The UN’s Latest Anti-Israel Outrage, and What Congress Can Do about It

Oct. 27 2022

In May of 2021, the UN Human Rights Council—whose current members include such paragons of human rights as China, Venezuela, and Qatar—created a special Commission of Inquiry (COI) to investigate human-rights violations “in the Occupied Palestinian Territory [sic], including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, . . . leading up to and since April 13, 2021.” This commission, whose open-ended remit has no real parallel within the United Nations, released its second report last week. Clifford May comments:

[T]he COI is funded—with Americans contributing the lion’s share—for the express purpose of demonizing and delegitimizing Israel in perpetuity. . . . The report urges UN members to prosecute Israeli officials for alleged violations of “international humanitarian law.” What does the report say about Hamas and the more than 4,000 rockets it fired at Israelis, its routine use of Palestinian civilians as “human shields,” and the support it receives from Tehran? Not a word. “Hamas,” “rockets,” and “terrorism” are not mentioned.

Israelis are protesting the report as they have protested such slanders in the past and will in the future. They’re also reminding anyone who will listen—not a large cohort—that one of the COI’s prominent members, Miloon Kothari, has questioned why Israel is “even a member of the United Nations.” Needless to say, Mr. Kothari has not suggested [the expulsion of] the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, or the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To [the COI], Jewish lives don’t matter. But they regard Palestinian lives as cheap, too. What other conclusion can we draw when they incessantly give Palestinians incentive to kill and be killed?

For now, American taxpayers still lavishly fund the UN. But a bill before Congress, the COI Elimination Act, would at least cut off dollars to one of its Jew-hating entities. Its passage would represent a small step toward decency.

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Read more at FDD

More about: Anti-Semitism, U.S. Foreign policy, UNHRC, United Nations

Demography Is on Israel’s Side

March 24 2023

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.

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Read more at Ettinger Report

More about: Demography, Fertility, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Yasir Arafat