Time to Leave UNESCO - Again

by Guy Millière • May 17, 2016 at 5:30 am

UNESCO's poisonous, fraudulent resolution is not only biased: it is negationist. All traces of Jewish presence in Jerusalem and Judea in ancient times are eliminated at the stroke of a pen.
Only six countries voted to reject the resolution: the United States, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. France, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia accepted the text and voted yes. The resolution was presented with the support of several Muslim countries -- some often described as "moderate": Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
UNESCO is a branch of the United Nations, and the UN is an organization where democracies are in the minority, surrounded by a huge majority of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes imbued with hatred toward the West. Israel is virtually the only country designated as guilty of violating human rights by the so-called Human Rights Council, and where, in 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was welcomed as a hero.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in French to a gathering of UNESCO representatives in Paris, on Oct 18, 2015, assuring them that "the engagement of the United States with this organization has never been as strong as now."

On April 11, 2016, the Executive Board of UNESCO adopted a resolution called "Occupied Palestine." The title immediately exposes it as a biased document. That is not surprising. All the texts adopted by UNESCO concerning the Middle East are biased.

However, those who read it carefully can see that a further step was taken.

UNESCO's resolution is not only biased: it is negationist. All traces of Jewish presence in Jerusalem and Judea in ancient times are eliminated at the stroke of a pen. The Temple Mount is never mentioned. It is only called by the name al-Aqsa Mosque / Haram al Sharif. The name "Western Wall" is placed between quotation marks, to indicate that it is an invalid name: Al Buraq Wall is used without quotation marks. The graves of Jewish cemeteries are described as "Jewish fake graves."

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The French Peace Initiative: From de Gaulle to Haaretz

by Fred Maroun • May 17, 2016 at 4:00 am

France's peace initiative is French President François Hollande's equivalent of de Gaulle's betrayal of Israel.
France has already announced that if the peace initiative fails, France will recognize a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rightly concluded that "this ensures that a conference will fail."
France knows that the peace initiative is pointless, but it is using it for theatrical value to embarrass Israel's government and curry favor with Arab regimes.
Those who claim to support peace, but who in fact work to undermine it, are partly responsible for the anti-Semitic campaign against Israel. They should be prominently named and exposed for collaborating with bigots, anti-Semites, and terrorists.

France's peace initiative, which includes an international summit in Paris on May 30 to discuss the "parameters" of a peace deal, is French President François Hollande's equivalent of de Gaulle's betrayal of Israel.

When I hear about the current French peace initiative for Israel and the Palestinians, I have to keep pinching myself to make sure that I am not dreaming. After the powerful United States tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to bring peace between these protagonists, what makes the French think that they can do better?

France's boldness is particularly shocking, since France long ago lost the right to be considered a friend of Israel. In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle imposed an arms embargo on Israel when the Jewish nation was under threat from a coalition of Arab countries. In doing so, de Gaulle threw the Jews under the bus in order to improve France's relations with the Arab world. Thanks to Israeli ingenuity and resiliency, Israel still defeated the Arab coalition in the Six Day War and impressed the United States, which then replaced France as Israel's main ally.

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Iran's Soft War Against America

by Lawrence A. Franklin • May 17, 2016 at 3:00 am

Iran's sophisticated employment of asymmetrical tactics such as "soft war" -- which relies on the other side's wishes, conscious or not, to be taken in -- is apparently part of Tehran's strategy to level the playing field against the U.S., despite America's overwhelming military superiority.
Iran is now being treated by most of the world as a normal nation-state rather than the revolutionary, terror-supporting, totalitarian regime that in reality it is.

The Iranian regime may well attribute recent American concessions to its employment of the soft war tactic of "smile diplomacy": the media-friendly demeanor of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Pictured: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during talks in Vienna, Austria, July 14, 2014. (Image source: U.S. State Department)

Iran is waging a "soft war" offensive -- media, social media, charm -- against the United States. Tehran believes it is scoring significant victories in this war, and it clearly has, as can be seen by the so-called "Iran deal" -- technically no "deal" at all: one side, Iran, got everything.

Iran's sophisticated employment of asymmetrical tactics, such as "soft war" -- which relies on the other side's wishes, conscious or not, to be taken in -- is apparently part of Tehran's strategy to level the playing field against the U.S., despite America's overwhelming military superiority.

Tehran seems to think, with justification, that it has successfully exploited the Obama administration's uncorseted desire for better bilateral relations into granting Iran concessions that are not part of the original Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA).

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