UN Condemns US - Bites Hand Feeding It

UN Condemns US - Bites Hand Feeding It

Commentary by Sanford D. HornDecember 22, 2017

The United Nations, on Thursday, December 21, cast what must only be interpreted as a symbolic vote condemning the United States for making the long overdue decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and announcing its intention to move the American embassy there, from Tel Aviv.

While symbolic to be sure, as it will not alter the decision made by the United States, it is the definition of that symbolism that speaks volumes. The UN, increasingly anti-American and always, historically, anti-Israel, demonstrated why, as an organization, it is less and less relevant.

News flash: Jerusalem, in fact, is actually the capital of Israel - of that there can be no disputing. Yet the vote, an overwhelming rebuke of the United States’ declaration, was rife with ignorance and hatred - again no surprise. The final tally looked like a pasting The Ohio State University football team would hand to a local Columbus high school: 128-9.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Only eight countries stood with the United States in support of an announcement declaring what is already a historical fact, while 128 nations condemned the United States, and by conjunction, Israel, again, for publicly stating what is factual data. It is akin for condemning the science teacher for declaring the world is round, or the math teacher for a pronouncement that one plus one equals two - a real flair for the obvious.

Standing with the United States: Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, and Togo. Thank you for having the courage to do the right thing.

Enter US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley who delivered a dynamite speech before the UN as she continues performing an excellent job in her appointed capacity. Haley said the United States exercised its right as a sovereign nation recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and for planning to move its embassy to that city.

“That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that. But this vote will make a difference on how America looks at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN. And this vote will be remembered,” said Haley.

“Let them vote against us,” said President Donald Trump, adding, “we’ll save a lot [of money].” This is yet another example of Trump’s boldness to keep his word, his promise, and follow through on what previous American presidents - Democrat and Republican alike failed to do.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the vote on Thursday “preposterous…. Jerusalem has always been Israel’s capital, and Jerusalem will always be Israel’s capital.”

This condemnation is hardly new nor surprising where Israel is concerned. According to Jake Tapper, Chief Washington Correspondent for CNN, between 2012 and 2015, the United Nations General Assembly voted 97 times to condemn a specific nation - 83 of those condemnations targeted Israel. Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East, the sole Jewish state on the planet, has been the subject of 86 percent of the UN’s condemnations.

Sure, that makes sense, after all, Israel is guilty of human rights violations such as denying women the right to walk in public alone, beheadings, the slaughter of children, the rape of women, murdering Christians and homosexuals… oh, wait, that’s NOT Israel. That’s a cadre of Arab/Muslim states who are on the receiving end of nary a UN chastisement. Arabs and Muslims live more freely in Israel than in Arab/Muslim nations. Christians are not attacked for being Christian in Israel and Israel hosts one of the world’s largest gay pride parades on an annual basis.

How does this vote benefit those 128 countries? If anything it demonstrates their animus toward both the United States and Israel. It demonstrates they are in the pockets of the 57 Arab/Muslim countries and that those 128 nations fear the Arab/Muslim countries while disrespecting the United States. That is, until those nations come crying to the United States for funding or to use its influence for their benefit.

Regarding that funding, for 2017, the Regular Budget of the United Nations is $2.6 billion, of which the United States contributes 22 percent. Of the Peacekeeping Budget of $7.8 billion, the United States contributes 28.4 percent. That does not count the use of the hall, the local police and security in and around the UN headquarters in New York City.

It is high time the United States start talking with its dollars. First, pull and/or decrease the funding the United States provides any of the 128 nations that voted against the US. For many years I have called for countries voting against the United States in the UN 50 percent of the time or more should receive absolutely nothing - not one red cent. Clearly, those countries do not have the back of the United States. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), during his failed 2016 presidential campaign, put forth the notion of each country starting at zero dollars and then making the case for why they should receive any funding on an annual basis. Unless a nation provides some security benefit for the United States, such as a military base, or unless there is a humanitarian need, the funding should be curtailed. Those funds should revert back to the US for use on domestic programs such as national security or desperately needed infrastructure repair.

Second, kick the United Nations out of the United States. Most of these nations don’t like the United States, thus, they can set up shop in Brussels, Geneva, Paris, or even Moscow. Let one of their countries pay the mother lode of expenditures. Revoke the diplomatic immunity retroactively in order to require any UN miscreants and denizens to pay their parking tickets, be tried and serve time for the crimes of rape, murder, and human/sex trafficking.

Lastly, the United Nations building should be converted into housing - apartments or condominiums for homeless and/or disabled veterans. At least those expenses can be justified to the American people. The residents can live there rent/mortgage free under the proviso that they maintain the units and overall property to acceptable New York City standards. The building, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, opened in 1952, and is located on First Avenue between 42nd Street and 48th Street.

Interestingly, Ambassador Haley announced a reception will be held for the 65 nations that did not vote to condemn the United States. This includes the aforementioned nine nations who voted no, the 35 countries that abstained, as well as the 21 who did not attend the vote at all. For the results of the vote, nation by nation, please visit: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/943895292138741760/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Fsections%2Fthetwo-way%2F2017%2F12%2F21%2F572565091%2Fu-n-votes-overwhelmingly-to-condemn-trumps-jerusalem-decision

May G-d continue to Bless the United States of America and Israel.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Opposite Day at UN: Saudis on Women's Rights Commission

Opposite Day at UN: Saudis on Women’s Rights Commission

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

April 27, 2017

Proving itself once again to be irrelevant and pedantic, the United Nations, in its infinite superciliousness, voted to appoint the open minded and tolerant Saudi Arabia to the UN Women’s Rights Commission.

Go ahead, go back and read that again – yes, Saudi Arabia elected to sit on the UN Women’s Rights Commission. (This is the same United Nations that, in 2014, appointed those great bastions of liberal democracy, China, Cuba, and Iran, to serve on a committee overseeing global human rights.)

How is that possible? Has the Klan been charged with running the NAACP? Has ham suddenly been declared kosher? Reminds one of the Seinfeld episode where perennial loser George Costanza became a winner by doing the opposite of his instinctual thoughts.

Saudi Arabia is a country affording women practically no rights short of breathing. Women in Saudi Arabia are neither permitted to obtain a driver’s license or drive a motor vehicle. According to Sharia Law, women in Saudi Arabia must don head coverings in public, and while out in public are required to be chaperoned my a male family member, even one who is younger than the female.

This is the same Saudi Arabia inflicting forced marriages upon girls – children as young as 10 years old. Saudi women require permission from a male to marry, work, travel, garner health care, or gain release from prison. Additionally, Saudi women do not possess the right to file legal claims or even rent an apartment.

In fact, in 2006, a victim of a horrific gang rape was sentenced to 200 lashes for being out in public without a male guardian. So, naturally, Saudi Arabia is qualified to serve on the UN’s Women’s Rights Commission.

Then again, this is the same United Nations that perpetually charges Israel with human rights violations while countries like Angola, China, Cuba, Iran, Mauritania, Sudan, and Syria commit atrocities against their own populations sans condemnation.

At the very least, the United States should stop paying the freight and bearing the brunt of the UN’s expenses while absorbing the traffic tickets on which foreigners with diplomatic immunity are permitted to skate. The United States is on the hook for 22 percent of United Nations’ budgeted expenses – the most of any country. The 192 visiting countries can pack their crap, get out of the United States and head to Paris or The Hague.

For the sake of global progress, the United Nations should be disbanded. Any organization that would condemn the only democracy in the Middle East that provides more rights to Palestinians and Arabs than Arab nations, while permitting a despotic nation to sit on a women’s rights commission, clearly serves no purpose.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Voter ID V. Genocide: UN's Quandary

Voter ID V. Genocide: UN’s Quandary
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
March 14, 2012

If this doesn’t drive you to the brink of insanity, nothing will. The voter identification laws of Texas and South Carolina rejected by the United States Justice Department will next be presented before the United Nations.

Activists opposed to voter ID requirements are taking their case to the world body on the grounds of human rights violations. The Human Rights Council will hear this in Geneva as an issue of minority rights with a presentation to be made by a representative of the NAACP, who claims the voter ID laws are discriminatory and will lead to voter suppression. Supporters of the ID laws believe, and correctly so, that voter fraud will be prevented.

Two Americans will testify at the hearing. One woman from Virginia, convicted of drug offenses, believes she will be denied the right to vote. This is a non-starter as felony convictions are a legal and automatic loss of voter rights. And the Commonwealth is not at issue here.

The other American, a student attending Texas Christian University claims his right to vote will be denied as his only forms of identification consist of his TCU student ID as well as an out of state driver’s license. This doesn’t pass the smell test either as the student is mobile enough to be able to procure a state ID, especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a major metropolis. Besides, shouldn’t an out of state driver’s license preclude the TCU student from voting in a Texas election? Otherwise, get a Texas license or vote absentee in the state where you are registered.

This is an absolute absurdity that American voter ID laws constitute a violation of minority rights and an even bigger absurdity that the United Nations, a traditionally anti-American body, would hear such a case. Serious human rights violations are being committed in China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Syria, Uganda, and countless other rogue nations where thousands of innocent men, women and children are systematically being used as slave labor, the victims of physical torture and mutilation, starvation, child trafficking, rape and outright slaughter.

Where is the UN when a 16-year-old Moroccan girl commits suicide after her RAPIST is allowed to marry her in order to escape a prison term and to preserve the reputation of the victim’s family? Amina Filali opted to down rat poison than suffer the inhumanity of living a life, if one could call it that, with the piece of detritus that stole her virtue and innocence, raping Filali when she was but 15-years-old. It is simply unconscionable that women can be treated with such disregard to force upon them such permanent pain and suffering, both physically and psychologically.

Where is the UN when a Ugandan cult leader, Joseph Kony, head of the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army has been on a systematic reign of terror abducting children to become forced sex slaves and child soldiers? Since his despotic reign began in 1986 roughly 66,000 children have been used as soldiers, many ordered to kill their own parents and other family members. Indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague in 2005, Kony remains at large, described by many as impossible to see as the wind.

Where has the UN been during the years of rebels butchering, maiming and severing the limbs of children during the ongoing blood diamond atrocities?

To make this all the more tragically laughable, is that the UN Human Rights Council includes the likes of such benevolent nations as communist China, Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba, Kuwait and Qatar, which only allowed women to vote in 2005 and 2003 respectively, and Saudi Arabia which won’t grant woman suffrage until 2015. In fact women still are not permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia.

Yes, by all means, this council should hear how the United States is suppressing the black and Hispanic votes because of the torturous, demeaning and life threatening demands of – wait for it – showing a state approved photo identification card.

This is simply a ploy by the Obama administration and the Democrats to paint Republicans as vote suppressors, when in reality they are attempting to ensure the sanctity of every registered voter’s vote and the integrity of all elections. Part of the proof comes from the state of Georgia which endeavored to provide mobile voter registration and provide state ID free of charge, and that was also decried by opponents of voter ID laws as discriminatory.

And why is it, I ask rhetorically, just the liberals and Democrats that oppose voter ID laws, while conservatives and Republicans support them? Is it possible only the GOP supports clean elections that give all voters the confidence that when they vote, those votes will count under a system of integrity sans voter fraud?

Thirty-one states already have voter ID laws and they are not designed to disenfranchise any voter that is legitimately registered. ANY account of voter fraud is one too many. And since Saudi Arabia sits on this Human Rights Council, it is imperative to disclose that although women are not permitted to vote, ALL males 18 years and older are required to obtain the state identification card.

And while the UN feels compelled to scrutinize over American voter ID laws, where were they in 2008 when the New Black Panther Party was busy committing voter intimidation with night sticks and bully clubs in Philadelphia? For that matter, where was Attorney General Eric Holder?

This UN circus is just that, and really, has no bearing on the legal system in the United States. Holder, however, is our problem and is without a doubt one of the most incompetent attorney generals in American history. While Obama will never ask for Holder’s resignation, he should have the smarts to know when he is sinking in the quicksand. And therein lies the problem – the lack of smarts to know what is in the best interest of the United States. The United Nations should be booted out of the country, relocate to Paris and begin anew sans les Etats Unis.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.