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Resources updated between Monday, December 27, 2021 and Sunday, January 2, 2022

December 31, 2021

The U.N. Human Rights Council

"At the turn of a new year, people traditionally make resolutions to improve themselves. So, what is the United Nations setting itself to do better in 2022?

Answer: Launching an onslaught against Israel even more malicious and far-reaching than the U.N.’s previous attempts to delegitimize and destroy it.

In the past week, the U.N. General Assembly approved an annual $5 million budget for a commission of inquiry, led by the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, which has unprecedented scope to demonize Israel.

The ostensible context for this inquiry, which was launched in a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in May, was the conflict that month when, under attack from thousands of rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza to kill Israeli civilians, Israel launched Operation Guardian of the Walls to defend itself.

Of the 236 Gazans who were killed during that conflict, at least 114 were members of terrorist organizations and 21 were killed by fellow Gazans as a result of rocket misfire.

The inquiry, however, has been set up as a kangaroo court. It’s not just that the UNHRC resolution failed to mention the rocket onslaught against Israeli civilians by Hamas, or its use of Gazan civilians as human shields.

The inquiry has clearly been set up to find Israel guilty of the human rights crimes of which it is both innocent and the victim — and furthermore, to declare it guilty of such crimes not just in Gaza and the 'West Bank' but within Israel itself.

Moreover, its remit includes 'all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.'

So, it’s poised to accuse Israel of the purported crime of its very existence going back to its creation in 1948, as well as libel it with the false charge of 'apartheid' which has become the defining smear of Israel-bashing circles.

Worse still, its scope and reach are astonishing and unprecedented. As Anne Bayefsky points out in a devastating article for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the commission will have 24 permanent staff members. This compares to 20 permanent staffers for the council’s branch covering all of Asia, Pacific and the Middle East, or more than 60 percent of the world’s population.

And its aim is to single out Israelis for criminal charges.

To that end, it will have four full-time lawyers, plus a 'forensic expert' to 'report on medico-legal issues,' and a 'military adviser' to pronounce on 'de jure command responsibility' and liaise with law enforcement officials.

This is designed to cripple Israel’s capacity to defend itself against murderous and existential attack. 'In effect, the budget of this U.N. inquisition funds the creation of a law firm inside the U.N. dedicated to manufacturing charges and mounting a global chase to arrest and incarcerate Israeli Jews,' Bayefsky writes...

This is not just Israel’s problem. As long as the West ignores the profound corruption of the UNHRC, it corrupts itself.

How to make the world a better place in 2022? Shut down the UNHRC."

New Year’s resolution? Abolish the U.N. "Human Rights" Council

December 30, 2021

United Nations in Geneva (File photo)

The U.N.’s perpetual, painful probe

The United Nations General Assembly (File photo)

U.N. inquiry comes with new independent façade, same anti-Israel bias

December 29, 2021

The Gaza fence (File photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Israeli civilian injured by gunfire from Gaza

"The ZOA strongly supports the initiative calling for submissions to the UN’s newly created diabolical 'Commission of Inquiry.' As Professor Bayefsky has alerted us, the United Nations has created this rigged 'Inquiry' to devastate Israel by labeling it a racist enterprise, criminalizing its self-defense and ravishing its economy through BDS.

The Chair of this three-person 'Inquiry' is former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. Pillay was the world’s leading champion of the UN’s antisemitic hate fest in Durban, South Africa, as well as the key sponsor and defender of the UN’s Goldstone report and its blood libel that Israel targets and murders civilians. Since leaving office, she has pedaled BDS and accused Israel of apartheid. Hence, this 'Inquiry' is indeed a witch hunt, rightly labeled 'Pillay’s Pogrom.'

As Bayefsky indicates, submissions are, therefore, not about changing the minds of the inquisitors, but about educating those who remain open to learning the truth about the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Submissions are about delegitimizing the delegitimizers. About exposing antisemitism and calling it out as such. About urging others to stand with the people of Israel and to object to the perversion of law and to the falsification of right and wrong by the United Nations.

Help Israel and the Jewish people by answering this call. Make a submission."

Zionist Organization of America Press Release on Fighting New U.N. Anti-Israel Action

Myanmar armed forces (File photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

"Absolutely horrifying": Two aid workers confirmed dead in Myanmar massacre

December 28, 2021

The United Nations in Geneva (File photo)

The U.N.’s Israel Libel Machine Expands

A church in Nigeria (File photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Nigeria: Dozens Killed, Abducted on Christmas After Jihadists Demand Churches Close

December 27, 2021

A Taliban member beating a woman (Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Afghanistan's Taliban ban long-distance road trips for solo women