Saudi Arabia, probably the most misogynistic dictatorship in the world, has won a seat on UN Women, the UN’s top women’s rights body, the BBC reports today. Iran, however, failed to gain a seat. Nonetheless, the fact that a Saudi regime which does not even allow women to drive cars will now sit in judgement on global gender equality issues is a sickening development even by the depraved standards we have come to expect from UN rights bodies.

Other regimes with terrible records on women’s rights to have been selected for the rights body include Congo and Libya. According to the UN’s website:

“The new agency was established on 2 July by a unanimous vote of the General Assembly to oversee all of the world body’s programmes aimed at promoting women’s rights and their full participation in global affairs. One of its goals will be to support the Commission on the Status of Women and other inter-governmental bodies in devising policies”.

Read the rest of this article »

Remember the uproar in 2004 when the Israelis took out Hamas terror bosses Ahmed Yassin and Abdelaziz Rantissi in targeted assassinations? Referring to the latter, the French foreign ministry sniffed at the time that “extrajudicial executions are contrary to international law and unacceptable…”. EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana described the killing of Yassin as “extremely terrible”, while as David Hornik reminds us in a recent piece on Pajamas Media, even the Bush administration tended to describe Israeli actions as “unhelpful”.

But hold on a second, just what is the politically correct and impeccably multilateralist Obama administration (with the help and complicity of many EU governments) doing right now in Pakistan with all these drone attacks? According to Yediot Aharonot analyst Ron Ben-Yishai (again quoted in Hornik’s article), since entering the White House Obama has authorised 122 assassination raids by unmanned drones on senior people in Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructure.

The figures are rising fast. In September, the number of publicly admitted drone attacks was 22. And they are extremely deadly too. In 2009, more than 700 people were killed, many if not most of whom will have been civilian bystanders. By the end of this year, the death toll is likely to have far exceeded the 1,400 or so estimated to have died in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

Read the rest of this article »

Today is a big day in Europe, though you wouldn’t know it if you relied on the continent’s leading newspapers and television stations. It’s not that the resumption of the trial of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands for insulting Islam is being completely ignored. Even the BBC has managed a short piece anouncing the event on its website.

It’s just that given the scale of its importance, it is deeply disturbing that it is effectively being demoted to what at best should be seen as a curiosity, and at worst as another example of the rise of the far right in an increasingly xenophobic Europe. So, it may be helpful to remind ourselves of precisely what is now going on in what was once considered Europe’s most libertarian-minded polity, and what this all means for the rest of us.

The key thing to note is that this is a political trial — the first of its kind in any mature European democracy since the end of the Cold War, and possibly since the end of World War II. If found guilty, Wilders could face a jail sentence at which point he would become a political prisoner.

Read the rest of this article »

In the latest display of sickening hypocrisy at the United Nations, the Human Rights Council yesterday endorsed by 30 votes to one this month’s report by three anti-Israeli lawyers which charged Israel with “wilful killing”, “torture” and “inhuman treatment” over the Mavi Marmara Gaza-flotilla incident earlier this year.

The United States was the only country to oppose the report, while France and Britain were among 15 others abstaining. What really strikes one, however, are the liberal-democratic credentials of those who backed the motion. To think! Being judged on a human rights issue by China, Libya, or Saudi Arabia? Actually this is no laughing matter. It is a depraved and disgusting statement on what the United Nations has become. It is, therefore, worth looking at the backers of this motion in a little more detail.

Read the rest of this article »

Just to inform readers that my book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, is now available in paperback. It has a new foreword bringing it up to date and making a few comments about the book’s reception.

Amazon is selling it at £5.99 which is a bargain! So, if you haven’t bought the book already (either for yourself, a friend, your member of parliament or whoever) here’s encouraging you to go out and buy it.
To purchase it on Amazon, click here.

The Kindle edition is also available on both Amazon.com ($9.28) and Amazon.co.uk (£5.98).