RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-safest-country-for-european-jews-try-hungary/

Last Friday evening I put on a kippah and walked half an hour across Budapest to the Keren Or synagogue maintained by the Budapest Chabad. After violent attacks on Jews in German streets, the leaders of Germany’s Jewish community warned Jews last month not to wear a kippah or any other visible sign of Jewish identification in public. The French community issued such warnings years ago. Belgian TV could not find a single Jew in Brussels willing to wear a kippah in public. I walked across Budapest four times (for Friday evening and Saturday daytime services), and no-one looked at my kippah twice. At services I met Hasidim who had walked to synagogue with kaftan and shtreimel, the traditional round fur hat. Whatever residual anti-Semitism remains among Hungarians, it doesn’t interfere with the open embrace of Jewish life. There are no risks to Jews because there are very few Muslim migrants.

On any given Friday evening, the Keren Or synagogue—one of several Chabad houses in Budapest—hosts two hundred people for dinner. Jewish life isn’t just flourishing in Budapest. It’s roaring with ruach, and livened by a growing Israeli presence. About 100,000 Israelis have dual Hungarian citizenship; many own property in the country and vote in Hungarian elections.

Prime Minister Orban has been a close friend of Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu for twenty years. When Orban first was elected prime minister in 1998 in the thick of an economic crisis, he asked then-Finance Minister Netanyahu for help, and Netanyahu lent him some of his staff to shape Hungary’s economic program. I asked everyone at Keren Or who spoke English what they thought of Orban. In that gathering the prime minister would have polled 100%.

Orban, in turn, is one of Israel’s few staunch supporters overseas. Earlier this month Hungary, along with Rumania and the Czech Republic, vetoed a European Community resolution condemning the U.S. for moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Cynics dismiss this as an instance of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That isn’t the case. Hungary is in the middle of a nasty fight with the European Community over migration, and stands to lose up to $4 billion in EC subsidies—roughly 3% of the country’s GDP. It doesn’t help Hungary to provoke Brussels by sabotaging its diplomatic efforts, as in the case of the Jerusalem embassy vote. On the contrary, Hungary is spending precious political capital in defense of the Jewish state, to its own possible disadvantage.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/u-s-walks-out-as-syria-assumes-presidency-of-un-disarmament-panel/

The U.S. delegation staged a walkout today in protest of Syria assuming the rotating presidency of the Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations in Geneva.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations said in a statement today that they would have tried to block Syria from holding the leadership role but were unable to do so because of the conference rules requiring unanimous consent. Instead, over the next four weeks of Syria’s presidency, the U.S. delegation “will limit participation in informal sessions convened by the presidency and will continue to highlight the hypocrisy of Syria holding this position in spite of its continued use of chemical weapons and disregard for its other disarmament obligations.”

Tweeted Robert Wood, a career State Department official who serves as U.S. ambassador to the conference: “I informed CD members that throughout Syria’s four-week presidency, the US would not attend any subsidiary body mtgs. or any informal sessions convened by the presidency. Syria’s presidency cannot be business as usual. I will, however, call out the regime’s crimes in plenaries.”

“It is shameful that a regime that continues to use chemical weapons to murder its own people has the audacity to accept the presidency of the very organization that established the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Ambassador Nikki Haley said. “The Assad regime does not have the moral authority to chair an organization that helped establish the global norms for ending the use of these heinous weapons.”

“It should immediately relinquish the presidency, and every country that supports accountability for the use of weapons of mass destruction should share our outrage and join us in opposing Syria’s presidency,” she added.

The monthlong presidency rotates alphabetically among the 65 conference members. Last up was Switzerland; next up will be Tunisia.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/assads-disarmament-chair-1527633758

Anyone who still thinks that world peace and order can be enforced from something called the United Nations might want to consider that Syria this week assumed the rotating presidency of the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament. That’s Syria as in Bashar Assad, as in sarin gas, as in barrel bombs dropped on innocent civilians.

The Conference is a multinational body based in Geneva that was established in 1979 to promote reductions in armaments, especially weapons of mass destruction. Though independent from the U.N., it reports annually to Turtle Bay, and the director-general of the U.N. office in Geneva is secretary-general of the Conference. Syria is now leading the group because it follows Switzerland in the alphabetical list of member nations.
Photo: istock/getty images

The appointment is best understood in light of the Conference’s proudest achievement: The 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. Apparently no one at the Conference sees any contradiction with having at its helm a regime that has used such weapons on its own people.

In 2012 Barack Obama declared the use of chemical weapons by Syria a “red line” that would trigger U.S. intervention. Assad used sarin gas anyway. In 2017 Syria used gas again, and President Trump responded with a missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Assad used chemical bombs again in April, which provoked another U.S. strike on Syria joined by Britain and France. On Friday U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Assad has used chemical weapons at least 50 times.