In Saudi Arabia women can’t drive cars, can be flogged if they don’t wear traditional garb, receive half the inheritance of their brothers are not permitted to travel unless accompanied by a male relative.
Clearly, you are thinking, Saudi Arabia must be a candidate for the worst country in the world for women. Not a bit of it. The United Nations has just named the worst nation for women’s rights. And which country might that be? Israel of course.
Human rights activist Anne Bayefsky writes:
Guess who is the number one violator of women’s rights in the world today? Israel. Violating the rights of Palestinian women.
At least that is the view of the UN’s top women’s rights body, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). CSW ends its annual meeting on Friday, March 20 by condemning only one of the 193 UN member states for violating women’s rights – Israel.
Countries the U. N. bypassed: Iran, where “adultery” (it is broadly defined) is a capital offense, as is fighting back against a male rapist, and Sudan, where domestic violence is legal, girls are often married off at the age of ten and genital mutilation is practiced on half the female population.
Bayefsky points out that it is unlikely that the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women would name Iran for the richly deserved “worst for women” designation since Iran is an elected member of CSW. Sudan, where the president has been accused of genocide, is also not likely to be criticized by the CSW—Sudan is a CSW vice-chair.
It might be noted here that it is Palestinian leaders who force their people to stay and function as human shields in buildings that the Israelis have announced in advance as military or bombing targets through leaflets.
Offended that Israeli Prime Minister had the nerve to get himself re-elected, even though POTUS doesn’t like him, President Obama reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister in the delayed congratulatory call that the United States is “reassessing its approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace in light of Netanyahu's pre-election comments rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
Netanyahu can be forgiven for not wanting a second Gaza on his borders. As Charles Krauthammer observes this morning it is not Bibi who stands in the way of a two-state solution—it is the Palestinians. One vehicle for punishing Netanyahu: the United States will no longer stand between Israel and anti-semitic actions taken by the U.N. Under this president, U.S.-Israeli relations have reached a "new and potentially unprecedented phase."
Meanwhile, President Obama appears poised to use the U.N. to bypass the U.S. Congress to rubber stamp any nuclear deal he gets with Iran. Senator Lindsey Graham has said that if the U. N. lifts sanctions on Iran (this would make retaining sanctions by the U.S. irrelevant at best and counterproductive at worst), he will see to it that the U.S. withholds its U.N. contributions.
The U.S. pays about a fourth of the cost of maintaining this rogues gallery in Turtle Bay.