U.N. Fair and U.N. Balanced
Sengupta’s implication in the third example is that the UN Security Council’s obsession with Israel is no big deal because it also discusses Yemen and Syria. But those countries are active war zones, sites of terrorism and foreign intervention and humanitarian crises. Is the New York Times seriously likening the situation in Israel to what’s happening in Yemen and Syria? To do so would be to commit the same gross moral equivalence of which the UN stands condemned.It’s fact and fiction at TOI event with two Jerusalem-based authors
Moral equivalence between Israel and its adversaries might as well be part of the Times style guide, I suppose. What’s remarkable about Sengupta’s piece is that even as she clumsily attempts to provide left-wing “context” to Haley’s appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, she can’t bring herself to mention that the charge of corruption against the UN Human Rights Council is a long-standing bipartisan element of U.S. foreign policy.
Saint Hillary Clinton herself, when she announced that America was rejoining the council in 2009, said her goal was “improving the UN human-rights system,” and in a subsequent speech she chided its anti-Israel bias. “It cannot continue to single out and devote disproportionate attention to any one country,” Clinton said.
Haley’s charge is obviously true. The council exists only because its ancestor, the UN Human Rights Commission, had become so monopolized by autocrats, dictators, anti-Semites, anti-Americans, and chronic human-rights violators that it was dissolved upon American withdrawal in 2006. Its replacement is little better, since any human-rights body whose members do not recognize rights within their own borders is not worthy of the name. Last November, the nonprofit UN Watch reported that the autocratic socialist government of Venezuela used hundreds of fraudulent groups to whitewash its record before the council. What’s the word for that? Right: corruption.
Nikki Haley has the clarity of vision and political gumption to call corruption by its name. No wonder the Times finds her so unusual.
Both immigrants from North America, Matti Friedman and Haim Watzman now live and write in Jerusalem. As reporters, they both observed Israeli life with the detachment of a foreigner — and the keen eye of an insider. Now, as authors, this insider-outsider perspective continues as seen in their recently published work.Yemen minister says fate of country’s last 50 Jews unknown
On Tuesday, April 25, the pair will discuss their new books in English for The Times of Israel Presents. The event is part of the monthly series, Personal Pages: Meet the Authors, and take place at the Tower of David.
Former The Times of Israel staff writer Friedman hails from Toronto. His first book, “The Aleppo Codex,” an investigation into the strange fate of an ancient Bible manuscript, won several awards including the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize and was translated into seven languages. His latest book, “Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story,” based on his military service in an isolated Israeli army outpost in Lebanon, was chosen as a New York Times notable book and one of Amazon’s 10 best books of 2016.
His reporting, mainly for the Associated Press, took him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus and Washington, DC. Critical essays he wrote for Tablet and The Atlantic about foreign media coverage on the 2014 Gaza War gained worldwide attention.
Yemen’s information minister said his government is unaware of the fate of the country’s few dozen remaining Jews, most of whom reside in the Houthi rebel group-controlled capital of Sana’a, Israel Radio reported.
Speaking to an Israel Radio reporter on the sidelines of a conference on the civil war in Yemen in Paris, Moammer al-Iryani also said Saturday that the Houthis view the tiny remaining Jewish population as an enemy and are engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that includes ridding Yemen of its Jewish community.
Approximately 50 Jews are believed to remain in Yemen, 40 of them living in Sana’a in a compound adjacent to the American Embassy. Despite the ongoing civil war, they have refused to leave the country.
The Iranian-backed Houthis, who took control of large parts of the country in an offensive beginning in 2015 alongside forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have long incited against Jews and Israel. The group’s slogan is: “Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse upon the Jews. Victory to Islam. Allahu Akbar.”