1. Today we'll be posting internal documents of the New Zealand Foreign Ministry that show how diplomats whitewash UNRWA corruption & antisemitism, hiding key information (like this report: unwatch.org/130-page-repor…) from their own ministers & taxpayers. Obtained by @IsraelInstNZ:
@IsraelInstNZ@MFATgovtNZ@NZinEgypt@winstonpeters 2. In that internal email, @MFATgovtNZ on 24/1/2018 reported: "There is nothing in their assessment about alleged complicity with 'terrorism' acts or anti-Jewish bias in educational materials/teachings."
@IsraelInstNZ@MFATgovtNZ@NZinEgypt@winstonpeters 3. In this recent 5 June 2019 memo, seeking to justify a $1 million grant, NZ officials claim—based on no less than 9 sources of information—that "UNRWA performance and risk management approaches are satisfactory."
This was 6 months after the UN Ethics Report accused UNRWA of...
@IsraelInstNZ@MFATgovtNZ@NZinEgypt@winstonpeters 4. "...sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives."
@IsraelInstNZ@MFATgovtNZ@NZinEgypt@winstonpeters 5. How did NZ diplomats get UNRWA so spectacularly wrong? After all, no less than 25 UNRWA directors and staffers reported the systemic corruption in the UN Ethics Report sent to the UN Secretary-General back in December 2018.
@IsraelInstNZ@MFATgovtNZ@NZinEgypt@winstonpeters 6. NZ diplomats boasted of their many supposedly reliable sources confirming UNRWA's great condition: "Annual reports, thematic evaluations, updates on agency policies, meetings between Embassy staff and UN personnel in New York, Palestine and Jordan..."
@IsraelInstNZ@MFATgovtNZ@NZinEgypt@winstonpeters 7. "...multi-donor assessments via Multilateral Organization Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN) & informal discussions with other donors." Yet this was all nonsense. Abuse, corruption & sexual harassment were everywhere. NZ just didn't want to see it.
⚡️ Exposé on UNRWA chiefs Philippe Lazzarini & Pierre Krähenbühl, Lebanon reps Dorothee Klaus, Claudio Cordone, Matthias Schmale, UNRWA deputies Gwyn Lewis, Hakam Shahwan, Thomas White, Munir Manna, Leni Stenseth: unwatch.org/the-unholy-all…
2/ See evidence of UNRWA teachers in a 3,000-member UNRWA Gaza staff Telegram group who cheered and celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre while at the same time asking when their UNRWA salaries will be paid.
⚡️ unwatch.org/unrwa-terrorgr…
3/ See the evidence that UNRWA for 30 years employed Fathi Sharif—the Hamas terror chief in Lebanon—to run their entire education system, putting a “teacher of Jihad” (as Hamas eulogized him) in charge of 65 schools, 2,000 teachers and 39,000 students: unwatch.org/wp-content/upl…
Jan. 15, 1964: UN Watch founder Morris Abram drafts UN anti-racism convention as member of UN human rights expert body.
Tomorrow: Loyal servants of Beijing & Tehran to be elected by acclamation to the successor UN human rights body.
2/ Meet 🇨🇳 Ren Yisheng. He served as a mouthpiece for the communist regime—primarily at UN human rights bodies.
Now he's going to switch roles by getting elected as a UN human rights expert.
Same guy who trashed a UN report on China's abuse of Uyghurs: archive.md/NWAtv
3/ Meet 🇮🇷 Afsaneh Nadipour. She's a 33-year veteran of the Islamic regime in Iran who defended their brutal crackdown on women's rights protesters. She’s an enemy of human rights.
Why are all our democracies silent ahead of her UNHRC election tomorrow?
.@GretaThunberg, while you're feasting once again on Israeli Navy sandwiches, remember that under international law—according to the UN—Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, designed to stop Hamas from smuggling rockets and other weapons, is entirely legal.🧵 blog.unwatch.org/wp-content/upl…
2/ The UN's Palmer Report found that “Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”
3/ “Although people are entitled to express their political views, the [2010] flotilla acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade. [T]here exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH. The actions of the flotilla needlessly carried the potential for escalation.”
Navi Pillay's UN inquiry on Israel just released a report accusing Israel of “genocide.”
We asked legal expert Salo Aizenberg to take a look.
Turns out the report is a complete travesty. See his devastating rebuttal here: 🧵
@Aizenberg55unwatch.org/un-watch-rebut…
2/ @Aizenberg55: “The UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry’s report is fatally deficient: its reasoning is deeply flawed, its evidentiary base unreliable, and its methodology unsound.
It selectively misinterprets statements by Israeli leaders, accepts unverified Hamas casualty figures, disregards Hamas’s systematic use of human shields, relies on unverified media reports (such as by Al-Jazeera), and assumes that civilian deaths in Gaza are only the result of deliberate targeting by Israel.
Its omissions are equally striking. The report erases Hamas as an active belligerent; across its 72 pages, it never acknowledges that the IDF is engaged with a 30,000-strong fighting force that constructed a battlefield fortified with 500 kilometers of tunnels.
Such deficiencies strip the document of legal credibility and render it indistinguishable from propaganda dressed in legal language.”
3/ “Failure to prove dolus specialis: The specific intent to destroy a protected group is the central and extremely high bar in any genocide case. The Commission’s claim of genocidal intent fails on this threshold alone, relying on tortured parsing of statements, selective quotations, and conjecture rather than unambiguous evidence.”
NO JOKE: Amnesty International's researcher in Gaza got Hamas to arrest peace activist Rami Aman for the crime of organizing a video call for Gazans to meet Israelis.
2/ On April 8, 2020, Amnesty International researcher Hind Khoudary, now an Al Jazeera “journalist,” called on Hamas to arrest Rami Aman for his peace initiatives. unwatch.org/the-disappeara…
3/ “In 2020, we organized a big conference between 10 Gazans and 300 Israelis,” explains Aman. “We were talking about Coronavirus — not talking about one state or two states, or talking about negotiation. We were talking about how we can save each other.”
“And two days later, I found a post started from a journalist working with Amnesty called Hind Khoudary, asking Hamas and mentioning Hamas leaders on Facebook, to arrest me. And that happened just a day later.”
“This surprised me from the first time because when I checked Hind Khoudary’s profile I saw that she is working with Amnesty and she is a journalist and I know that she is a U.S. fellow.”
“So for me, how come Amnesty is calling for my arrest? How come a journalist asking the security to arrest me?” x.com/UNWatch/status…
🇺🇸 @MorganOrtagus tells UN: “Today’s resolution is yet another counterproductive gesture that only rewards Hamas, drags out the war, and undercuts the very diplomatic efforts to free the hostages and end the suffering in Gaza, which the New York Declaration claims to support.”
2/ The French-led resolution is “is yet another misguided and ill-timed publicity stunt that undermines serious diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. Make no mistake – this resolution is a gift to Hamas.”
3/ “It is likewise cynical, transparently driven by the domestic politics rather than a serious foreign policy agenda.”