Dear Friend of FLAME:

The overwhelming one-sidedness by the United Nations (UN) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict---favoring the Palestinians, of course---has been going on for decades.  In fact, we now expect this bias in any report the UN issues that involves Israel. 

We at FLAME have been documenting the UN's bias for years now, whether it be the utter self-serving nature of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)---which actually increases the number of Palestinian refugees year after year---or the nine anti-Israel resolutions that the UN General Assembly adopted in one day last December.

Perhaps the most absurd examples of UN bias against Israel were the two most recent "World Conference Against Racism" events in 2001 and 2009.  Naturally, it was Israel that was singled out at both conferences as being the worst perpetrator of discrimination in the world.  What about China, Sudan, North Korea or even Iran?  No, it is the human rights record of Israel---one of the world's most democratic champions of civil liberties---that receives the lion's share of condemnation.    

More recently, the misnomered United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)---whose members include such paragons of human rights as Libya, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan---was demonizing Israel yet again, this time in a fact-finding mission on Israeli "settlements." 

As Herb Keinon of the Jerusalem Post reported, "the report slammed Israel for violating human rights and international law, called for a withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and called for private business to terminate their business interests in the settlements."

Even more appalling than this recent report was the news reported by Tom Gross in this week's truly shocking FLAME Hotline on the UNHRC's decision to appoint Mauritania as the vice-chair of the UNHRC.  Mauritania, as you'll discover below, allows hundreds of thousands of its people to live in abject slavery. Yet the UN continues its obsession with Israel and rewards a country that allows one of the vilest, most oppressive, and human-rights denying practices ever.

If there has ever been an imperative to read one of our Hotlines, this week's is an absolute must.  Please take a few minutes to read Gross' well-written article, and then I urge you to pass it along to your friends, colleagues, and fellow congregants using the "send to a friend" button at the bottom of this email, or using the buttons above to share it via social media. 

Thanks for your continued support of Israel, and thank you for your support of FLAME.

Best regards,

Dave Nogradi
FLAME Hotline Contributor

P.S.

Have you seen the recent FLAME hasbarah message titled "The Truth About the Muslim Brotherhood: Is it a moderate Egyptian party committed to democracy . . . or a jihadist group seeking to create an Islamist empire?" In the face of the U.S. recently delivering a fleet of F16 fighter jets to the new Islamist Egyptian regime, this piece tells the truth about President Morsi's treacherous Muslim Brotherhood. It's about to appear in media nationwide, reaching an audience of 10 million, including distribution to all U.S. Senators and Representatives, members of the Supreme Court, and, of course, President Obama. I hope you'll review this outspoken position paper and pass it on to your friends, members of your congregation and colleagues. If you agree that FLAME's outspoken brand of public relations on Israel's behalf is critical, I urge you to support our publication of such outspoken messages. Please consider giving a donation now, as you're able---with $500, $250, $100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To donate online, just go to http://www.factsandlogic.org/make_a_donation.html. Now more than ever we need your support to ensure that Israel gets the support it needs---from the U.S. Congress, from President Obama, and from the American people.

The UN's willful ignorance of modern-day slavery
by Tom Gross, National Post, February 13, 2013

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) begins its annual session in Geneva today by once again disgracing itself through the appointment of the West African country of Mauritania as its vice-president for the next year.

The UNHRC is the organization that, in the past, has cozied up to the Gaddafi and Assad regimes in Libya and Syria; that praised Sri Lanka's human-rights record shortly after that country's military killed more than 40,000 Tamil civilians in 2009; and that still exhibits at the entrance to its meeting hall, two pieces of art, one donated by Egypt's Mubarak regime, the other with a plaque that reads, "A statue of Nemesis, Goddess of justice, donated by the Syrian government."

It also appointed Alfred De Zayas as one of its leading advisors last December, despite the fact that his books on the Second World War portray Germans as victims and the Allies as perpetrators of "genocide." De Zayas, while not denying the Holocaust himself, has nonetheless become a hero to many Holocaust deniers, and his sayings are featured on many of their websites. He has called for Israel to be expelled from the UN, while defending the ruthless Iranian regime.

And now Mauritania has been chosen by the UNHRC to help preside over worldwide human rights for the next 12 months. Mauritania, although all-but ignored by mainstream human-rights groups, is a country that allows 20% of its citizens, about 800,000 people, some as young as 10, to live as slaves.

An estimated 27 million people worldwide still live in conditions of forced bondage, and every year at least 700,000 people are trafficked across borders and into slavery, according to figures compiled by the U.S. State Department, the International Organization for Migration and other reliable sources.

But nowhere is slavery still so systematically practiced as in Mauritania, an Islamic republic where imams often use their interpretations of Sharia law to justify forcing the darker-skinned black African Haratine minority to serve as slaves to the Arabic Moor population.

"The situation is every bit as bad as it was in apartheid South Africa, and in many ways it is worse," Abidine Merzough, the European coordinator for the anti-slavery NGO Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in Mauritania, told the fifth annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy last week.

"Officially, the Mauritanian authorities have abolished slavery on five separate occasions. But in reality, it exists exactly as before, backed up by imams and other clergy who write laws and issue fatwas justifying slavery," said Merzough, who was born to slaves in Mauritania but is a rare example of someone who managed to escape and now lives in Germany.

"Slaves are their masters' property, often from birth. Women slaves are allowed to be sexually abused whenever their masters want. The masters can buy or sell slaves or loan out parts of their bodies for use — arms, legs, vaginas, mouths. The slaves must obey. This is Islamic law as it exists in Mauritania today," Merzough told the Geneva Summit, which (to their credit) was this year attended by a small number of UNHRC ambassadors from democratic countries (including Canada, but not by Britain and France).

Last year I attended both the Geneva Summit and the opening session of the UN Human Rights Council. The contrast could hardly be greater. I watched the UN ambassadors arrive in chauffeur-driven Mercedes, and then congratulate themselves while ignoring human-rights abuses throughout the world. The Geneva Summit, by comparison, is put together on a very modest budget by 20 NGOs, headed by UN Watch, an organization that does such good work for human-rights issues that the UNHRC should hang its head in shame.

At this year's Geneva Summit, I moderated a panel that included Mukhtar Mai, an extraordinarily brave woman who was gang raped on the order of a tribal court in Pakistan after it was alleged (wrongly) that her brother had acted immodestly. And after the rape, instead of committing suicide (which is common after such experiences in Pakistan), she has fought a 10 year legal battle in an effort to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Other speakers at this year's Geneva summit included dissidents, torture survivors and witnesses from Congo, Iran, Tibet, Syria, North Korea and elsewhere — as well as Pyotr Verzilov, the husband of the jailed lead singer of the Russian band Pussy Riot.

When Britain's Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and other dignitaries assemble in Geneva to open the annual session of the UNHRC today, they might want to ask why these dissidents were not invited to address them. And they might want to ask why Mauritania, instead of being held to account, has been appointed the organization's vice-chair.

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