UN WATCH: No joke! U.N. Elects Saudi Arabia to Women’s Rights Commission

The Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch condemned the U.N.’s election of Saudi Arabia, “the world’s most misogynistic regime,” to a 2018-2022 term on its Commission on the Status of Women, the U.N. agency “exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

“Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. “It’s absurd.”

“Every Saudi woman,” said Neuer, “must have a male guardian who makes all critical decisions on her behalf, controlling a woman’s life from her birth until death. Saudi Arabia also bans women from driving cars.”

“I wish I could find the words to express how I feel right know. I’m ‘saudi’ and this feels like betrayal,” tweeted a self-described Saudi woman pursuing a doctorate in international human rights law in Australia.

Yet the fundamentalist monarchy is now one of 45 countries that, according to the U.N., will play an instrumental role in “promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

Saudi Arabia was elected by a secret ballot last week of the U.N.’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Usually ECOSOC rubber-stamps nominations arranged behind closed doors by regional groups, however this time the U.S. forced an election, to China’s chagrin.

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Hillel Neuer 

✔@HillelNeuer

Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief.https://www.unwatch.org/no-joke-u-n-elects-saudi-arabia-womens-rights-commission/ …

7:23 PM - 22 Apr 2017

No Joke: U.N. Elects Saudi Arabia to Women's Rights Commission, For 2018-2022 Term - UN Watch

The U.N. has elected Saudi Arabia, the world’s most misogynistic regime, to a 2018-2022 term on its Commission on the Status of Women, the U.N. agency “exclusively dedicated to the promotion of...

unwatch.org

 
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5h

Hillel Neuer 

✔ @HillelNeuer

At least 5 EU states voted FOR the Saudis.
Belgium?
Czech?
Estonia?
Finland?
France?
Germany?
Greece?
Ireland?
Italy?
Portugal?
Sweden?
UK? pic.twitter.com/e4FPK1PgMB

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kh.oz @khuludAu

@HillelNeuer @UN_CSW @UNECOSOC I wish I could find the words to express how I feel right know. I'm 'saudi' and this feels like betrayal.

3:13 AM - 23 Apr 2017

 
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Saudi Arabia was also recently re-elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council where it enjoys the right to vote on, influence and oversee numerous mechanisms, resolutions and initiatives affecting the rights of women worldwide, including:

• Elimination of discrimination against women
• Equal participation [of women] in political and public affairs
• Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice
• Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences
• Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women
• The right to a nationality: women’s equal nationality rights in law and in practice
• Addressing the impact of multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence in the context of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance on the full enjoyment of all human rights by women and girls
• Annual full day debate on women’s rights
• Annual half-day panel on the integration of a gender perspective

The latest ECOSOC vote is reported in a U.N. press release:

Commission on the Status of Women:The Council elected by secret ballot 13 members to four-year terms, beginning at the first meeting of the Commission’s sixty-third session in 2018 and expiring at the close of the sixty-sixth session in 2022:  Algeria, Comoros, Congo, Ghana and Kenya (African States); Iraq, Japan, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan (Asia-Pacific States); and Ecuador, Haiti and Nicaragua (Latin American and Caribbean States).

The only good news: thanks to the U.S. calling a vote — breaking with the Obama Administration policy which in 2014 allowed Iran to be elected by acclamation — Saudi Arabia was not elected by acclamation, but instead received the least votes of any other country: 47 out of 54 votes cast, even though there was no competition given that there was an equal amount of competitors for available seats.

Here were the results of the elections, with all 54 ECOSOC members voting:

African States
Algeria: 54
Comoros: 53
Congo: 53
Ghana: 53
Kenya: 53

Asian & Pacific States
Iraq: 54
Japan: 53
Republic of Korea: 54
Saudi Arabia: 47Turkmenistan: 53

Latin American States
Ecuador: 54
Haiti: 54
Nicaragua: 52

______

It was a secret ballot, but the math tells us that at least 15 of these member states of the U.N. Economic and Social Council voted to elect Saudi Arabia to the U.N.’s women’s rights commission:

• Argentina?
• Australia?
• Belgium?
• Brazil?
• Chile?
• Czech Republic?
• Estonia?
• Finland?
• France?
• Germany?
• Greece?
• India?
• Ireland?
• Italy?
• Japan?
• Portugal?
• South Korea?
• South Africa?
• Sweden?
• United Kingdom?
• United States?

Honor Diaries- exclusive extended clip

ELDER OF ZIYON: European NGO blames Israel for Gaza men beating, abusing their wives

The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights has released a laughably biased and inaccurate report about the situation of women in Gaza.

As we have seen before, anti-Israel NGOs like to use any hook they can find to blame Israel and only Israel. The Goldstone Report said no less than eight times that Israel, by attacking Gaza in response to Hamas rockets, was violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which is beyond absurd. 

This report by Euro-Mid shows the same type of bias, specifically using the issue of women's rights - something Hamas is not exactly known for - as an excuse to condemn Israel. 

Some lowlights:

Access to services in Gaza has been significantly curtailed by the 7 years long Israeli blockade. The ban on the private sector to import construction materials, medical equipment, and machinery impacts every aspect of life in Gaza, which is already highly affected by the frequent Israeli military operations.

There are no Israeli restrictions on medical equipment into Gaza outside of some paperwork. Evenanti-Israel groups admit this. Euro-Mid is lying.

Frequent Israeli military attacks have left a large number of women in Gaza on their own to raise their families. Pal-Think for Strategic Studies estimates that in just the aftermath of the 23-day Israeli military operation called “Cast Lead” in 2008-2009, more than 800 new widows were created. These widows suffer from insecure incomes and constant feelings of threat and insecurity, high levels of anxiety and concern about lack of access to education and other services for them and their children.

Given that over 700 of those killed in Cast Lead were terrorists, this means that Euro-Mid is blaming Israel for defending itself because killing terrorists creates widows!

Such stresses increasingly contribute to tension within the family, with 90 per cent of the women describing the blockade and frequent Israeli military attacks as directly triggering higher levels of nervousness, tension and anxiety. A result of these growing tensions is a rise in the divorce rate (perceived as increasing by 24.6 per cent of the interviewees) and violence against women and girls. More than half (58.9 per cent) of the women in the study said they believe domestic violence is a growing problem in Gaza, and an even larger proportion (61.3 per cent) think their children are more at risk. An earlier survey (2011) by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics corroborated the women’s concerns. It found that approximately 37 per cent of Palestinian women in both the West Bank and Gaza had experienced physical or sexual abuse by their husbands in the previous 12 months. A larger 51 per cent in Gaza reported violence within the household directed against at least one member (including children).

Yes, when a Gaza man beats or sexually abuses his wife, he is blameless - it is all Israel's fault! 

I'm surprised that Euro-Mid doesn't take this to the next logical step - since Israel's existence is an affront to the Arab world by existing and thriving, it is causing more rape and wife beatings than would occur if Israel would be destroyed. Maybe next year they can put this in their report. (Just give me a hat tip, okay?)

Pregnant women are particularly at risk. A report on the “Situation of and Assistance to Palestinian Women,” produced in December 2012 by the United Nations Economic and Social Council’s Commission on the Status of Women, estimates that 45 per cent of pregnant women in the Gaza Strip suffer from anemia.

Additionally, a June 2012 joint report by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and Save the Children notes that anemia affects 36.8 percent of pregnant women in Gaza and that anemia can result in “poor pregnancy outcome, reduced work 9 productivity in adults,” and “contributes to 20 percent of all maternal deaths.”

And how does that compare to women throughout the world? Well, according to WHO, about 42% of pregnant women worldwide are anemic. 

To prevent anemia, women should take pre-natal vitamins including iron. There are no restrictions on such vitamins in Gaza from Israel. But who gets blamed?

Of course, the report must mention the fuel shortages in Gaza:

The latest crisis in Gaza was triggered on June 30, when the Egyptian military halted all but a trickle of traffic into and out of Gaza, adding more agony to the already crippling blockade imposed by Israel since 2007. The Egyptian actions have created an acute shortage of fuel, construction materials and a variety of essential medicines within Gaza.

On November 1, Gaza’s power plant ran out of fuel, causing power outages averaging 16 hours a day, paralyzing all facets of daily life in the Gaza Strip from families maintaining their incomes to hospitals running properly.

Yet do the recommendations mention Egypt or Hamas or anything else to alleviate the problems in Gaza? Well, why should it?

The recommendation given:

The only answer to the suffering of the people of Gaza, including its neglected women, is for the international community to hold Israel accountable and force it to lift the blockade, allowing the Palestinian society to evolve and develop in a healthy way and grant Palestinians their right to gradually heal from this injustice.

This report, like many of the other reports by NGOs working in the Middle East, is little more than an excuse to blame Israel for everything (and to justify receiving grants from governments so "researchers" can keep churning out more biased reports like these.)

One more thing: this report does not mention Hamas or the PA once, even though their hate for each other are the major reason for any lack of medicines, medical equipment and fuel in Gaza today.

ATLAS SHRUGS: VIDEO: SHARIA COURTS IN THE UK

The dehumanization and diminishment of women is universal in the Muslim world -- "you can't go against what Islam says." These sharia courts should be banned in Western nations. They are vicious, misogynistic, and brutal.

A BBC [!] Panorama Documentary goes undercover in one of the 85 sharia courts operating as a parallel legal system in the UK, uncovering the extensive abuse of women, refusal to grant divorces, charging of the woman but not the man for divorce proceedings, and even the taking away of the woman's children, and rulings contrary to British law.

"Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God's guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them." (Qur'an 4:34)

I am sure that all the Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. who constantly assure us that only greasy Islamophobes think that that verse actually means beat them are jetting over to Egypt right now, to explain to Mahmoud Al-Denawy how he is getting the wife-beating verse all wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Egyptian Cleric Mahmoud Al-Denawy Instructs European Muslims on Wife Beating," from MEMRI, June 17:

Following are excerpts from a religious call-in show featuring Egyptian cleric Dr. Mahmoud Al-Denawy, which aired on Iqra TV Europe/Africa, on June 17, 2013:

Mahmoud Al-Denawy: Here is an important question from sister Hagar from Norway. She says: What’s the Islamic view on the beating of wives? Non-believers use this point against Islam. May Allah reward you, sister.

Indeed, many people take this as something [with which] to stab Islam and to stab Muslims. They say: Here Islam is calling for the beating of wives. Islam is urging Muslims… There are so many sayings and many misconceptions about this, but they forgot an important thing: Allah says that if there is a problem – or a lady, for example, who is disobedient, she has a bad behavior, for example – the husband should do his best to correct her, to fix this issue, first of all, by admonishing, by leaving her bed. For example, he shouldn’t sleep with her. He should sleep in a separate room, or whatever. And, at the end… Allah says: “Sleep in beds apart, and beat them.”

The issue of beating… First of all, if someone [does it] just for admonishing, or whatever… When it comes to beating, he should never beat her harshly. He should never raise his hand. He should never beat her on her face. But he can use something very simple – like a siwak [dental stick] or something like this pen. The beating should not lead to breaking her arm or a tooth. He should avoid this, because the Prophet urged us and told us that when you beat someone, you should never beat him or her on his or her face. This is because the face is owned by Allah.

What? The rest isn't?

ELDER OF ZIYON: Fantastic Arabic poster

Seen on Facebook, I added the translation underneath:

If you want more photos of the annual Rabin Square water war, see here and here.

(If you want to nitpick, the photo on the right is from the 2011 Water War.)

(h/t Dror and Ibn Botrous)

Israel Matzav: In Saudi Arabia, 96% of the suicides are women

ELDER OF ZIYON: Libyan cleric "We don't want women's soccer! We want more floggings!" (Well, floggings would get better ratings.)

Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon delivered by Sheik Salem Jaber, in Benghazi, Libya, which aired on Libya Al-Hurra TV on June 7, 2013:

Salem Jaber: Every day, I hope to hear on TV that from now on, anybody who drinks wine will receive 40 or 80 lashes, or that a fornicator – male or female – will receive 100 lashes, in accordance with the explicit word of the Koran.

So it came as a surprise to me to hear the news that a sports team was being established at the university. Is it for youth who are failing in their studies? Or is it for outstanding youth? No, it is for neither. Tall, young, and beautiful girls were picked for the team. Just what our country needed... A woman's soccer team.

Is this what our country needs? What about Islamic universities? What about Islamic punishments? What about judges? What about rights and duties? What about the fear of Allah? What about implementing the punishments decreed by Allah?

Whose daughters are these? Are they the daughters of Jews, of Christians, or of Zoroastrians? Are they the daughters of heretics? Of Communists? It is written in their fathers' ID cards that they are Muslim.

But today, these girls are exposing their heads. Is this to be allowed? In a few months' time, they will be exposing their legs. The day they joined [the soccer team], exposing what should be hidden, these girls sold out their honor, and soiled the honor of their families with the filth of nudity and shamelessness.

I take that back. The ratings for nude and shameless women's soccer, populated exclusively by "tall, young, and beautiful girls," would go through the roof!

ISRAEL MATZAV: Stop 'Palestinian' gender apartheid

ISRAELYCOOL: In Case You Think Your In-Laws Are Bad Aussie Dave

A one-and-a-half-year old boy keeps calling for his mother, unaware that he will never she her again, and that his father’s family may be responsible for her death.

Nawal Fathi Tafish Qudieh, 25, lived with her family-in-law in the town of Khuza, east of Khan Younis. On Saturday she was allegedly beaten to death by her in-laws. She was seven months pregnant at the time, and the baby also died.

Nawal’s brother Ahmad says that his sister was humiliated, insulted, verbally abused and beaten by her mother-in-law and her husband’s family.

Nawal’s family even offered her a piece of land to build a house on and live in with her husband and family to get away from the abuse, but her husband refused to leave his family.

“Due to the problems she was exposed to, she was banned from entering the kitchen. She used to wait for her mother-in-law to leave the kitchen in order to be able to enter the kitchen,” Ahmad told Ma’an.

On the day of her murder she had entered the kitchen without making sure her mother-in-law had left the area, her brother said.

“Her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law began beating her on the head, abdomen and back. They did not feel sorry for her or even for the baby she carried in her womb for the seventh month.”

Her brother-in-law then began beating her with an iron pipe, with the family joining in until she lost consciousness, Ahmad said.

They dragged her body into the landing of the house and left her there until an ambulance arrived and tried to resuscitate her, but it was too late.

Both Nawal and her unborn baby died. Medics at Shifa hospital said that the cause of death was bleeding in her brain due to blunt force trauma.

Nawal’s family are in a state of shock following the murder, Ahmad said, with her mother unable to speak and regularly fainting.

“They killed my sister a million times over the past three years, and today they robbed the life of my sister and killed her son,” Nawal’s sister said.

The extended family of Nawal’s husband, the al-Najjar family, denounced the murder and have called for legal action to be taken against the murderers. The family have even hung banners in the street saying: “The al-Najjar family, in Palestine and abroad, denounces the crime against the Qudieh family.”

Police in Gaza have detained Nawal’s mother-in-law, sisters-in-law and brother-in-law, and her husband is said to be in a state of hysteria following the murder.

I am sure Israel will somehow be blamed, either for imposing a “siege” leading to the frustration that caused the in-laws to go medieval on the woman, or, alternatively, for allowing iron pipes into Gaza.

ELDER OF ZIYON: Pregnant Gaza woman beaten to death for entering in-laws' kitchen

Ma'an reports:

Nawal Fathi Tafish Qudieh, 25, lived with her family-in-law in the town of Khuza, east of Khan Younis. On Saturday she was allegedly beaten to death by her in-laws. She was seven months pregnant at the time, and the baby also died.

Nawal's brother Ahmad says that his sister was humiliated, insulted, verbally abused and beaten by her mother-in-law and her husband's family.

Nawal's family even offered her a piece of land to build a house on and live in with her husband and family to get away from the abuse, but her husband refused to leave his family.

"Due to the problems she was exposed to, she was banned from entering the kitchen. She used to wait for her mother-in-law to leave the kitchen in order to be able to enter the kitchen," Ahmad told Ma'an.

On the day of her murder she had entered the kitchen without making sure her mother-in-law had left the area, her brother said.

"Her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law began beating her on the head, abdomen and back. They did not feel sorry for her or even for the baby she carried in her womb for the seventh month."

Her brother-in-law then began beating her with an iron pipe, with the family joining in until she lost consciousness, Ahmad said.

They dragged her body into the landing of the house and left her there until an ambulance arrived and tried to resuscitate her, but it was too late.

Both Nawal and her unborn baby died. Medics at Shifa hospital said that the cause of death was bleeding in her brain due to blunt force trauma.

One commenter is convinced that Israel must be responsible, somehow:

---

3 ) albertine harris / usa

26/05/2013 21:57

sorry..show me facts..how do i know that she was not abused by israelis''...? they seem vicious and cruel to children? what makes me to think otherwise.

A quick search shows that this commenter is "US Representative for Arab Green Development Association" who wants to invest in something called "bioatomic plants."

ATLAS SHRUGS: Topless Anti-Jihad Activist Hunted Down and Arrested A Muslim cleric in moderate Tunisia called for her stoning death.

Gender apartheid.  A Muslim woman who wants to be free will be jailed for it under the sharia.

Back in March I reported deep concern for a young Tunisian Muslima who had disappeared after she posted topless photos of herself to protest the Shariah oppression and subjugation she suffered as a Muslim girl. One controversial image showed the young Muslimah, Amina Tyler, smoking a cigarette, baring her breasts, with the message in Arabic written across her chest: “My body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honour.”

A Muslim cleric in moderate Tunisia called for her stoning death. Tunisian newspaper Kapitalis quoted preacher Almi Adel, who heads the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, saying:

The young lady should be punished according to Shariah, with 80 to 100 lashes, but [because of] the severity of the act she has committed, she deserves be stoned to death.” And: “Her act could bring about an epidemic. It could be contagious and give ideas to other women. It is therefore necessary to isolate [the incident]. I wish her to be healed.

Amina was on the run solely because she wanted to be free. She was caught and arrested. Even more heinous is Muslim women who enable this misogyny and oppression.

“Amina Tyler, Tunisia’s ‘topless jihad’ activist, caught and under arrest“ Al Arabiya, May 21, 2013After months of reportedly going into hiding, the outspoken Tunisian feminist who sparked a trend of “topless jihad” has been found and arrested by Tunisian authorities earlier this week and may be charged for conducting “provocative acts.”

Amina Tyler, 19, was found in the midst of police scuffles with hardline Salafist group Ansar al-Shariah in the central Tunisian city of Kairouan on Sunday.

Tyler previously described herself as a member of the Ukrainian feminist group Femen, which uses nudity in protests.

Witnesses said she allegedly scrawled “Femen” on the wall near the main mosque and may have intended to hang a banner on the building before an angry crowd gathered and started shouting at her to leave, according to The Associated Press.

Video posted by the Tunisian online Nawaat news site shows Tyler, with dyed blonde hair, clutching a banner and being hustled away by police and put into a van as residents chased her.

A local resident shouts at the camera: “She is dishonoring us. We will protect our town, but a dirty girl like her shouldn’t come among us.”

…

In March, Tyler posted pictures of her topless body with the phrase “my body is my own” scrawled on it, and she went into hiding after receiving death threats. Her family took her to stay with relatives outside the capital before she escaped and hid with friends.

A month later, Tyler had been trying to leave Tunisia, her former lawyer said after a video surfaced in which the woman recounted being drugged and given virginity tests by relatives.

Civil Trial Attorney Baruch C. Cohen's letter to the editor regarding the Los Angeles Lawyer Magazine's sanitizing Sharia abuses

Dear Editor:

The April 2013 edition of the Los Angeles Lawyer Magazine presented an article by Abbas Hadjian entitled: “The Children of Sharia” about how Islamic nations apply civil and Islamic legal traditions differently in matters of child custody and spousal support. The article gave credence and even reverence to Islamic Sharia law and read as if this was just an innocent comparative law course. The article said nothing about how Sharia is a savage and barbaric set of archaic laws that threaten American democratic rule of law. 

Shariah Law punishes violators of Islamic law with stonings, executions, amputations, whipings and beatings. Sharia law allows “honor killings,” genital mutilation, pre-teen marriages, polygamy, and divorce & inheritance rules that undercut the standing of women (i.e, testimony from non-Muslims and even Muslim women is given less weight than that of Muslim men). The list of human rights abuses of Sharia go on and on. 

How your excellent magazine could turn such a blind eye to such human rights atrocities and sanitize Sharia's abuses as a legitimate set of laws worth studying is beyond me. 

Baruch C. Cohen, Esq.

UNVEILED INSIDE THE HOMES AND LIVES OF SAUDI WOMEN

Dr. Fawzia Akhdar, retired member of the ministry of education: “The Saudi woman is a chancellor, judge, leader, and mother. She can shake the world with her left hand and rock her child with her right, as Napoleon said. The rest of the world views the Saudi woman differently because she is covered and wearing a hijab, so she must be oppressed. But the opposite is true. The Saudi woman is like the rest of the women of the world, or even stronger because she has had to fight to reach where she is.” 

Forty-five percent of Saudi Arabia’s population is female. Ironically, these ladies control an estimated $11.9 billion of the nation’s wealth but are denied rights that most women take for granted: They are forbidden from voting (until 2015), can’t drive, and require written permission from their male “guardians” (usually a father or husband) if they wish to travel abroad or open a business. It’s no wonder they are often stereotyped as faceless, voiceless shadows without control over their own destinies.

Offered a unique opportunity, I was invited into a world rarely visited by outsiders—one that is usually considered off-limits and impenetrable—to lift the abaya and niqab and meet the women underneath. 


Najat Bager, former school principal who now writes for various newspapers and internet publications: “Westerners must change the way they relate to us in the media. They must write the truth about Saudi women—and not just the bad women. We have women who are working as directors in television and editors at newspapers. It’s not like before.” 


Salwa Shaker, broadcaster: “When I started working as a broadcaster you could count us on one hand—perhaps three or four—but now we have more than 20 or 25 female broadcasters. What’s important is that the kingdom and the government gave priority to the development of human abilities, whether of a man or of a woman.” 


Faima Almotawa, dentistry student in her internship year: “The world should know that we don’t live in a desert and that we don’t ride camels. Our women are not slaves at home. We go to work, study, and decide our own pathway. Our challenges have never been about the Saudi government—it’s the culture. People can’t accept that women can be in line with men. Or at least they couldn’t accept it, until now.” 


Deema Barghouthi, child-speech pathologist: “Saudi women are just like any other women in the world. They are nice wives, they are kind to their kids, and they are ambitious. We want to learn and get higher education to serve our country.”