms. Bayefsky.

For the record, the U.N. claims that Ms. Bayefsky violated procedures by bringing a colleague who lacked a proper badge, and that she was not entitled to speak where she did, though representatives of nongovernment organizations have used it in the past. And when we called the Palestinian Mission to get their side of the story, they told us the fracas was the last of their worries. Maybe so.

Yet the U.N. continues to bar Ms. Bayefsky from the premises, despite calls on her behalf by the U.S. mission and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Best-case scenario, one U.N. insider tells us, is that “they’ll put her on probation.” We hear the U.N.’s NGO accreditation committee, chaired by Sudan, will likely make the final decision.

Meanwhile, a committee of the General Assembly recently passed a resolution on the so-called defamation of religion. “Everyone has the right to hold opinions without interference, and has the right to freedom of expression, the exercise of which carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to limitations,” it says.

“Without interference” yet “subject to limitations.” Orwell should be living now.

******

Leading U.N. Critic Sees Political Agenda Behind U.N.’s Decision to Bar Her

CNS News November 20, 2009,

After being denied access to United Nations headquarters for two weeks, one of U.N.’s most forthright critics will find out Friday if her confiscated entry pass will be returned to her – and under what conditions.

Human rights law expert Anne Bayefsky said she was told on Thursday to report to a security official on Friday to “sign something” in order to get her pass back temporarily.

It’s not clear what Bayefsky would be expected to sign. Meanwhile, a final decision on her longer-term access will be in the hands of a 19-member NGO-accreditation committee whose members include Sudan, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt, Russia and China – countries whose conduct at the U.N. Bayefsky frequently criticizes.

U.N. security guards removed Bayefsky’s pass and escorted her from the building on November 5 after she used a media stakeout microphone to condemn a General Assembly resolution endorsing the controversial “Goldstone report,” which accuses Israel of war crimes in Gaza.

Bayefsky, director of the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at Touro College, a Jewish-sponsored independent institution in New York, and editor of the Hudson Institute’s Eye on the U.N. project, called the resolution “a travesty.”

Moments later, she recounted by phone from New York Thursday, she was “surrounded by four or five guards,” asked to identify herself – which she did – and told that she was not supposed to use the microphone.

She and an assistant were then accompanied to the security office, where the head security guard told her that Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour, who had spoken at the stakeout shortly before her, was “very upset” about her remarks.

Bayefsky said she also was challenged about the fact that her assistant did not have an entry pass – he was visiting from out of town and she swiped him in using her own pass – but she called that a “secondary issue,” saying the comments she made at the microphone were obviously the main problem.

Bayefsky said she conceded to the guards that she should have gotten her assistant a pass and told them that when he returns to New York, she would do so.

“That would have been the end of it if it wasn’t for the fact that the Palestinian ambassador had conveyed to security that he had been upset by my remarks.”

The two were then escorted from the building.

In subsequent attempts to get her entry pass back, Bayefsky said she was told to come in and write a statement, after which it would be returned to her. But when she insisted on including in the statement the comment relayed to her about the Palestinian ambassador, officials refused to accept it and the pass was not returned.

At the same time, U.N. spokespersons stoked confusion by denying that that Bayefsky’s accreditation had been revoked. At a press briefing Wednesday, spokesman Farhan Haq said that as far as he was aware, she was free to pick up her pass.

Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour speaks to reporters outside the General Assembly after the resolution endorsing the Goldstone report was passed on November 5, 2009. He is speaking at the same microphone Anne Bayefsky used minutes later. (UN Photo by Paulo Filgueiras) But at Thursday’s briefing Haq’s colleague, Michele Montas, issued a statement of “clarification,” saying that Bayefsky was under a security investigation for having used her building pass “in an unauthorized manner” to bring in her assistant.

The result of the inquiry would be passed to the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for a final determination, she said.

Montas said the “breaches of security protocol” – not the use of the microphone – was the basis for the suspension of the pass.

Regarding Bayefsky’s use of the microphone, she added that it was U.N. policy that speakers at stakeouts must be introduced by or accompanied by representatives of the U.N. or a member state. Unless so accompanied, she said, “an NGO [representative] cannot step up to the microphone and just make a statement.”

Bayefsky said by phone later in the day that she and other NGO members have used stakeout microphones in the past without any difficulties being raised. Responding to Montas’ statement about the need to be accompanied she said, “that’s just not true – or at least it’s not enforced, with respect to anybody but me.”

‘On the radar screen’

Bayefsky said she had no doubt her pass had been withheld because of her criticism of the U.N.

“This was political from the get-go,” she said. “I was obviously on their radar screen.”

Bayefsky’s U.N. Watch monitors the world body’s activities in New York and at its Human Rights Council in Geneva, with a particular focus on its treatment of Israel.

Presenting statements during NGO segments of meetings, she has been responsible for some of the most hard-hitting criticism heard in U.N. forums.

When the Human Rights Council considered the Goldstone report in late September, Bayefsky was scolded by the council president for a direct and personal challenge to Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who led the U.N.-mandated fact finding mission behind the report.

“How does it feel to have used your Jewishness to jeopardize the safety and security of the people of Israel, and to find yourself in the company of human rights abusers everywhere?” she asked him.

In an earlier visit to Geneva, Bayefsky caused a stir during the “Durban II” racism conference, a week-long event attended by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and boycotted by the U.S., Israel and a handful of other Western countries.

Ahmadinejad sparked a walkout during a speech in which he called Israel the “most cruel and repressive racist regime,” described the Holocaust as a “pretext” for Israel’s establishment in 1948, and said the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then U.S. administration.”

During an NGO segment later, Bayefsky berated the U.N. for giving the Iranian “a global megaphone” and said it had also “ translated his hate speech into six languages and broadcast it around the world.”

Interrupted several times by a protesting Iranian delegate, she accused the U.N. of enabling anti-Semitism, criticized “all those states without the courage to reject a forum for bigotry when it masquerades as human rights,” and concluded that the Durban II conference deserved to end up in “the dustbin of history.”

By comparison, her impromptu Nov. 5 comments at the stakeout microphone were relatively mild.

She noted that the resolution passed by the General Assembly that day endorsing the Goldstone report made not mention of Hamas – the Palestinian group whose thousands of rocket attacks from Gaza were Israel’s stated reason for its military offensive last winter.

“This is a resolution that purports to be evenhanded,” she said. “It calls for accountability and in fact what we see instead is impunity for the Palestinian side.”

‘West gets outvoted’

The body that will decide whether Bayefsky will be able to retain access to U.N. meetings is an ECOSOC committee overseeing accreditation of non-governmental organizations, more than 3,000 of which have “consultative status” at the U.N.

This year the committee has been chaired by Sudan, and two of its four vice-chairmen are Cuba and Pakistan.

The committee has been accused in the past of political decision-making. In a vote last summer it rejected the accreditation application of a Christian NGO because it refused to produce names and addresses of its members in China, citing religious freedom concerns.

China led the move to shut out the Christian organization and the U.S. was one of just four committee members to vote in support of the group (the others were Britain, Romania and Israel.) The U.S. delegate said that by taking the decision to exclude the NGO, “we are embarrassing ourselves and embarrassing the United Nations.”

The committee’s members are Angola, Britain, Burundi, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Guinea, India, Israel, Pakistan, Peru, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Sudan, Turkey and the United States.

“The United States and other Western governments never prevail at that committee,” Bayefsky commented Thursday. “They get outvoted … that’s why some Western democratic NGOs never get NGO accreditation.”

EYEontheUN monitors the UN direct from UN Headquarters in New York. EYEontheUN brings to light the real UN record on the key threats to democracy, human rights, and peace and security in our time. EYEontheUN provides a unique information base for the re-evaluation of priorities and directions for modern-day democratic societies.

We need your support to continue our crucial work. Donate to EYEontheUN online HERE.

On November 15, 2009, former President Clinton stated in Jerusalem: “Two things remain unchanged since 1993 – geography and demographics. Palestinians have more children than Israelis can have or import.”

Clinton’s intentions are positive. However, he is mistaken and misleading, while trying to convince Israelis to support a policy (withdrawal to the 1967 lines), which could determine the fate of the Jewish State: Oblivion or survival.

Hawks and doves would concur that public debate is dysfunctional when employing invalid numbers in order to frighten Israel into adopting a potentially-dangerous policy. Hawks and doves are aware that demographic-fatalism erodes confidence in Israel’s cause and in Israel’s steadfastness. It minimizes options and produces hasty decisions concerning critical national security issues. Decisions based on erroneous assumptions yield erroneous policy. Public debate should distance itself from baseless assumptions and position itself upon well-documented data.

In contrast to Clinton’s statement, Israel’s Jewish demography has been enhanced since 1993. A solid and a long-term 67% Jewish majority, west of the Jordan River (without Gaza) is documented by birth, death and migration records of the Palestinian Health and Education Ministry and Election Commission, as well as Israel’s Border Police (which acts like the American INS), the World Bank and the Israeli and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. In 2009, the Jewish population benefits from a substantial demographic tailwind, which could expand its majority.

And, here are the facts:

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of annual Jewish births has increased by 45% from 1995 (80,400) to 2008 (117,000), in spite the cuts of child allowances – a global rarity. The number of Arab births within pre-1967 Israel has stabilized, around 39,000, during the same period.

The Jewish tailwind has persisted during the first eight months of 2009: 77,797 Jewish births, which amount to over 75% of total births within pre-1967 Israel, compared with 69% in 1995.
The significant decline in Arab fertility rate reflects a significantly improved standard of living, resulting from successful integration into Israel’s infrastructures of health, education, employment, commerce, politics, media, sports, culture and the arts. The Arab-Jewish fertility gap was reduced from six births per woman in 1969 to 0.7 in 2008.

The Jewish secular sector – and especially the Olim (immigrants) from the USSR – is chiefly responsible for the upward trend of Jewish demography. The one million Soviet Olim arrived with a typical Russian fertility rate of one birth per woman, but they have adopted the typical secular Jewish fertility rate of 2-3 births per woman. In addition, Israel’s yuppies are switching over from the European rate of 1-2 births to 3-4 births per woman.

A September 2006 World Bank survey of education in Judea, Samaria and Gaza documented a 32% distortion of Arab births by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. According to the Bank, the Arab demographic decline resulted from a drop in fertility and a rise in emigration.

The decline in Arab population growth follows a 20-year surge, which was a result of the post-1967 access to Israel’s health infrastructure. The decline has been caused by urbanization (from a 70% rural to a 70% urban population in Judea and Samaria), unprecedented expansion of the education system, especially among women, and family planning.

Net-emigration has accelerated the fall of the Arab population growth rate in Judea and Samaria. From 1950 to 2009, there have been only six years of net-immigration. Net-emigration skyrocketed during the 1950-1967 Jordanian occupation, slowed down drastically following 1967, in response to the enhancement of health, education and employment, surged as a result of the 2000 Intifada and shifted to a higher gear in 2006, due to the rise of Hamas and the Hamas-PLO war.

The Arab fertility rate in Judea and Samaria declined to four births per woman and is trending downward. According to the UN Population Division, the decline typifies all Muslim countries other than Afghanistan and Yemen. For example, Jordan (a “twin-sister” of Judea and Samaria) has three births per woman, Iran – 1.7, Egypt – 2.5, Syria – 3.5 and Algeria – 1.8 births per woman.
The Judea and Samaria Arab population of 1.55 million – and not 2.5 million as claimed by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics – was documented in December 2008: a 66% distortion!

Theodore Herzl (1900) and David Ben Gurion (1947) did not subordinate their Zionist vision to the prophets of demographic doom – Simon Dubnov and Prof. Roberto Bacchi – although Jews were a minority of 8% and 33% respectively.

In 2009, Israel’s leaders should refrain from subordinating the future of the Jewish State to Clinton’s pernicious demographic fatalism.

More and more people are rallying around unilateral action by Israel. Ofer Falk, a research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, took issue with the plan put forward by Mofaz and recommended the Israel option. He recommends annexing Ariel, Modi’in Illit and Ma’aleh Adumim first, just as I do.

[..] MOFAZ IS an Israeli war hero, but his proposed plan for peace does not serve his country well. The plan’s main problem is that it is more of same in terms of giving the Palestinians something in return for nothing. That formula has failed repeatedly.

The time has come to change this premise for peace and the sequence of give-and-take.

Israel should start by getting land rather than always giving it away. There is a wide national consensus and a broad international understanding, long ratified by UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 that part of the territories will become part of Israel proper. Mofaz noted 8% in his plan, Binyamin Netanyahu has mentioned much more and Ehud Olmert said that the Palestinians will never receive more than what he once offered them.

Land that is either barren or densely populated with Jews, such as the Ariel, Modi’in Illit and Ma’aleh Adumim areas will be part of Israel proper. The Clinton and Bush administrations recognized it; the Europeans recognize it; the moderate left in Israel recognizes it; and even pragmatic Palestinians acknowledge it. So let’s start from there, instead of continuing the formula of giving something for nothing.

Once the Palestinians see that the process of give and take is a two-way street, it might actually serve as a catalyst for negotiations. The PLO was established well before the 1967 war, but only after Israel managed to settle hundreds of thousands of Jews in the territories were the Palestinians willing to negotiate. Palestinian pragmatism might need a kick-start.

As they have recently stated their intention to declare an independent state and by doing so shut the door on dialogue, Israel’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement is to finally define and draw “secure and recognized” borders based on a national consensus and simple criteria of maximum area, maximum Israelis and minimum non-Israelis within those borders, while limiting the uprooting of residents (regardless of nationality) to an absolute minimum.

Endless - and at times senseless - discussions have been carried out as to whether the Syrian option should be preferred to the Palestinian option or vice versa. I suggest we concentrate on the Israeli option first.

Israel should start preparing for this annexation to take place sometimes in 2010.

Yisrael Harel, Institute for Zionist Strategy, writes Barack Obama’s vision impossible referring to the Saudi Plan.

SO IS there a way out? Not for the moment. In the longer run, if there emerges a Palestinian leadership capable of committing all factions to its decisions and if the decision is to go for a two-state solution, I believe the Israeli public will offer its support, subject to the following minimal conditions. First, the Palestinians forgo the right of return. Second, the settlements remain in place. And third, Palestinians do not receive land inside Israel as “swaps” for the “settlement blocs.”

[..] Both the Palestinians and the Obama administration must recognize that the talk of “time is in the Arabs’ favor” is in fact wrong. When Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords, there were around 150,000 Jewish settlers. Today, despite the (incomplete) settlement construction freeze, nearly 300,000 Jews live in the territories. They are determined soon to reach half a million - and they will.

How can anyone believe in the possibility that the “Palestians” will accept such a deal with or without leadership.

There must be a unilateral solution. Michael Freund agrees and says “It’s annexation time”

We need to send a clear message to our foes, one that will put them on the defensive and strengthen Israel’s hand. And there is no better place to start than with our own unilateral measures, chief among them the annexation of all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

OVER THE past 16 years, nothing has been gained by keeping the settlements issue on the table. Nor has dangling the possibility of expelling masses of Jews from their homes along the lines of Gush Katif brought the Palestinians any closer to making a deal.

Last August, PM Salam Fayyad released a Plan to “establish Palestine as an independent, democratic, progressive, and modern Arab state, with full sovereignty over its territory in the West Bank and Gaza, on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” within two years. Israel took little notice of it.

In early November Haaretz reported it included a secret provision which stipulated a “unilateral declaration of independence”. Then Israel took notice and said ‘If PA Declares State, Israel Will Annex Settlements’.

“If the Palestinians take such a unilateral line, Israel should also consider … passing a law to annex some of the settlements,” Environment Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) said. [..]

MK Danon says that Israel must not settle for annexing settlement blocs, but must rather annex Judea and Samaria in their entirety, except for Arab cities.

Minister Erdan also said Israel has the option of tightening up travel restrictions for Arabs and stopping the transmission of tax money that the Israeli government currently transfers to the Palestinian Authority - money that is collected by Israel for the PA.

Meanwhile, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) and Minister Landau have taken action to introduce bills for annexing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

The PA also threatening to seek the formal endorsement of the UN but the Eu and the US have turned thumbs down on the issue.

Even if the U.N. recognizes a Palestinian state, it would make little difference to the reality. In 1988 the Palestinians also declared independence and many states recognized it, but nothing came of it.

So long as Israel controls the land it controls what happens there.

But Alan Baker, writing in JCPA, says such declaration Undermines the Legal Foundations of Israeli-Palestinian Diplomacy and “could set off a series of reactions - whether legal or political - that might create substantive, structural damage to the peace process.” because the Oslo Interim Agreement provides

Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the Permanent Status negotiations.

So far Israel has been adamantly against abrogating the Oslo Accords no matter what the provocation. After 15 years of trying to negotiate a deal, perhaps its time for Israel to do so and the PA unilateral declaration, should it happen, could be just the pretext, if pretext is needed.

Everyone knows that there is no diplomatic solutions. Neither party is willing to make the necessary compromises. That’s why the PA talks about a unilateral declaration and the EU and some in the US talk about an imposed solution. Israel also is contemplating a unilateral solution. What might that be?

According to the remarks above, it would involve annexing parts, if not all Judea and Samaria. No land would have to be conquered. Israel has already annexed Jerusalem and the Golan and could do the same for other settlements such as Ariel and Maaleh Adumin and perhaps the Jordan Valley. At a minimum it would signal that these settlements, like Jerusalem, are non-negotiable.

This would be an incremental approach to gauge the reaction of the international community. It wouldn’t be pretty. The next step would be to annex all of Areas “B” and “C” with its Arab population of about 340,000. Area “A” with its 1.2 million Arabs would be dealt with thereafter assuming that it is not decided to do it all at once.

Mike Wise, published the Jewish One State Plan, hereinafter referred to as the “Plan” a number of years ago. I first endorsed it in 2005 in my article Israel From the Mediterranean to the Jordan and have written much since.

In Caroline Glick’s article, Obama’s failure, Netanyahu’s opportunity she introduces this Plan.

Israel should strike out on a new course and work toward the integration of Judea and Samaria, including its Palestinian population, into Israeli society. In the first instance, this will require the implementation of Israeli law in the Jordan Valley and the large settlement blocs.

but she doesn’t fully, at least in this article, endorse the Plan. The Plan proposes that Israeli law be extended to all of Judea and Samaria as follows,

Annexation will provide a clear and well-defined status for West Bank Arabs. At the time of Annexation, the PA will no longer have a reason to exist and it and all terrorist infrastructures will be outlawed and dismantled. The PA and other terrorist organizations will be subject to Israel law and be dealt with in the same manner that all countries deal with internal subversive, treasonous and criminal organizations. Israel would no longer police the West Bank as an “occupation force”. It is important to understand that after Annexation, Israel will have significantly greater flexibility in dealing with issues and problems on the West Bank. Those problems will all be viewed as internal problems of the State of Israel and not problems subject to constant international scrutiny by those who view the West Bank as “occupied” territory.

Although Glick wants to integrate all of Judea and Samaria, she only wants to extend Israeli law to the “Jordan Valley and the Settlement Blocks”.

The Plan further provides,

It is essential that the process and strategy of offering Israeli citizenship to West Bank Arabs must be very carefully planned, including its timing, demographic, geographic, historical and social factors. Citizenship will include all the benefits currently available to the citizens of Israel including: health care, education, welfare, economic incentives, employment, social safety nets, voting rights and others. The responsibilities of citizenship will include a public oath of loyalty to the State of Israel. The procedures and the details of the citizenship offer will be determined as an internal matter by the State of Israel. Each country determines its own citizenship rules and there are many models ranging from extremes like Switzerland where citizenship is often not granted for several generations, and the extremely restrictive standards set by Islamic States to the more liberal standards applied by other countries. Since the process will be phased in over time, the possibility to adjust the procedures appropriately will be available as circumstances require.

The reason Glick excludes Area “A” is because of the 1.2 million Arabs living there. She and most Israelis don’t want to extend Israeli citizenship to them no matter on what terms. The Plan doesn’t see this as a problem that can’t be dealt with.

There are about 200,000 Arabs in Jerusalem who have been given blue cards which entitled them to work and vote in municipal elections. Some suggest that such cards, rather than citizenship, should ultimately be given to the Arabs in the annexed territories .

Jerusalem Summit, a Christian/Jewish think tank, in 2005 published Prof Martin Sherman’s article, Redefining the Palestinian Problem which proposed an humanitarian solution rather than a political one. This proposal involves resettling the refugees elsewhere and offering compensation to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria to leave. Nothing unusual about that.

Apparently, Denmark to pay immigrants $20,000 to go home if they “can’t or won’t” assimilate

Denmark is boosting cash incentives to entice immigrants to return to their homelands if they ‘can’t or won’t’ assimilate into society.

The offer now on the table is close to £12,000 for every person who takes up the offer to leave.

Critics of the measure say it sends the wrong message to foreigners but the centre-right government in Copenhagen is forging ahead with the plan.

The financial carrot is ten times more than that previously offered under a scheme which as been law since 1997.

Sarkozy has also floated such a plan. So why can’t Israel do likewise.

Paul Eidelberg is totally against relying on Netanyahu’s “economic peace” which Glick supports. He says they “succumb to the wishful thinking of crypto-Marxists and capitalists who think there is an economic solution to human conflict, including religious conflicts.”

One consequence of bettering their economic lot would be that Arabs would immigrate to this area rather than emigrate from it. The reverse of what we want. But that is not what he is concerned with. He wants to deal with reality and not fantasy. Therefore the problem must be solved in a different way.

One suggestion that he makes in The Eidelberg Plan is for Israel to become more Jewish. He believes that this would cause Arab Israeli emigration. But aside from not saying what to do with Judea and Samaria, he agrees that “Palestine” won’t come into existence because neither side will make the necessary compromises.

Currently PM Netanyahu, supported by Barak and Peres, is banging the peace drum for all he is worth. He is begging for negotiations to begin and hinting he will be generous but has not yet backed away from his demands of recognition, an undivided Jerusalem and demilitarization. The Obama administration has supported him in accepting that negotiations should be without pre-conditions. The PA wants to have negotiations begin where Olmert left off and to have an end result of the creation of Palestine with ‘67 borders.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Netanyahu is not about to give away the farm.

What negotiator starts negotiations by showing how much he wants them. The reverse is always the case. Therefore, I believe that Netanyahu is talking the talk knowing he won’t have to walk the walk. Many in the know, that I have talked with, agree.

Today, the focus of the Middle East players is Iran. The creation of Palestine is of little concern.

Assuming no diplomatic solution will be forthcoming for the creation of Palestine, Israel will begin to make moves, probably after Iran is dealt with, to incorporate Judea and Samaria unilaterally. The key questions in so doing will involve whether to extend Israel law to Areas “B” and “C” only or to all of Judea and Samaria and whether to give blue cards or Citizenship based on significant requirements.

The peace process has brought death and destruction and not brought us closer to peace. Time for new approach.

Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times a week ago, agrees.

“It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our “Peace-Processing-Is-Us” sign and just go home.”

This would enable Israel to do its thing as suggested above.

ADDENDUM

The JCPA released a study entitled International Recognition of a Unilaterally Declared Palestinian State

International law has traditionally required that four separate criteria be satisfied before the recognition of an entity as an independent sovereign state can be considered:

1. The entity must exercise effective and independent governmental control.
2. The entity must possess a defined territory over which it exercises such control.
3. The entity must have the capacity to freely engage in foreign relations.
4. There must be effective and independent governmental control over a permanent population.

Only if the Palestinian entity satisfies the traditional criteria for statehood by exercising independent and sovereign governmental control (including the capacity to freely engage in foreign relations) over a permanent population in a defined territory over which it has possession, can its recognition as a sovereign state be considered.

It concludes that “should the Palestinian Authority unilaterally declare a state, under present circumstances, it would not meet these legal criteria, and hence should not be recognized.” That doesn’t mean it won’t be.

I know Anne Bayesfsky and have followed her invaluable work in covering the UN on matters relating to Israel. As it happens she is a Canadian lawyer. We must do all we can to publicize this story and work for her reinstatement. Ted Belman

U.N. Watchdog in ‘Kafkaesque’ Limbo After Criticizing World Body

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

This article appears today on FoxNews.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This was broadcast live. These are very serious matters,” said Nkolo. “We are trying in this building to work toward peace in a very serious manner.”

Bayefsky is now waiting for the U.N. to return her credentials or to refer her case to the Committee on NGOs, which will meet during January and February and could decide whether to renew her NGO pass — a prospect that has her deeply worried.

“The chances of my getting through that committee are basically nil,” she said.

The nation that chairs the committee, Sudan, is currently engaged in a murderous war on its own citizens and expelled 13 major aid NGOs from the country in March - meaning that a human rights violator that rejects NGOs within its own borders will be overseeing the approval of NGOs at the U.N.

Asked about this apparent inconsistency, a spokeswoman for the U.N. body overseeing the NGO committee said in an e-mail that “the Departments concerned are investigating this matter on the basis of established practice, jurisprudence and thorough review of the facts.”

That spokeswoman, Diane Loughran, noted that “The decision on whether to suspend or withdraw her organization from the UN would be up to the Committee on NGOs upon receipt of a formal complaint.” But Loughran said she was not aware of any formal complaints filed with the committee.

In the meantime, Bayefsky has no pass and can’t hope for a hearing until at least January or February, which means she could be barred from working at the U.N. for the next few months.

“The next three weeks are the heart of the entire year at the U.N. General Assembly. The frenzy of anti-Israel activity is going on right now,” she said.

“There’s a reason they’re keeping me away - this is no accident.”

EYEontheUN monitors the UN direct from UN Headquarters in New York. EYEontheUN brings to light the real UN record on the key threats to democracy, human rights, and peace and security in our time. EYEontheUN provides a unique information base for the re-evaluation of priorities and directions for modern-day democratic societies.

The shootings at Fort Hood - by a Jihadist in American military garb shouting “Allahu Akbar” - should have sounded a sobering alarm regarding the insidious threat of Islamist terrorism, but the President’s response to the tragedy failed to acknowledge any connection. In his comments, the President spoke of Nidal Hasan in a contextual vacuum, ignoring his known Jihadist sympathies and urging Americans not to rush to judgment. Mr. Obama has since requested that Congress delay its investigation into the civilian and military intelligence lapses that enabled Hasan’s actions. The President’s refusal to validate the obvious is only the latest act or omission in a pattern of coddling the Arab-Muslim world and of refusing to confront the very real threat of terrorism – a pattern that has been marked by alternating fits of apathy, apologia and denial.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Obama appointed Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security and promptly set about changing how this country would deal with Islamist terrorism in the future. In an interview with “Spiegel Online International” last March, Napolitano explained that the Administration would refrain from using the term “terrorism,” and instead would refer to acts of terror as “man-caused disasters.” Her reason for employing such a vacuous term was “to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.” To the extent one could divine any substance from this absurdist statement, it seems that the Administration considered the word “terrorism” to be a politically weighted term incompatible with the philosophy underlying its approach to foreign policy.

Napolitano’s explanation was disingenuous as the word “terrorism” certainly has an objective and concise dictionary definition. In employing the silly term “man-caused disasters,” Napolitano and the Administration engaged in partisan linguistic tinkering that reflected an inclination to appease the societies that foster terrorism and validate their dubious grievances against Israel and the West. Napolitano’s tortured explanation was clearly an exercise in casuistry. However, it was perfectly consistent with the Obama Administration’s persistent attempts to recast the definition of terrorism so that foreign terrorists would no longer be considered unlawful or enemy combatants. Rather, they would now be treated as common criminals entitled to trials in civilian courts.

As previously discussed in these pages, the Obama Administration’s decision to treat foreign terrorists as common criminals entitled to Constitutional protections is in flagrant disregard of both international norms and American common law. Despite the Administration’s obtuse reasoning, there is no precedent entitling terrorists to the same rights as domestic criminals or even lawful enemy combatants captured on the battlefield.

The commonly accepted standard was incorporated into the Geneva Convention III, Article 4, under which terrorists are unlawful combatants because they do not constitute

Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory. . . [who] fulfill (sic) the following conditions:

(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Hostile parties who fail to conform to the foregoing recognized standards of wartime conduct are not considered lawful combatants.

These international standards have been have been recognized in the United States for years. As articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Ex parte Quinn, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), an unlawful combatant is one who “without uniform come[s] secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war.” The Quinn Court explained further that:

[T]he law of war draws a distinction between . . . lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful.

Consequently, terrorists who target civilians, who traffic in hidden and concealed weaponry, who fail to wear uniforms, who use artifice and subterfuge to inflict casualties and who flout the established conventions of war are unlawful combatants not entitled to the protections of civilian courts. In attempting to define terrorism out of existence, the Obama Administration knowingly repudiated long-standing international conventions and domestic jurisprudence in an effort to curry favor with the Arab-Muslim world.

The pattern continued last June with Mr. Obama’s speech in Cairo, where he distorted Jewish history and repeated the revisionist myth that Israel was a European invention imposed on the Arab world at the expense of a people (i.e., the Palestinians) who had no historical existence. Moreover, he focused on Israeli “settlements” as the stumbling block to peace, analogized the plight of the Palestinians to that of African-Americans, and failed to chastise the Arab world for supporting and exporting terrorism, rejectionism and antisemitism. The President continued this revisionist cajolery during his recent address at the United Nations, where he called on Israel to retreat to indefensible borders and used the term “occupation” to refer to Israeli presence on ancestral Jewish soil. Both speeches were significant for their use of words and imagery culled from classical revisionist thought and anti-Israel propaganda.

The Administration’s pattern also included its courting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, its repeated attempts to force Israeli concessions regarding settlements and Jewish habitation of Jerusalem, its refusal to take effective measures to prevent Iran from going nuclear, and its disrespectful treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu on multiple occasions. Domestically, the policy tilt has been expressed by the President’s oft-repeated expressions of admiration for Islam, which stand out against his more muted statements regarding the value of other religious groups and beliefs within American society, and by Attorney General Eric Holder’s comments to the ADL in Las Vegas last month equating discrimination against Muslims with antisemitism.

Holder’s remarks were particularly troubling for their ignorance regarding the nature and character of antisemitism, and of the role of Arab-Muslim society in propagating it. Unlike “Islamophobia,” antisemitism has ethnic, racial and national components that fuel hatred of Jews irrespective of their religious beliefs. Thus, Holder’s facile equation ignored that Jews are targeted because of who they are, not for what they believe. Muslims have never suffered the same kind of discrimination. Moreover, his comparison ignored the significant role of Arab society in perpetuating antisemitism, and of religious beliefs that consider the Jews’ autonomy in their ancestral homeland to be anathema. It also ignored the history of discrimination against Christians in the Arab world.

The President’s failure to address the underlying motivation for the Fort Hood shootings, and his call for Americans to exercise restraint in judgment, are perfectly consistent with his Administration’s pattern of assiduous assuagement. In choosing not to comment on the role of Islamist terrorism and Jihad, the President continued his pattern of kowtowing to those with a world view that is inconsistent with American and Western values, and which poses an existential threat for Israel and the West. One wonders how the President could remain silent regarding the Islamist connection after Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical imam with ties to the 9/11 terrorists, proclaimed Hasan a hero. On his website, al-Awlaki said: “The fact that fighting against the U.S. army is an Islamic duty today cannot be disputed. Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims.”

There are nagging questions in light of published reports that various intelligence agencies knew well before the shootings of Hasan’s multiple attempts to contact al-Qaeda and his e-mails to al-Awlaki, and his possible connection to posted internet content extolling the virtue of suicide bombers. Was the apparent breakdown in the civilian and military intelligence systems influenced by the Administration’s history of pandering to the Arab world? Was the failure of the military to relieve Hasan of his commission caused by a mandate not to offend Muslim sensibilities? Were those killed and wounded by the hand of Hasan merely the victims of a “man-caused disaster”?

The American media has been slow and reluctant to explore the clear influence of Islamic extremism in Hasan’s actions. During recent comments on television, for example, Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas referred to Hasan thus:

I cringe that he’s a Muslim. I mean, because it just inflames all the fears. I think he’s probably just a nut case but, with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going. And it just, these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse.

Proclaiming that Hasan is a “nut case,” however, suggests that his acts were simply aberrant and beyond any explicable context. And expressing concern that the incident would rile the “right-wing” would seem to suggest that American political conservatives are somehow as bad as Islamist terrorists. Such comparisons are nonsense.

In column after column, liberal pundits have failed or refused to discuss the influence of Islamist extremism. Some have simply played deaf and dumb, while others have affirmatively sought to justify Hasan’s actions by claiming that he was somehow the victim of Islamophobia, despite reports that his heritage actually helped him advance through his medical training and the military ranks despite questionable aptitude. Still others have argued – incredibly – that Hasan was horrified by war experiences related to him by others.

The only non-cable broadcast network to explore the Islamist link at the outset was ABC. The others either remained silent or downplayed any connection, leaving one to wonder whether these conspicuous media lapses represented passive deference to political correctness, or affirmative exercises of a conscious agenda.

The question that most cries out for an answer is this: Why do those who claim to espouse western democratic values – who profess to defend individual freedoms and personal liberty – not only refuse to condemn the threat of Islamist totalitarianism, but serve as apologists for a religious philosophy that openly states its opposition to those very values? Why do those who condemn conservative Christians as fundamentalist lunatics sympathize with Muslim extremists who have declared war on Western society and have actually taken up arms against it? The intellectual incongruity is glaring and palpable.

Based on the Obama Administration’s pattern of soft pedaling any criticism of the societies that spawn extremists and rationalize terrorism, it seems unlikely that it has either the inclination or fortitude to deal with the Jihadist threat in any meaningful way. And this failure of resolve is clearly enabled by a press that, for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities, refuses to acknowledge that the Fort Hood massacre was a terrorist act perpetrated in the name of Jihad. Ironically, this obsequious stance has not curried any favor in the Muslim world, but instead has made the United States appear weak, ineffectual, and incapable of defending its own societal values. # # #