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The Obama administration condemned the deadly shelling of a United Nations school in Gaza Wednesday, using tough, yet carefully worded language that reflects growing White House irritation with Israel and the mounting civilian casualties stemming from its ground and air war against Hamas. The U.S. frustrations were compounded by a flurry of Israeli media reports this week that appeared aimed at discrediting President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who spent days trying to negotiate an unsuccessful cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. In unusually blunt language, a State Department spokeswoman on Wednesday repeatedly described one of the reports...

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon spoke Wednesday at a summit in Costa Rica where he placed blame on Israel for an attack at a UN school in Gaza. Not once mentioning Hamas in his speech, Ban said: This morning, yet another United Nations school sheltering thousands of Palestinian families suffered a reprehensible attack. All available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause. Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children. At least 16 civilians are dead, and many more are injured. I want to make it clear that the precise location of this Jabalia Elementary Girls School had...

There needs to be an investigation of the UNRWA over this. Could it really keep happening without any UN officials knowing what was going on? The problem is, who can investigate the United Nations? Not Obama’s investigative or intelligence apparatus. In any case, if we had a President who had America and its allies’ best interests at heart, that President could announce that no U.S. funds would go to the United Nations if any more jihad rockets were found in its schools — and the schools would thenceforth be clear of the rockets. “THIRD Rocket Arsenal Found At UN School...

Christian refugees march against persecution by Islamic State fighters outside the UN compound in Irbil, Iraq (also below - CNS) Iraqi Christian refugees braved temperatures as high as 50ºC (122ºF) to demand that the United Nations intervene to protect them from persecution by Islamist militants.Sahar Mansour, a Chaldean Catholic who fled Mosul, Iraq, in June, told Catholic News Service by email that she saw some of the demonstrators faint in the heat as they marched from their refugee camp in Ankawa to the UN base in Irbil.“We were holding banners in Arabic, English, Chaldean and French against the violence that...

Despite a history of rocky relations between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama administration could largely be counted on to watch Israel's back in the U.N. Security Council, where it succeeded for more than five years in blocking successive efforts by the Palestinians to gain more of the trappings of an independent state and to get the world body to formally censure Israeli settlement policies. That changed after the stroke of midnight Sunday when, in the early minutes of Monday, July 28, the U.N. Security Council, with the backing of the United States, issued...

Despite a history of rocky relations between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama administration could largely be counted on to watch Israel’s back in the U.N. Security Council, where it succeeded for more than five years in blocking successive efforts by the Palestinians to gain more of the trappings of an independent state and to get the world body to formally censure Israeli settlement policies. That changed after the stroke of midnight Sunday when, in the early minutes of Monday, July 28, the U.N. Security Council, with the backing of the United States, issued...

Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on Sunday criticized the United Nations for failing to end “the Zionist regime’s” crimes, AFP reported. The comments came in a conversation with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as Zarif conducted a hefty round of telephone diplomacy to rally support and humanitarian aid for Gazans. He also spoke with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and other regional leaders, stressing that the priority was to get food and medical aid into areas worst hit by Israel’s military offensive, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said. According to AFP, in his conversation with Ban Zarif said...

The United Nations is facing tough criticism and allegations of major misconduct after caches of rockets were found hidden at a UN-run school in Gaza before reportedly being handed to terrorists, sparking a global scandal that threatens to further undermine the credibility of the dictator-dominated world body. Making matters even worse, after being found, the U.S. taxpayer-funded UN “Relief and Works Agency” (UNRWA) handed the deadly rockets over to Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza with an iron fist and hides behind Arab civilians while firing thousands of rockets into Israel. Now the global outfit is complaining that its...

The head of the independent U.N. commission on Syrian war crimes said Friday that commanders of the Islamic State extremist group are “good candidates" to be put on a confidential list of alleged perpetrators. Brazilian diplomat and scholar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said the al-Qaida breakaway group, which now controls a swath of north and eastern Syria, has carried out public executions, crucifixions and other “gross human rights violations.” […] He said the list includes people who are “criminally responsible for hostage-taking, torture and executions;” heads of Syrian intelligence branches and detention facilities where detainees are tortured; military commanders who target...

Amidst news the Israelis have turned down secretary of State Kerry’s latest, apparently Qatar-inspired, ceasefire, not to mention the other day’s nauseatingly familiar anti-Israel fusillade from the mega-Orwellian UN Human Rights Council, comes word that Hamas had been planning a gigantic attack on Israel this September via its dozens of tunnels.From the Gatestone Institute [1]: Hamas had apparently been preparing a murderous assault on Israeli civilian targets for the coming Jewish New Year Holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which begins on September 24, according anonymous sources in the Israeli security services, as reported today [2] by the Israeli daily Maariv.The Hamas...

As legend has it, Groucho Marx sent the Friars Club a telegram that read, “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” At least the Friars Club had standards. What to make of the United Nations? It has a single criterion for membership: existence. Admittedly, this is an unattainable standard for such fictional realms as Westeros, Erewhon, Kreplakistan, and numerous locales from the TV series MacGyver (Gnubia, Kabulstan, et al.). But if you’re a nation-state that actually exists, you’re a shoo-in, like Kate Upton trying to get...

In an urgent message to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako has said that the UN “cannot stand by and be a witness to the ongoing atrocities committed against Christians” in Iraq. While thanking the UN leader for his public condemnation of the violence against Christians in areas controlled by the Islamic State, the Chaldean prelate asked for energetic international pressure to stop the persecution. He emphasized that “the militants want to wipe out the Christian community.” “The instability in Iraq threatens the entire region,” the Patriarch reminded the UN leader. He pleaded for diplomatic action...

What follows is testimony delivered on Wednesday by UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer, at the UN Human Rights Council Emergency Session on Gaza, in Geneva. The Palestinian ambassador to the UNHRC, together with Iran, Syria, Egypt, Cuba and Venezuela had tried but failed to silence Mr. Neuer. As expected, the council voted 29 to 1 (USA), with 17 abstaining (EU & others), to condemn Israel for “gross violations of international human rights,” and it created a new commission of inquiry. ... An entire nation—towns, villages and cities, from the Negev Desert up to the Galilee, from the Judean hills...

Netanyahu calls human rights forum decision a ‘travesty’; US envoy says it lacks ‘balance’ and may undermine ceasefire efforts. The UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday launched a probe into the conflict in Gaza, backing calls by the Palestinians to hold Israel to account despite fierce opposition from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Netanyahu’s media office slammed the decision as a “travesty” that ignored human rights violations by Hamas terrorists. “This investigation by a kangaroo court is a foregone conclusion,” his office said. The United States was the sole member to vote against. The 17 abstentions were by the council’s European...

United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm on Wednesday that 20 rockets found hidden in a United Nations school in Gaza had gone missing and directed the world body to deploy experts to deal with the situation, Reuters reports. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, found the rockets in one of its vacant schools a week ago. It found a second batch in a vacant school on Tuesday, but said in a statement that because staff were withdrawn quickly, they were “unable to confirm the precise number.” […] Ban “expresses his outrage and regret at the...

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Wednesday told United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that Israel would not stand by while Qatar, which paid for the UN official’s private flight to the Middle East, continued to finance Hamas militants, and took Ban to task for the two UN-run schools found to be housing Hamas rockets in Gaza. In his last full day in office, Peres, a historically dovish leader, struck a defiant tone in a statement delivered to the media after meeting Ban at the President’s Residence, in Jerusalem. “Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and...

Navi Pillay said Tel Aviv's two-week onslaught on Gaza - which has cost more than 650 Palestinians lives - would be thoroughly investigated. Ms Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the attacks have destroyed houses and hospitals and killed civilians. "These are just a few examples where there seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes. "Every one of these incidents must be properly and independently investigated." According to Gaza officials, 475 houses have been destroyed and 2,644 damaged, while 46 schools, 56 mosques...

GENEVA, July 23 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Wednesday launched an international inquiry into human rights violations and crimes that may have been committed by Israel during its military offensive in the Gaza Strip. The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned the Israeli assault which it said had involved "disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks", including aerial bombing of civilian areas, collective punishment, and the killing of more than 650 Palestinians. At the end of an emergency session, the 47-member forum adopted a resolution presented by Palestinians by a vote of 29 states in favor, 1 against (the United States) with 17...

 – The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session on Wednesday to consider a draft resolution that condemns Israel repeatedly for its military offensive against Hamas, but does not mention the terrorist group once.The resolution calls for the establishment of an international commission of inquiry to probe allegations that Israel has committed war crimes and violated international law. Alongside multiple criticisms of Israel – whose conduct the council “condemns,” “strongly condemns” and “condemns in the strongest terms” – there is a single reference in the three-page type written draft to rocket attacks on Israeli civilians

No country would accept rockets raining down on its civilians, and all countries and parties have an international obligation to protect civilians, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Ban, who arrived in Israel as part of his effort – together with US Secretary of State John Kerry – to broker a cease-fire, said at a press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the UN position was clear: “We condemn strongly the rocket attacks, and these must stop immediately.” Furthermore, he said, “we condemn the use of civilian sites, schools, hospitals and other civilian facilities for...