Anti-Israel Bias

paul_valaru

100% Pure Canadian Beef
Anti Isreal Bias.

In the UN

Many perceive the UN to be deeply prejudiced against Israel. As evidence, they cite what they say is the disproportionately long list of resolutions concerning Israel [10] especially the 1975 Resolution 3379 which qualified Zionism as a form of racism (revoked by Resolution 4686 and the alleged complicity of UNIFIL in the October 2000 Lebanon abduction of three Israeli Engineering Corps soldiers, by Hezbollah . In September 2004, the bereaved families announced that they intended to sue the UN for its part in the abductions. No legal challenge has to date succeeded in substantiating these claims against the UN.
The perception amongst Israelis that the UN is biased against their country helps explain the refusal of successive Israeli governments to pay attention to the numerous motions passed against Israel by the General Assembly
Starting in the mid-1970s, an Arab-Soviet-Third World bloc joined to form a pro-PLO lobby at the United Nations. This was particularly true in the General Assembly where these countries frequently voted together to pass resolutions attacking Israel and supporting the PLO.[11] An early example would be in 1975, soon after the award of permanent representative status to the PLO, at the instigation of the Arab states and the Soviet Bloc, the Assembly approved Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism and racism.[11]
U.S. Ambassador Daniel Moynihan called the resolution “a reckless and obscene act.”[12] Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog told his fellow delegates the resolution was “based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance.” Hitler, he declared, would have felt at home listening to the UN debate on the measure.[13]
In her June 21, 2004 speech [14] at a Conference on Confronting anti-Semitism: Education for Tolerance and Understanding sponsored by the United Nations Department of Information and in her articles [15], a human rights scholar and activist Anne Bayefsky attending as representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, advocated the necessity of deep reforms within the UN and criticized some of the UN policies and practices:
There is only one entire UN Division devoted to a single group of people: the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights [16] (created in 1977).
The only UN day dedicated to a specific people is November 29 the annual UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
There is only one refugee agency dedicated to a single refugee situation: UNRWA (in operation since 1950).
One of the General Assembly six committees, "the Fourth Committee, routinely devotes 30% of its time to the condemnation of Israel."
"The General Assembly emergency sessions... began in 1956, and since then six of the ten emergency sessions ever held, have been about Israel. The 10th such sessionbegan in 1997 and has been reconvened 13 times. A million dead in Rwandaor two million dead in Sudan might have warranted one General Assembly emergency session."
"...the UN's primary human-rights body is the UN Human Rights Commission. 30% of the resolutions condemning specific states ever adopted over 40 years are directed at Israel." [17]
In August 2004, the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom (UNA-UK) published a report analyzing thirteen years of United Nations resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In light of the study’s conclusions, Malcolm Harper, speaking on behalf of the UNA-UK (of which he was director until recently), called for an examination into how, if at all, the lopsided resolutions contribute to the Middle East peace process. The 76-page report [18] makes the following principal findings:
The texts of UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions are "often unbalanced in terms of the length of criticism and condemnation of Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories as against Palestinian actions such as suicide bombings."
The United Nations is "palpably more critical of Israeli policies and practices than it is of either Palestinian actions or the wider Arab world. However criticism is not necessarily the product of bias."
In resolutions of the UN General Assembly, "violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians, including the use of suicide bombers, is mentioned only a few times and then in only vague terms."
The report also stated "However, criticism is not necessarily a product of bias, and it is not the intention here to suggest that UNGA and UNSC reproaches of Israel stem from prejudice. From the perspective of the UN, Israel has repeatedly flouted fundamental UN tenets and ignored important decisions."
The event celebrating an annual "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" on November 29, 2005 was attended by Kofi Annan and other high-ranking diplomats. In his January 3 2006 letter to Mr. Annan, the US ambassador John Boltoncriticized the UN for promoting anti-Israel agenda and noted that the map prominently displayed at the event "erases the state of Israel" only days after Iran s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech calling to wipe Israel off the map The organizer of the "solidarity" event is the Division for Palestinian Rights (2004-2005 UN budget: $5,449,600). Other bodies include the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories ($254,500), the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People ($60,800), and the Information Activities on the Question of Palestine ($566,000). Similar funding has been approved for the next biannual budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_United_Nations

The United Nations-sponsored World Conference on Racism -- while failing to mention human rights abuses in China, Rwanda, or anyplace in the Arab world -- spoke of Israel’s policies prior to recent struggles under the Barak government as constituting ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The NGO declaration at the same conference was even more virulent.
http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2002/morningprayers.html

"As noted in H. Res. 282, a bipartisan resolution introduced by the distinguished Chairman of the Middle East Subcommittee, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, and adopted in this body last week, the UN Human Rights Commission took several months to correct in its record a statement by the Syrian ambassador that Jews allegedly had killed non-Jewish children to make unleavened bread for Passover.
"If that were not enough, the President of the Human Rights Commission, in 1997, refused to challenge an assertion made by the Palestinian observer that the government of Israel had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus.
http://www.house.gov/chabot/UNamend2005.html

in media

http://patterico.com/2006/07/31/4932/the-incredible-anti-israel-bias-of-the-la-times/

and
AP Headline Casts Palestinians as Victims of Tel Aviv Terror Attack
April 30, 2003
The Associated Press wire service sent out an outrageously distorted headline today concerning yesterday’s Arab terror attack against Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv. It says: “Bomb Mars Historic Day for Palestinians.” This headline not only fails to make clear that the murderous bombing was perpetrated by an Arab against Israeli civilians, but also casts Palestinians as the bombing victims. The real victims, as the article by Yoav Appel notes, were the three murdered Israelis (Yanai Weiss, 46; Ran Baron, 24; and Dominique Caroline Hess, 29) and dozens of injured Israelis who were enjoying an evening of entertainment at the Tel Aviv pub.
Surely the Arab bombing attack marred the day of Israeli families whose loved ones were killed and Israelis who lost their limbs more than it marred the day of Palestinians swearing in a new prime minister. The headline should have accurately reflected these events.
from camera.org

and

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=15&x_outlet=36&x_article=1175
 
You're preaching mostly to the choir (well, there is this one guy in back...)

The UN is the most anti-American anti-Israeli organization in the world. Yet, those silly UN delegates keep coming to NYC & abusing the system. A city full of Jews in a country full of hicks & still they partake in our riches. Where's Paris in all this?
 
Geesh, talk about bias. camera.org and patterico.com would be pretty damned biased. There's plenty of examples of pro-israel bias so this victim thing is a little played.


CASE STUDY OF PRO-ISRAEL BIAS:
http://www.inminds.co.uk/case-study-of-bias.html

Israeli contribution to conflict is forgotten by leading papers

In the wake of the most serious outbreak of Israeli/Arab violence in years, three leading U.S. papers—the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times—have each strongly editorialized that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking violence, and that the Israeli military response was predictable and unavoidable. These editorials ignored recent events that indicate a much more complicated situation.

Beginning with the Israeli attack on Gaza, a New York Times editorial (6/29/06) headlined "Hamas Provokes a Fight" declared that "the responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas," and that "an Israeli military response was inevitable." The paper (7/15/06) was similarly sure in its assignment of blame after the fighting spread to Lebanon: "It is important to be clear about not only who is responsible for the latest outbreak, but who stands to gain most from its continued escalation. Both questions have the same answer: Hamas and Hezbollah."

The Washington Post (7/14/06) agreed, writing that "Hezbollah and its backers have instigated the current fighting and should be held responsible for the consequences." The L.A. Times (7/14/06) likewise wrote that "in both cases Israel was provoked." Three days and scores of civilian deaths later, the Times (7/17/06) was even more direct: "Make no mistake about it: Responsibility for the escalating carnage in Lebanon and northern Israel lies with one side...and that is Hezbollah."

As FAIR noted in a recent Action Alert (7/19/06), the portrayal of Israel as the innocent victim in the Gaza conflict is hard to square with the death toll in the months leading up to the current crisis; between September 2005 and June 2006, 144 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces, according to a list compiled by the Israeli human rights group B'tselem; 29 of those killed were children. During the same period, no Israelis were killed as a result of violence from Gaza.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/07/29/18292647.php

members of Congress from Joe Lieberman to Tom DeLay competed to heap praise on Ariel Sharon and disdain on Yasir Arafat. Reporting on the vote, the New York Times noted that one of the few dissenters, Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, "suggested that many senators were after campaign contributions."

Aside from that brief reference, however, the Times made no mention of the role that money, or lobbying in general, may have played in the lopsided vote. More specifically, the Times made no mention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It's a remarkable oversight. AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington. Its 60,000 members shower millions of dollars on hundreds of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. It also maintains a network of wealthy and influential citizens around the country, whom it can regularly mobilize to support its main goal, which is making sure there is "no daylight" between the policies of Israel and of the United States.

So, when Congress votes so decisively in support of Israel, it's no accident. Yet, surveying US newspaper coverage of the Middle East in recent months, I found next to nothing about AIPAC and its influence.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020610/massing
 
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