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Palestinian Authority (PA) Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki on Tuesday stated his certainty that a committee appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will find Israel guilty of "war crimes" in Operation Protective Edge. "We have full confidence that this commission is going to do everything to demonstrate that Israel has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity in its attack on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip," al-Maliki said during an official visit to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, reports AFP. Al-Maliki added "we are going to cooperate with this commission when it arrives in Palestine. We know...

With the UN everything is possible and this Fox News report by George Russell certainly raises some questions. While controversy continues to swirl around the huge Hamas tunnel network in Gaza, an internal United Nations audit report reveals that a U.N. Development Program office that funds and monitors spending on construction in the territory allowed at least five non-staff contract employees to handle “core” procurement processes that only staffers are supposed to handle, including those for ordering up “significant” civil construction activities.At the same time, the office’s internal financial tracking system — a UNDP-wide system known as Atlas — was...

Prof. William Schabas, a Canadian law professor chosen to helm a United Nations commission examining possible war crimes in Gaza scoffed Monday at charges he's biased against Israel, but his past utterances leave little doubt as to his lack of objectivity. According to the Canadian Press, Schabas once suggested in a speech that he believes Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should be "in the dock of an international court." He also wrote in a law journal article that the Israeli prime minister could be regarded as "the single individual most likely to threaten the survival of Israel." "The suggestion that...

A three-member panel appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will investigate allegations that Israel violated humanitarian law in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The commission of inquiry will be headed by Canada’s William Schabas, an international law professor at Middlesex University in London who served on the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2002 to 2004, the UN council said in an e-mailed statement to the news website. The other members are Amal Alamuddin, a British-Lebanese lawyer who previously worked at the International Court of Justice, and Doudou Diene of Senegal, the...

Clinical trials of a preventative vaccine for the Ebola virus made by British pharma company GlaxoSmithKline may begin next month and made available by 2015, the World Health Organization said on Saturday. "We are targeting September for the start of clinical trials, first in the United States and certainly in African countries, since that's where we have the cases," Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, the WHO's head of vaccines and immunisation, told French radio. He said he was optimistic about making the vaccine commercially available. "We think that if we start in September, we could already have results by the end of...

The relief agency in Gaza, financed in part by the U.S., has become a patron of Palestinian grievance. On Wednesday, as a truce held between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group ..., United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon briefed the U.N. General Assembly. "The senseless cycle of suffering" must end, he said, asking: "Do we have to continue like this: build, destroy, and build, and destroy?" For answers, the secretary-general would do well to look at the U.N.'s own main agency in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, better known as Unrwa....

United Nations (UN) chief Ban Ki-moon declared on Wednesday that the organization is ready to help rebuild Gaza but it would be “the last time”. Ban opened a special meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with an appeal for a lasting peace as a 72-hour ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was holding for a second day. “The senseless cycle of suffering in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in Israel must end,” he was quoted by AFP as having told the 193-nation assembly. After three wars in Gaza in six years, the UN secretary general warned that...

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter takes to ForeignPolicy.com to argue that the key to ending the current war in Gaza is "recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor." Writing along with fellow "Elder" Mary Robinson (part of an "international group of elder statesmen"), the former president pins the blame for the current conflict on Israel's refusal to appreciate a "major concession" made by Hamas in April and to recognize the new Palestinian government formed by the Hamas-Fatah "reconciliation": This tragedy results from the deliberate obstruction of a promising move toward peace in the region, when a reconciliation agreement among...

The UN is going bonkers because they say another one of their schools in Gaza was shelled. Ten people were killed and dozens injured, but read this account carefully from The Guardian: A deadly attack on a school in the city of Rafah in the south of Gaza has been denounced as a “moral outrage” and “criminal act” by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. At least 10 people were killed and dozens more wounded after a projectile struck a street outside the school gates on Sunday morning.The school was sheltering more than 3,000 people displaced by fighting in...

The conflict in Gaza should not be an excuse for anti-Semitic slurs and attacks, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said late Sunday. Ban “deplores the recent upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks, particularly in Europe, in connection with protests concerning the escalation of violence in Gaza,” read a statement from the UN leader’s spokesman. “The Secretary-General emphasizes that the conflict in the Middle East must not constitute a pretext for prejudice that could affect social peace and harmony anywhere.” …

Israel was once again criticized on Sunday for an attack on a United Nations school in Gaza, which the United States said was “disgraceful”. According to the AFP news agency, in one of the most strongly-worded statements yet from Washington since the conflict began nearly a month ago, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was "appalled" by the attack on the school in Rafiah. At least 10 people were killed in the shelling, the third time in 10 days that a UN school has been hit in fighting. "The United States is appalled by today's disgraceful shelling...

This week we learned that former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the elected choice of the wealthy denizens of San Francisco, believes that Hamas is a humanitarian organization. Qatar, Hamas’ principle supporter, told her so. From former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton we learned that the reason Hamas’ weapons are found stored in civilian sites -- schools, mosques, hospitals, and UNWRA buildings -- is because the area is so small there’s nowhere else to hide them. And from the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, the viciously anti-Israeli Navi Pillay, we learned that the Israel may have committed war...

In what may be one of the most ridiculous accusations yet against Israel, the UN's top human rights official condemned Israel on Thursday for failing to share the Iron Dome anti-missile system with Hamas, Breitbart reports. According to the report, human rights commissioner Navi Pillay condemned Israel’s military actions to stop Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, telling reporters that Israel was “deliberately defying International Law... in a way that may constitute war crimes.” "There is a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes,” Breitbart quoted Pillay as saying following...

The UN's top human rights official again condemned Israel for its military actions to stop Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, accusing the Jewish state of “deliberately defying International Law... in a way that may constitute war crimes.” Navi Pillay told reporters following yet another "emergency" meeting of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council that Israel was not doing enough to protect civilians. "There is a strong possibility,” said the known Israel critic, “that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.” Among the UN’s long bill of particulars against the beleaguered Jewish state...

Obama and the U.N.’s Alternate UniversePosted By Bruce Thornton On August 1, 2014 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments Barack Obama has managed to push American foreign policy into an alternate universe in which everything the human race has learned over the past 2500 years about human nature, aggression, and its deterrence has been stood on its head. He is not solely to blame for this. For 150 years the West had indulged the illusion that human nature is progressing away from our violent past toward a world of reason in which conflict can be resolved and negotiated...

The US has said the shelling of a UN shelter in Gaza is "totally unacceptable and totally indefensible". In its strongest criticism yet of Israel's offensive in the Palestinian territory, the US - Israel's closest ally - also said the civilian casualties were "too high". It urged Israel to do more to protect civilian life. Israel says its offensive in Gaza is designed to defend its population from attacks by Palestinian militants. The UN has also criticised Israel over the worsening situation in Gaza, saying people there are "facing a precipice".

Australia is grieving the loss of 28 lives taken too soon over the skies of Eastern Ukraine. It reminds us that in each act of war there is also collateral damage and always unspeakable suffering and loss. Behind each act of aggression are soldiers led by commanders who are led by leaders and governments all playing the age old battle for territorial and ideological gain.When thinking about those innocent people shot out of the sky over Eastern Ukraine, we already understand that the greatest casualty in this tragedy, as well as the wider conflict in Ukraine, is always “the...

Thirty-two countries have written to a U.N. General Assembly committee asking the United Nations to recognize Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur, as an official holiday. The letter to the assembly’s Committee on Conferences, circulated on Wednesday, says the U.N. “recognizes the major festivals of many of the world’s main religions, yet Judaism is not represented.”“We believe that the United Nations calendar should reflect the organization’s founding principles of coexistence, justice and mutual respect,” the 32 countries said. “We urge the United Nations to correct this inequity and recognize the holiest day of the Jewish faith.” …

Deputy FM Hanegbi says that “instead of blaming Israel, UNRWA should make a real effort to stop being manipulated by terrorist organizations.” Israel has ample evidence that Hamas is using UNRWA schools and facilities for terrorist purposes, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said Wednesday. Speaking at a press briefing in Jerusalem, he pointed out that on three separate occasions UNRWA itself has admitted that rockets were hidden in the basement of their facilities. “Who knows how many were not found,” he said, adding that this phenomenon was “totally unacceptable.” Each time that the rockets were found, he said, they were...

The United Nations Relief & Works Agency For Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced Tuesday that another rocket stockpile has been found at one of its schools in Gaza. This instance marks the third time since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge that a weapons arsenal has been found at an UNRWA school in Gaza. UNRWA has yet to place blame on any individuals or organizations for placing the weapons stockpile within a children’s school. The UN body refused to do so on the past two previous occasions as well.The UN body, after both previous findings, has handed the rockets it had...