Iran was elected to a top post on the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference, UN Watch revealed on Sunday. The Geneva-based human rights group is calling on UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who addressed the conference on the same day, to condemn the selection of the Tehran regime.
UNHRC on Friday named three women to the panel, one accused Israel of "total discrimination," another's sister served on the Goldstone commission.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s welcome on the sunny Ipanema beach in Rio was less than warm from an eclectic group of Jews, human rights activists, and homosexuals, who arrived Sunday to protest the Iranian president’s attendance at a UN summit on sustainable development.
The Palestinian Authority will attempt to register the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as a world heritage site in the country of Palestine when the World Heritage Committee meets in Russia from June 24 to July 6.
Belgium’s health minister Laurette Onkelinx said she was “profoundly troubled” by the behavior of her Israeli counterpart, Yaakov Litzman, after the Haredi official refused to shake her hand at a conference. The website Juif.org wrote: "There are indeed only two possibilities: either this lady is ignorant, or has malicious intent."
By JTA
Jewish reaction was mixed to the election of the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande as the president of France while Jewish leaders in Greece expressed concern and disappointment after the fascist Golden Dawn party was poised to enter the Greek parliament for the first time.
Belgian Jews are at loggerheads as a result of an EU vote to dispatch the UN to Israel on a mission to scrutinize Jewish towns and communities in Judea and Samaria.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has announced that Israel had severed all working relations with the UN Human Rights Council as of Monday this week, and will block a U.N. fact finding team from entering Israel or Judea and Samaria to investigate Jewish settlements. Spokesman Yigal Palmor said this "means that we're not going to work with them. We're not going to let them carry out any kind of mission, including this probe."
By The United Nations Relief and Works Agency
The Commissioner-General of UNRWA expressed his gratitude for the crucial support extended by the United States: "The United States remains UNRWA's largest bilateral donor and this latest contribution again demonstrates America's strong support to the Agency and its activities, of which improving the lives of Palestinian refugee youth, and the opportunities open to them, is such an important part."
By Rafi Harkham
Deputy FM Danny Ayalon said Israel would not be cooperating with the Council in the wake of its passage of a resolution ordering a 'fact-finding mission' into Israel's conduct in Judea and Samaria: "We have no reason to continue cooperating with a hypocritical organization which specializes in double-speak and has a mission to smear us."
At a speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, coinciding with the Super Tuesday primaries, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum accused President Barack Obama of appeasement of Iran and urged an ultimatum demanding that it put a stop to its nuclear production immediately, or the US will "tear down" its plants. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich took a break from their race for votes in the high-stakes primaries to speak to the pro-Israel lobby.
The Security Council statement, read to the media, "condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in New Delhi, India, aimed at Israel's diplomatic personnel, which resulted in injuries to diplomatic personnel and civilians, and the recent attempted terrorist attack in Tbilisi, Georgia." The Council also "reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations […]