Tag Archives: United Nations

Palestinians Accuse Israel of War Crimes at International Criminal Court

Just days after the United Nations shut down Palestinian attempts to force the world to recognize them as a nation, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority are now attempting to attack Israel in an international court.

The Palestinians claim that Israel committed war crimes beginning on June 13, 2014, the day after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian affiliated terrorists.

The move comes after Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas signed the ICC’s founding treaty and filed a formal request for Palestine to be considered a member state.  It will take weeks for that process to be approved by the Court.

Palestine had been upgraded in a unanimous vote to “observer status” in December.  The previous times Palestine has come after Israel at the ICC the cases have been dismissed because Palestine had no authority over the areas where they alleged crimes had taken place.

A PLO official told Haarets News Agency that it was important to get Palestine in the ICC because then civilian groups could file lawsuit after lawsuit against Israel.

UN Security Council Rejects Palestinian Statehood Resolution

Palestinian leaders were shocked Tuesday when their resolution for Palestinian statehood was rejected by the U.N. Security Council by an 8-2 vote with 5 nations abstaining.

The measure needed 9 “yes” votes for the measure to pass.

The resolution would have created a 12 month timetable for negotiations for a final peace deal with Israel.  The measure would also require Israel to pull out of the West Bank within three years and declare that East Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state.

Palestinian leaders had told press sources before the vote they had the nine votes required to pass the measure and force the United States to use their veto as a permanent member to stop the action.  However, Nigeria and Rwanda, which the Palestinians expected to support them, abstained from the vote at the last minute.

Only the U.S. and Australia voted no on the measure.  The five nations that abstained from the vote (effectively helping stop passage) were the U.K., Lithuania, South Korea, Nigeria and Rwanda.

France, China, Russia, Argentina, Chad, Chile, Jordan and Luxembourg voted in favor.

Israeli officials were furious French officials who voted in favor of the measure despite claiming they had serious issues with the wording of the resolution.  France had tried to push forward what they termed a “more moderate resolution” that did not include the timetables and other demands on Israel made by the Palestinians and their supporters.

State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters that many countries agreed with the U.S. that the measure was “unconstructive and poorly timed.”

“We think it sets arbitrary deadlines for reaching a peace agreement and for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank, and those are more likely to curtail useful negotiations than to bring them to a successful conclusion,” Rathke said. “Further, we think that the resolution fails to account for Israel’s legitimate security needs.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ahead of the vote if the Security Council did not reject the resolution, “we will.”  He added that direct negotiations and not imposed conditions are the only way to reach a long lasting peace in the region.

Palestinians Plan UN Resolution For Statehood

Officials at the United Nations say Palestinian leaders are quietly putting together a draft resolution that would recognize statehood for Palestine.

Despite opposition from Israel and U.S. officials, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would be pushing forward with the resolution that calls for a peace deal with Israel within a year and an “end to occupation of Palestinian territories by 2017.”

“Today the Arab group will meet in New York, and we will submit the original draft resolution to the Security Council hoping to conclude the vote by tomorrow or the day after,” senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told Reuters.

The crux of the resolution would be negotiations for the deal with Israel that would require the land captured by Israel in the 1967 war be returned to Palestine.

The proposal would also say that East Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state and calls for an end to Israeli settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

“We will continue to rebuff vigorously attempts to force terms that would jeopardize our security,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

ISIS Using Children As Human Shields

A new United Nations report is outlining the ways ISIS has been brutalizing children.

The UN International Children’s Fund says that over 5 million children have had their lives directly impacted by ISIS actions.  Thousands of children have been used both as human shields by the terrorists or have been strapped to tables and had their blood drawn for terrorists wounded in attacks.

The report outlines specific instances where the terrorists were using children to create propaganda devices.  In one case, the terrorists went to a hospital and pulled two cancer stricken children out of bed to pose in a picture holding an ISIS flag with fighters.

The report outlines statements from former teenage fighters that say ISIS is forcing children to take drugs so they will carry out any order including suicide terror attacks.

In addition to the front line uses, the terrorists are also forcing children to be domestic servants, cooking, cleaning and bringing water to the wounded in makeshift hospitals.

UN Says ISIS Has Enough Weapons For Two Years

A new report from the United Nations says that ISIS has stored enough weapons to continue their fight for at least two more years.

The report says that the supply estimate is taking U.S. airstrikes into account.

“According to different sources, the amounts of Iraqi small arms and ammunition captured by ISIL are sufficient to allow ISIL to continuing fighting at current levels for six months to two years,” the report states. “ISIL should have few problems maintaining state-of-the-art materials seized from the Iraqi Government, as most were unused.”

The terrorists have seized Iraqi and Syrian weapon caches from cities in the Anbar, Diyala and Salah al-Din provinces.

“Both ISIL and [Al Nursa Front] have seized military assets from conventional armies,” the report says. “The scale of these seizures can be grasped by noting that ISIL, in June of 2014, captured vehicles, weapons, and ammunition sufficient to arm and equip more than three Iraqi conventional army divisions.”

The report says that in addition to the weapons, ISIS makes about a million dollars a day from oil sales and over $45 million in the last year from kidnapping ransoms.

UN: Ebola Could Trigger Food Crisis

The United Nations says that the Ebola crisis in west Africa could end up bringing a widespread famine that leads to more deaths than the virus will end up causing at the end of the outbreak.

The announcement came on the eve of the UN’s World Food Day Thursday.

“The world is mobilizing and we need to reach the smallest villages in the most remote locations,” Denise Brown, the U.N. World Food Program’s regional director for West Africa, said in a statement Wednesday. “Indications are that things will get worse before they improve. How much worse depends on us all.”

The World Food Program says that over 1.3 million people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are lacking enough food.  The organization says they don’t have enough supplies for everyone and currently are able to reach up to 700,000 people a month.

The WFP is providing food to families of Ebola victims.

“We are assessing how families are coping as the virus keeps spreading,” an organization spokesman said. “We expect to have a better understanding of the impact of the Ebola outbreak on food availability and farming activities by the end of October.”

Teen Taliban Tried To Kill Wins Nobel Peace Prize

A teen girl who stood up to the Taliban and survived an attempted assassination has received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala Yousafzai is the first teenager to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala was a teen advocate for girls being given an education, which went against the edicts of the Islamic terrorist group.  The Taliban tried to assassinate the then 15-year-old as she traveled to school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in October 2012.  The bullet struck above her left eye and grazed her brain but did not cause fatal damage.

She was flown to Britain where she received treatment and now attends school.  She is still a worldwide advocate for the rights of women in Islamic countries and to raise awareness of the treatment of women by Islamic groups such as the Taliban and ISIS.

“The extremists were and they are afraid of books and pens,” Yousafzai said in a speech last year at a UN youth assembly. “The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them.”

“The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambition,” Yousafzai said last year. “But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born.”

UN: “Thousands Will Be Massacred”

The United Nations is saying that unless action is taken to stop the Islamic terrorist group ISIS from overtaking the city of Kobani, “thousands will most likely be massacred.”

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura says that Kobani is on the verge of suffering the fate of the Bosnian town of Srebrenica where 8,000 were killed by Serbs in 1995.

“If this falls, the 700, plus perhaps the 12,000 people, apart from the fighters, will be most likely massacred,” de Mistura said. The United Nations believes 700 mainly elderly civilians are trapped in the town itself and 12,000 have left the center but not made it across the border into Turkey.”

“Do you remember Srebrenica? We do. We never forgot and probably we never forgave ourselves.  When there is an imminent threat to civilians, we cannot, we should not, be silent.”

The threat of the massacres of Kurds in the city is causing problem in Turkey, where Turkish Kurds are rising up against the government for their not stepping in to help stop the killing of their kin.

UN Worker Infected With Ebola In Germany For Treatment

A United Nations medical official who tested positive for Ebola has arrived in Leipzig, Germany for isolation and treatment.

The medic is the second member of the U.N.’s medical team to contract the virus.  The first member of the team infected died on September 25th.

“The man will be treated on an isolation ward… with strict security measures,” Dr Iris Minde, head of Leipzig’s St Georg clinic wrote in a press statement. “There is no danger of infection for other patients, relatives, visitors or the public.”

The clinic says their staff is fully trained in dealing with highly infectious diseases.

Meanwhile, two doctors who treated a Spanish nursing assistant who contracted Ebola from a priest who had been transported to Spain after his infection are under observation as a precaution.  Neither the doctors nor the husband of the infected woman are showing signs of Ebola but remain quarantined.

Teresa Romero was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday and is the first person to catch the disease outside of Africa.  Two other nurses who attended to the priest are in isolation and observation.

The death toll from the Ebola outbreak is closing in on 3,900.

UN Ebola Chief Fears Disease Could Go Airborne

The head of the U.N.’s Ebola response says that unless it’s brought under control quickly, the risk is growing likely the virus will mutate and become airborne.

Anthony Banbury said it would be a “nightmare” scenario if the virus were to mutate within new hosts to become airborne.

“The longer it moves around in human hosts in the virulent melting pot that is West Africa, the more chances increase that it could mutate,” Banbury told the London Daily Mail.  “It is a nightmare scenario, and unlikely [now], but it can’t be ruled out.”

Banbury also said it was the worst situation he’s ever seen.

“In a career working in these kinds of situations, wars, natural disasters – I have never seen anything as serious or dangerous or high risk as this one.”

The fears of the UN head come as Texas officials admit at least 80 people have been taken into quarantine because of contact with the confirmed Ebola patient in a Dallas area hospital.