U.N. ENDORSES ANTI-SEMITISM

'UNHRC endorsed anti-Semitic charter' (JPost)
UN Watch has urged UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour to clarify a recent endorsement of the Arab Charter of Human Rights, which it said "contains several provisions that promote classically anti-Semitic themes."

In a letter issued Monday, the organization pointed to several phrases in the charter, such as "rejecting all forms of racism and Zionism, which constitute a violation of human rights and a threat to international peace and security," as well as "all forms of racism, Zionism and foreign occupation and domination constitute an impediment to human dignity... all such practices must be condemned and efforts must be deployed for their elimination."

The Arab Charter on Human Rights is intended to serve as a basis for the principles of freedom by which Arab nations must abide. The charter protects the civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights of the people of those nations.

The Arab League initially adopted the charter in 1994, after which the document underwent several changes, but it never came into force as it was not ratified by the required number of seven member states. However, earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates became the seventh nation to approve it after Jordan, Bahrain, Algeria, Syria, Libya and the Palestinian Authority.

On January 24, Arbour released a statement in which she welcomed the ratification, which would bring the charter into effect, saying it was "an important step forward" in strengthening the enjoyment of human rights in the Arab world.

"The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is committed and stands ready to support the [states party] to the Charter in ensuring that core values of human rights are upheld," Arbour said.

The UN’s “Great Step Forward” ABE GREENWALD  (Contentions)

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has recently endorsed the recently ratified Arab Charter of Human Rights. Arbour called the Charter “an important step forward,” and on January 24 she released a statement saying she “is committed and stands ready to support the States Parties to the Charter in ensuring that core values of human rights are upheld.”

“All forms of racism, Zionism and foreign occupation and domination constitute an impediment to human dignity . . . all such practices must be condemned and efforts must be deployed for their elimination,” says the document Arbour heartily endorses. The Charter, like the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam was created by the Arab League of States specifically to make-up for the lack of Sharia-inspired anti-Semitism in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The organization UN Watch has asked Louise Arbour to clarify her endorsement. “”We trust that Ms. Arbour was not aware of [the charter’s contents], but this must be made clear, and the responsible person in her office must be held fully accountable,” said Hillel Neuer, the body’s executive director. Neuer must be trying to shame Arbour with his feigned ignorance. Louise Arbour is a professional flatterer of tyrants and anti-Semites. Like the Human Rights commissions of her native Canada, she applies an Orwellian version of human rights promotion: the grossest violators are offered impunity under the umbrella of “Islamophobia” protection. She took the side of vengeful imams in the Danish cartoon affaird and recentlyenjoyed the company of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a Human Rights conference in Tehran. In Arbour’s universe, the ratification of this disgraceful charter is, in fact, “an important step forward” in legitimizing the institutional anti-Semitism of the Council of the Arab League of States.

Tom Lantos Is Shocked ABE GREENWALD (Contentions)

In a UN speech delivered by his daughter on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, U.S. congressman and chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Tom Lantos (D-CA) laid into the UN for its efforts to de-legitimatize Israel, as the Jewish state faces a renewed threat to its very existence:

Two generations after the Holocaust, I never thought - I could not even have imagined - that within the structure of the United Nations there would be some who would attempt to de-legitimatize the Jewish State, the State of Israel, founded and built by the remnants of European Jewry and by the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab lands.

The UN deserves to be hammered on this point, but Lantos’ words raise the question: why was he so ill-prepared for this revelation? It’s harder to imagine that there are some “within the structure of the United Nations” who don’t attempt to de-legitimatize Israel. TheJerusalem Post reports: “Lantos lamented the fact that the UN chamber was too often the setting for “shameless invective against Israel.” Well, it’s his fellow Democrats who seek the approval of said chamber.

Lantos added, “Just as an earlier dictator pledged to destroy the Jews of Europe, so a new one is threatening to destroy the Jewish State.” But according to prominent members of his party, Iran has been effectively deterred from waging such an attack. Moreover, after the release of December’s NIE claiming that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development, Lantos hadthis to say:

This newest information supports what I have said all along: We need to give diplomacy with Iran more of a chance. I continue to favor dialogue between our two countries, in contrast to the Administration’s belligerent and stiff-necked refusal to talk with Tehran. And I believe we need to use every means at our disposal - economic, political and diplomatic - to persuade Iranians that peaceful development of energy options, free of any hint of military use, is well within reach.

So: which is it Tom?