Why is the U.S. still in the United Nations? Why is the U.N. still operating on U.S. soil?

United Nations Human Rights Council meeting room.

“UN Accused of ‘Blackmailing’ Israeli Telecomm Company to Cut Services to Jews,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, October 16, 2017:

The United Nations Human Rights Council is pressuring a major Israeli telecommunications company to cease operations in disputed areas of the Jewish state or face a potential designation as a human rights abuser, according to a copy of communications sent by the Human Rights Council that is being viewed as an attempt to blackmail international corporations into boycotting the Jewish state.

The UNHRC recently sent a letter to the CEO of Bezeq, a major Israeli telecoms firm, accusing it of promoting settlement activity in Israel and of providing cellular services to areas that the Council believes are Palestinian territory.

The UNHRC’s effort to create a database of companies working in and with Israel is being viewed by pro-Israel leaders as an effort to intimidate Israeli and Western businesses as part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, a global effort that has been described by the United States and others as anti-Semitic in nature. Bezeq is among a number of companies, including those in America, who have received such letters from the UNHRC.

A senior U.S. official familiar with the situation said the Trump administration opposes the UNHRC database and views it as part of a larger effort to isolate the Jewish state and use the United Nations to bully international corporations.

The UNHRC has long been accused of harboring an anti-Israel bias and recently elected a number of prominent global human rights abusers to take a seat at the council, including nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Angola, and Qatar, all of which have been accused of violating their citizens’ human rights.

The UNHRC’s effort to create a database of corporations that it claims support Israeli settlement growth and the abuse of Palestinian human rights has been described by some pro-Israel voices as a blackmail effort meant to undermine the Jewish state’s international standing.

The UNHRC sent a letter to Bezeq in late September accusing it of “supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements, as well as the “use of nature resources, in particular water and land, for business purposes,” according to a copy of that letter that first circulated on Facebook.

The UNHRC threatens to add Bezeq to its database of companies operating in what it claims are Israeli settlements and the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Bezeq owns approximately 40 real estate properties in the West Bank used for telecommunications infrastructure, and operates antennas throughout the West Bank,” the UNHRC wrote in its letter.”

“Bezeq provides landline, cellular, internet, and cable TV services to residents of settlements in the West Bank,” according to the UNHRC, which considers this activity a violation of its accords.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the UN criticized the creation of the database, telling the Washington Free Beacon the United States will not participate in such an effort.

“We have made clear our opposition regarding the creation of a database of businesses operating in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and we have not participated and will not participate in its creation or contribute to its content,” the official said.

Anne Bayefsky, a prominent pro-Israel activist and head of Human Rights Voices, a watchdog group that monitors anti-Israel bias at the UN, told the Free Beacon the letter to Bezeq represents an effort by the international body to promote BDS efforts against Israel.

“The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jordanian Prince Zeid Al Hussein, acting in cahoots with the UN Human Rights Council, has been blackmailing companies around the world as part of a UN BDS campaign directed at Israel,” Bayefsky said.

Similar letters have been sent to companies across the globe, threatening them with inclusion into this anti-Israel database….

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I received this most interesting email yesterday from Daniel Sexton, an American who was an eyewitness of the recent Barcelona jihad attack. Mr. Sexton is a Catholic, and he wrote an open letter to Cardinal Juan Jose Omella, Archbishop of Barcelona, lamenting Omella’s statements after the massacre, as well as the lack of any response from the Church at the scene. Whether or not you share Mr. Sexton’s faith, the import of this is clear: in Spain, jihadis are aggressively advancing, and in response, the Catholic Church is not only not being true to itself, but is actively aiding and abetting the conquest of the continent: “No priest came to give Last Rites to the dying or comfort the wounded and terrorized. But the Cardinal went to the hospital in the evening and said all religions are religions of peace.”

I have a background in Latin and ancient Greek and found your book Did Muhammad Exist? to be revelatory. How is it that the scholarly consensus that Islam was a post conquest creation of Arabs and that the Koran is actually a Nestorian liturgical book written in Syriac, not known in our universities? I tend to view you and other such as Elena Chudinova to be our Cassandras, issuing true prophecies that no one will believe.

Yet I spent ten days in Europe this summer with my sons. Europe was as I remember her from my youth when I had lived there for a year — steeped in a Christian past and lost in an epicurean present. We traveled through Catalonia, Languedoc, and Provence and the Islamic presence, from the perspective of someone who lives in Jersey City, to be almost negligible. On the last day, I was walking on Las Ramblas at 5:00 PM, reveling in my last few hours in this paradise and going over in my mind our visit. I thought perhaps Islam was not such a threat — that I should limit my exposure to Breitbart and Jihad Watch — and not be, as my newly minted Princeton politics grad says, such a hater. I saw a woman in a Burqa with a baby and pitied her for being so out of place. In the next moment, I saw the white van plowing through the crowd. I was ten yards from the Joan Miró mosaic where it came to rest. The dead and dying were all around me. I stayed and helped a grievously injured 16-year-old German girl who had been visiting with her parish. No priest came to give Last Rites to the dying or comfort the wounded and terrorized. But the Cardinal went to the hospital in the evening and said all religions are religions of peace. I wrote an open letter to the newspapers in Barcelona but no one bothered to call me back.

Here is Mr. Sexton’s open letter:

c/o La Vanguardia, elPeriodico, el PuntAvio

Cardinal Juan Jose Omella
Archbishop of Barcelona

Your Eminence:

Please accept this open letter to you and the Church in Barcelona. I, myself, probably because of my sins, happened to be at the Rambla de Sant Josep at the corner at Carrer de L’Hospital at the moment the van driven by young Islamic terrorists passed by coming to rest at the Juan Miro mosaic last Thursday. I was unable to comprehend what was happening as the idyllic scene was replaced by a nightmare. The van with its human detritus sped by and a wave of terrified citizens and tourists overwhelmed. All around me was blood, and bodies and people in torment and terror — babies, children, the old and the young.

The police and the security forces arrived almost instantaneously and were fierce and courageous and non-stinting as they sought to secure the area even while the perpetrators escaped back over their victims. Strangers offered aid to the wounded. Terrified children and babies were corralled into the adjacent stores. I saw one young guy jumping from body to body — giving CPR here, making a tourniquet there. (I have read that Lucas Digne, the fullback for Barça, had run from the safety of his luxury apartment with water and towels, and I believe that he is the guy I saw). At last, the ambulances began to arrive with medics, one by one. They addressed those in extremis first while those who were conscious had to wait. In the 45 minutes I was at the scene, several persons there on the pavement were pronounced dead as resuscitation efforts by just regular people were abandoned when the medics said there was no hope.

Yet one thing was conspicuously absent: not a single priest appeared in my sight to give Extreme Unction to the dying, to comfort those in agony, to give witness to those in shock that Christ is with us — that he has overcome the world and that we must be willing to undergo any and every trial for the sake of the kingdom. Even if he did nothing, a priest in his cassock would have born witness. Maybe a priest was there and I missed him in his jeans or shorts, and if so, then I apologize for my accusation. But the dead I saw had no minister of God to assist them. To me, this is inexplicable. There were four churches within a stone’s throw — including the Basilica of St. Maria, the parish of St. Augustin, the parish of St. Philip Neri, and your very own Cathedral. If any of the deaths on the Rambla of Sant Josep were happy, it is no thanks to the Church.

I was in Barcelona with my sons for a holiday and I wanted more than anything for them to experience the glories of a civilization built on Christ and his love — but also his judgment. My mantra was the line from Hilaire Belloc, that “the Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith.” In this vein, we marveled at Sagrada Familia and even more of the fanatical faith of Gaudi, which seems to embarrass or at least befuddle his current admirers. We made a pilgrimage to Monteserrat and ardently kissed the orb which the Black Madonna holds in her extended right hand — the world redeemed by Christ whom she had borne without corruption. We venerated the sarcophagus and the relics of the Virgin Martyr St. Eulalia in your own Cathedral.

Yet you said, after visiting the injured in the Hospital del Mar only hours after the attack, that “God is the God of life and love in all religions….”

This is false, Your Eminence! There is only one true religion and, if you, a Prince of the Church cannot say that it is the Catholic and orthodox faith that comes to us from the apostles, who can? Moreover, it is demonstrably not true that the Allah of Islam engenders life and love. Having read your comments yesterday and being familiar with Pope Francis’ denial of these truths, I was not surprised to read this morning that “at least 10,000 Catalans with links to the separatist movement have actually converted to Islam in recent years [and that] [i]t is believed that two out of every ten Catalan radicals who belong to the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), a far-left political party, are converts to Islam. The ERC, which now governs Catalonia, has vehemently refused to sign a cooperation agreement with the central government in Madrid to fight jihadist terrorism.”[1] How anomalous is this that a movement that seeks to preserve and cultivate Catalonian culture morphs into the modern-day descendant of its ancient foe? Something happens to radical movements. The IRA in the 1960s, one recalls, became hardline Marxist-Leninists trained and armed by the Soviets.

Barcelona does not need minutes of silence or shouts of “we are not afraid.” She and all of us need shepherds with testicular fortitude and faith to lead men to embrace with all of their hearts and all their minds the salvation which is from Christ alone and none other. No political movement or primitive cult of violence can compete with such a vision.

Sant Jordi pray to God to send us shepherds who will teach the truth! Santa Eulalia pray to God for us that we may not fail at the time of trial! La Morenata pray to God for us who mourn and weep!

[1] Barcelona Attack Was Preventable, Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute, August 22, 2017

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Cardenal Joan Josep Omella 21.06.2017 Fotografia Pere Virgili

Pope Francis and H.R. McMaster are on their way to Pakistan now to explain to Ayman al-Zawahiri that al-Qaeda has nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with Islam.

“‘Dead or Alive’: President Trump Appears on Al-Qaeda Wanted Notice,” by Jack Moore, Newsweek, September 19, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Al-Qaeda has had a resurgence online in recent months, using the heir of the group’s late leader Osama bin Laden—his son Hamza—as a propaganda pawn whose family lineage boosts its image. Now, Al-Qaeda’s supporters are using another notable name to attract attention: President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, the Al-Hijrah media group, marked by a green logo and active for only the past several months, released a wanted notice for the U.S. president, calling for his capture “dead or alive.”

The notice, provided to Newsweek by the jihadi monitoring site Jihadoscope, says Trump should be targeted for his “crimes against Islam.” It says he is sought for “treason, murder, injustice, kidnapping, massacre, extremism, negligence, hate.”

The release came a week after the jihadi channel warned it would have “a message to Trump and the people of America coming soon.”

Tuesday’s release also includes a message that pointed to Trump’s decision to expand U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

“Trump is talking about winning in Afghanistan. And you Americans what do you think? Do you not know history?” it reads, referring to the failure of the Bush and Obama administrations to defeat the Taliban mujahedeen, Arabic for holy warriors.

“It is clear that Trump is waging this war only for his hatred of Muslims,” it says. “You will never be victorious, you will be defeated.” The statement repeats the Taliban phrase that Afghanistan will become a “graveyard” for American troops….

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