United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (Photo: Flickr/World Economic Forum)

The tea party has added another item to its list of reasons to fear the United Nations: Some in the movement say the U.N. is planning to intervene in the United States’ upcoming elections.

This week, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced his speech on voting rights, the Texas group True the Vote called for a protest of the event because “Holder is for NAACP Plans to involve the United Nations in US Elections.” [Their emphasis.]

True the Vote, a voter integrity initiative launched by the Houston tea party group King Street Patriots, held a national summit this year featuring some of the right’s most incendiary speakers, such as Andrew Breitbart, The Texas Independent reported. According to the Independent, “representatives from more than 25 states attended the two-day national summit in Houston to receive training and information about the conservative organization’s efforts to combat voter fraud.”

The Independent reported back in March that the group was a 501(c)4 nonprofit and had applied for 501(c)3 nonprofit status.

Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of King Street Patriots, said during the group’s summit that she was hoping to mobilize teams of three people to oversee each voting precinct in the country. That would add up to roughly 1 million right-wing tea party volunteers nationwide by the 2012 general election, the Independent reported.

Tea Party Manatee, based in Southwest Florida, sent out an email newsletter this week, echoing the King Street Patriots’ latest fight and warning that the U.N. is “trying to Intervene in 2012 Elections.”

According to group’s email:

• In November 2012 Foreign bureaucrats will appear at your polling station to ensure you adhere to their vision of a ‘fair’ election.
• Local polling officials who dare to enforce state clean election laws will be subject to lawsuits and arrest.
• Conservative political speech will be deemed hateful and be suppressed.
• Just enough voter fraud will be allowed to ensure a second term for Barack Hussein Obama.

This is not a fantasy – next week it will start to become reality when a delegation of leftist Obama supporters will meet with the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. And there they will lay the groundwork to ensure the United Nations takes action in time to save Barack Obama.

You see, the Democratic Left is terrified of the new clean election laws being passed across America. These laws have cleared our voter lists of the dead and the ineligible, require voter identification for everyone and insist that our military be allowed to vote.

And clean elections are the single greatest weapon we have to ensure an honest vote in 2012 and a single term for Barack Obama. And the Left can’t allow that to happen.

So they will make their case for action to the UN Human Rights Council – an international government origination so biased that even Hillary Clinton has denounced it.

Council members like Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Mexico and China will review your election laws and judge if you measure up to their idea of democracy. How can we accomplish any of our goals, like repealing health care rationing, securing the borders and balancing our budget if we can’t even control our own elections?

That’s why we need to send a clear message to the UN – stay out of America’s elections and abandon Barack Obama to the judgment of the American people. I need you to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to send that very message to the United Nations – by any means necessary.

It’s difficult to trace the exact origin of this particular hysteria, but one of the earliest mentions of the NAACP’s plan to involve the U.N. came in a report by Fox News.

According to Fox:

The NAACP is calling on the United Nations to intervene as it claims state governments are colluding to “block the vote” for minority communities ahead of the 2012 election — a charge those governments vehemently deny.

The nation’s biggest civil rights organization this week released a report that claimed a raft of new voting laws at the state level would disenfranchise minority voters. The report said 14 states passed 25 measures “designed to restrict or limit the ballot access of voters of color.”

…

Supporters of the laws describe them as common-sense measures meant to ensure the integrity of elections. In Tennessee, which is implementing a new photo ID law, elections coordinator Mark Goins dismissed the criticism and questioned why the NAACP would flag the United Nations over its concerns, calling that effort “a bit extreme.”

“I don’t know what the benefit of going to the U.N. would be,” he said. “I can’t imagine any authority whatsoever that they would have here in Tennessee.”

But the NAACP described the new measures as part of a “concerted” effort to drive down minority turnout and is planning a multi-stage campaign to attract international attention.

To start, the group is planning a “Stand 4 Freedom” rally this Saturday across from the U.N. headquarters. Supporters are being asked to sign an online pledge which, among other demands, calls on the United Nations to “investigate and condemn voter suppression tactics in the United States.”

Copies of the latest report are being sent to the United Nations, as well as attorneys general across the country and the Department of Justice. According to one newspaper report, the NAACP will follow up in March when it sends a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland, to present its case before the U.N. Human Rights Council — a group known more for its sustained criticism of Israel than its attention to voting rights.

An NAACP spokesman says the organization is just doing its duty as one of the 3,500 groups that “has consulting status” with the U.N. The group simply works with the international organization to make sure the United States is “living up to its commitment” to an initiative to eliminate discrimination, the spokesperson says.

He also says that the U.N. does not have the power to actually intervene in state matters, and can only interview people and create reports through the Human Rights Council.

“We are just working to make sure the U.S. remains a beacon of democracy,” the NAACP spokesperson says.

The NAACP will be giving a presentation in Geneva to the Human Rights Council in March 2012 as part of its consulting status.

Affirming his allegiance to Israel, Perry stood alongside several Jewish leaders including an Israeli politician and an American Orthodox Rabbi.

While Perry’s rhetoric on Israel echoes that of other GOPers, and curries favor with Jewish Americans and Israelis abroad, the governor’s close ties to groups calling for Jews to convert Christianity may not play so well among those same circles.

As host of the “The Response,” a controversial Christian prayer rally in Houston held in August, Perry partnered with organizations like the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer (IHOP), which believe Jewish people should convert to Christianity to help bring on the return of Jesus Christ. The group held a conference in 2010 built around that cause in particular.

“Response” endorser Mike Bickle — who led prayer onstage for much of the event — leads the all-hours worship center, which been criticized by pastors elsewhere for its “cultish atmosphere.” IHOP has close connections to prayer groups overseas, including one in Israel, where Jews are encouraged to convert to Christianity.

“In this humanistic culture today, people are talking about love without talking about Jesus Christ,” Bickle said onstage at “The Response.” “All these other religions, they can say what they say. There is no other god but Jesus Christ.

After the event, the Texas Observer pointed out a little-noticed moment when the evangelist Don Finto took the stage and called for the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity, saying, “Lord we pray for the revival around the world and for Israel to come to their own Messiah.”

Other “Response” endorsers also support the conversion of Jews, including San Antonio pastor and right-wing Christian Zionist John Hagee. As founder of the organization Christians United for Israel, Hagee’s backing of the Mid-East country is vocal — but, as some suggest, ill-intentioned. As pro-Israel advocacy group J-Street points out Hagee’s “so-called support for Israel is actually a means to an apocalyptic end of destruction or conversion for the Jewish people.”

Hagee also has come under fire from Jewish groups for his controversial remarks about the Holocaust and Judaism, including a sermon delivered in 1990 that suggested it was God’s will that led Nazis to expel the Jews from Europe and lead them to Palestine.

Hagee — who, like Bickle, took the stage at “The Response” — argues in his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown” that anti-Semitism should be blamed on Jews themselves, because of an ancient legacy curse. Hagee likened Adolf Hitler to a “hunter” sent by God, to force the Jews to return to Israel. Those comments eventually led former presidential contender John McCain to reject Hagee’s endorsement.

Perry’s partnership with these controversial figures, and his headlining role in such a divisive Christian event, elicited condemnation from those in the Texas Jewish community, including the local Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee of Houston and one of the few Jewish lawmakers in Texas, state Rep. Elliott Naishtat (D-Austin).

Feith, along with Paul Wolfowitz, headed the Office of Special Plans under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, tasked with digging up raw intelligence on Saddam Hussein before the war began — specifically ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Today, Politico’s Ben Smith reports that Perry reached out to Rumsfeld himself for tips on foreign policy contacts:

Perry’s aides have been tight-lipped about the gathering, which National Review reported included former Rumsfeld aides Doug Feith, Daniel Fata, and William Luti, as well as the magazine’s Andrew McCarthy and others. But I’m told Rumsfeld helped steer Perry’s staff to the low-key advisory group, and his detainee adviser Cully Stimson was also invited, but couldn’t attend.

Stimson ran the Department of Defense’s detainee affairs office, overseeing prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Fata, at the Department of Defense under Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, focused on Europe and NATO.

Feith, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, slammed many of his former colleagues on the Iraq war in his 2008 memoir.

Despite few other indicators as to how Perry would handle foreign policy, Adam Serwer at the American Prospect suggests, based on that lineup of visitors, “Perry would be the candidate most likely to inherit the former president’s foreign policy views.”

Till now, Perry’s foreign policy experience has centered on the Texas-Mexico border, where he’s criticized the Obama administration for its “grossly inadequate” defense, and dispatched Texas Department of Public Safety officers and helicopters for additional defense.

As the Texas Tribune reported in late June, Perry also staked out his turf in the Israel-Palestine debate, with a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, criticizing attempts to protest Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

Obama’s comprehensive speech covered a variety of topics, though he emphasized the United States would give its support to countries forming new democracies — specifically Egypt and Tunisia — and would protect Israeli security interests, while fostering tolerance of religious minorities in the Arab world.

However, the President also called for restoring the pre-1967 borders between Palestine and Israel, which met with some disagreement from certain lawmakers in Washington D.C.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), said he appreciated the President’s support of Israel as it “complements the goal of spreading freedom and peace in the region,” but was also critical of Obama’s idea to reinstate the borders between long-time foes Israel and Palestine.

“While the United States has a role to play in setting the stage for peace negotiations, we shouldn’t undermine this process by setting preconditions on Israel, as the President now has done,” Grassley said through a spokesman Thursday.

U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa), called Obama’s speech both “timely and comprehensive,” and said he agreed with Obama’s support of Egypt and Tunisia.

“The Middle East is changing, and I am hopeful that this progress will bring stability and peace to the region,” Boswell said through a spokesperson. “I was pleased that he addressed Arab-Israeli relations and the need for a two-state solution.”

Other legislators hope Obama’s stances will redefine U.S.-Arab relations and foreign policy in the Middle East.

“With the death of Osama bin Laden, it is time to get away from the ‘war on terror’ mentality that has driven so much of our policy, which I’ve never agreed with, and which puts great strain on our relations with Islamic nations,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said through a spokesman.

Watch President Obama’s remarks below:

“It is inconceivable in many ways that we would have to even argue and debate whether or not Israelis could live in Israel, not just in parts of Israel but anywhere in Israel they wished to live,” Huckabee added. “I cannot imagine as an American being told that I could not live in certain places in America because I was Christian, or because I was white, or because I spoke English. I would be outraged if someone told me that in my country, I would be prohibited and forbidden to live in a part of that country, for any reason.” #

Israel Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz also spoke at the ceremony and asserted that construction in Jerusalem is “not an impediment to peace, it brings it closer,” adding that the more Israel builds “the more peace there will be.” #

As reported by Haaretz: #

“That is why this neighborhood is only the cornerstone. It will serve as a model for the resurgence of Jerusalem’s construction swing,” Hershkowitz said. #

Also addressing the crowd, Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor David Harari said that the “housing units to be built here are only the beginning of the road,” adding that talks were underway “to turn it into a substantial neighborhood.” #

Earlier this month, Haaretz learned that the Jerusalem planning commission was expected to approve a new large-scale construction project beyond the Green Line. #

The plan, called Gilo: Southern Slopes, includes the construction of 1,400 housing units on an area between the neighborhood of Gilo toward the Cremisan Monastery, and the settlement of Har Gilo. It is expected to draw widespread international criticism. #

Huckabee, a Fox News personality and likely 2012 GOP presidential candidate, who in 2007 claimed “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian,” was joined by actor and tea party favorite Jon Voight in a three-day visit hosted by the Jerusalem Reclamation Project, a group whose focus is to promote Jewish settlements. Both Huckabee and Voight will be meeting with Israeli officials, including Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as touring existing housing units. #

In a meeting with reporters, the former evangelical minister dismissed the notion that Israel should relinquish land for peace, calling it an “unrealistic, unworkable and unreachable goal.” #

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports: #

Most of the international community — including President Barack Obama — considers Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal because they are built on occupied land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim both areas for a future state. #

Huckabee suggested that [if] a Palestinian state were to be established, it shouldn’t come at Israel’s expense. #

“There are vast amounts of territory that are in the hands of Muslims, in the hands of Arabs. Maybe the international community can come together and accommodate,” he said. #

Huckabee also claimed that any peace agreement has to recognize that “the Jewish people have indigenous rights to the land in which they occupy and live and it goes back not 60 years or 80 years but it goes back 3,500 years.” #

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem, states that international law clearly defines the Jewish settlements in the West Bank as illegal: #

The establishment of settlements in the West Bank violates international humanitarian law which establishes principles that apply during war and occupation. Moreover, the settlements lead to the infringement of international human rights law. #

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit an occupying power from undertaking permanent changes in the occupied area unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population. #

The establishment of settlements results in the violation of the rights of Palestinians as enshrined in international human rights law. Among other violations, the settlements infringe the right to self-determination, equality, property, an adequate standard of living, and freedom of movement. #

#

With victory in the congressional elections less than a day old, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (Rep.) who considers himself a ‘Tea Party’ member, is set to arrive in Israel on Sunday. Rubio’s visit so soon after the election win is a move that strengthens assessments that the congress in its current form will continue where it left off – at least where Israel is concerned.

Rubio gave a speech on Israel in June to the Republican Jewish Coalition “about the need for the United States to stand with Israel without equivocation or hesitation,” criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

He also called on the U.S. to move its embassy to Jerusalem and said that the administration should not push Israel to a settlement freeze before negotiations. Like America, he said, Israel is an “exceptional” nation.

Neoconservatives loved it. Jennifer Rubin of Commentary called it the best speech on Israel “since George W. Bush went to the Knesset.”

His belief that the U.S. should support Israel unequivocally jibes well with the Republican Party’s foreign-policy thinking on Israel.

Luke Johnson reports for The American Independent.

The RJC has taken a strong interest in the Pennsylvania race. It attacked Sestak earlier in the campaign following an endorsement he received from former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), another figure the group considers to be dangerously anti-Israel. Its new ad points out that Sestak said he would support the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in a Pennsylvania civilian court and paints the idea as irresponsible.

Going after Sestak on national security issues seems unlikely to make a big dent in his support. The man is a retired three-star admiral who worked in counterintelligence for years. Yet the added million dollars’ worth of negative air time in an area he needs to win by a wide margin is a sizable sum that will counterbalance the cash-on-hand advantage that Sestak improbably enjoys over former Rep. Pat Toomey.

Another interesting storyline to monitor will be to see what additional moves, if any, Toomey’s old friends at the Club for Growth will make on his behalf in the final weeks of the campaign.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday (epa/ZUMApress.com)

A year after President Obama’s speech in Cairo vowing to reset relations with the Muslim world, Muslims worldwide are telling pollsters about their disillusionment with what they consider unfulfilled expectations.

According to the Pew Center’s new survey of global attitudes (PDF), released Thursday morning, citizens of Muslim nations report disproportionate antipathy to Obama’s foreign policy. With the exception of Indonesia, where Obama spent a portion of his childhood, Muslims are the exceptions to the Pew poll’s findings that eighteen months of the Obama administration have seen a surge of international support for the United States after the public-opinion troughs of the Bush administration.

[Security1] “The Pew results reflect growing dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies, as many Arabs and Muslims are disappointed that Obama has not lived up to his promises, especially on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” said Marc Lynch, a George Washington University professor and the co-author of a recent Center for a New American Security report measuring Obama’s global engagement efforts. “They don’t see his actions matching his words, and until they do then it isn’t likely that there will be a sustained recovery in America’s image.”

In Jordan, the U.S. approval rating has fallen to 21 percent. It’s at 17 percent, the lowest of any countries Pew surveyed, in Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan. And this comes after the Obama administration has presided over the largest non-military aid package to Pakistan — the $7.5 billion, five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill — in history.

“Opposition to key elements of U.S. foreign policy remains pervasive,” Pew analyzes, “and many continue to perceive the U.S. as a potential military threat to their countries.”

The news is not universally negative. Nigerian Muslims give Obama a 70 percent approval rating, up from 61 percent in 2009. But they’re the outliers. In Egypt and Lebanon, Obama’s ascendance — and the departure of George W. Bush — elevated Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. somewhat: 25 percent of Egyptians reported favorable opinions of the U.S. in 2009, up from 20 percent a year earlier; Lebanese Muslims in 2008 had given the U.S. a 34 percent favorability rating, which rose to 47 percent in 2008. Now Egyptian Muslims have reverted to their pre-Obama 20 percent favorability rating. Lebanese Muslims have settled into a 39 percent favorability rating.

More ominous from the perspective of Obama’s Cairo speech, Muslims express a sentiment directly opposite the speech’s offer of partnership: They fear that the U.S. will attack them. Majorities, and sometimes large ones, of respondents in Egypt (56 percent), Lebanon (56 percent), Indonesia (76 percent), Pakistan (65 percent), Jordan (52 percent) and Turkey (56 percent) believe the U.S. is a potential military threat. That shouldn’t be surprising: Pakistan, despite being a Major Non-NATO Ally of the U.S., is currently battered in its tribal areas by CIA drone strikes, a step the U.S. has taken in response to what it considers insufficient Pakistani military action against al-Qaeda-aligned extremist groups. In Cairo, Obama pledged that the U.S. “is not, and never will be, at war with Islam,” but many Muslims worldwide believe that the U.S. still has them in its crosshairs.

Support for the Afghanistan war and U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Muslim countries is also anemic. Lebanon is the only Muslim country surveyed by Pew where even 20 percent believe that the U.S. should keep fighting in Afghanistan. (Neighboring Pakistan? Seven percent.) While support for U.S. counterterrorism efforts have grown in non-Muslim countries since Obama took office, it’s at 18 percent in Egypt, 12 percent in Jordan, and 47 percent among Nigerian Muslims.

Several counterterrorism experts believe the U.S.’s counterterrorism efforts will ultimately be hobbled if they run into a headwind of Muslim antipathy. Malcolm Nance, a retired veteran military intelligence officer who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, argues in a new book that rather than attempt to change Muslim attitudes, a more productive strategy would involve moving the conversation to al-Qaeda’s apostasy. Nance code-names this approach CIRCUIT BREAKER, and writes in “An End to Al-Qaeda” that subjecting al-Qaeda to a “deep analytical dissection of their religious motives” can provide a path to “a new era for reconciliation and cooperation with the Muslim street.” It would also provide a platform for popular acquiescence to military or intelligence action against al-Qaeda — or at least limit blowback from it.

The administration appears to be attentive to the challenges, even if it hasn’t figured out a programmatic way to overcome them. Last month, the Pentagon quietly established a new office to ensure that military efforts don’t inadvertently undermine the administration’s broader promotion of the rule of law around the world.

Lynch, who also recently evaluated Obama’s counterterrorism efforts for CNAS partially through the prism of Muslim acquiescence, disputed that the Pew numbers demonstrate that Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world was in vain. “It’s more that he said he would do things, but thus far hasn’t delivered,” Lynch said, “so the words lose their meaning. It’s a real problem for the broader counterterrorism strategy, since winning over mainstream support is absolutely key to the strategy.”

Gaza, of course, is under an Israeli blockade and controlled by the rejectionist group Hamas, which the U.S. won’t talk to until it ceases rejecting the peace process and the existence of Israel. Within those parameters, any aid package has to depend on external and diplomatic circumstances to reach Gaza. The $400 million Obama announced will go through Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who don’t have sway over Gaza or its 1.5 million residents.  So the administration labeled them “a down payment on the United States’ commitment to Palestinians in Gaza, who deserve a better life and expanded opportunities, and the chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank.”

The White House called the siege of Gaza “unsustainable” in a press release, and says it demands “a significant change of strategy.” In what direction? The administration pledged to “work with our partners in the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Egypt, and the international community to put such a strategy in place.” In other words, the administration either has no idea or isn’t prepared to tell Israel to lift the siege.

But here are the “down payment” initiatives, as per a White House fact sheet:

A $240 million investment by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) in the AMAL mortgage finance program in the West Bank, which is designed to increase homeownership by offering long-term mortgages at fixed- and variable rates.

· $75 million in funding through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to support the Palestinian Authority’s work to improve infrastructure throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

· $10 million in USAID-funded activities aimed at enhancing the Palestinian private sector’s competitiveness.

· $40 million to support UNRWA’s Emergency Appeal for Gaza and the West Bank, which will help improve educational and health services, increase job creation, and repair shelters in Gaza, while also addressing core humanitarian needs in the West Bank.

· $14.5 million in USAID projects for school rehabilitation, small-scale agriculture, the repair of a hospital facility and other community infrastructure in Gaza.

· $10 million for the construction of five new UNRWA schools in Gaza.

· $5 million to start nine USAID-funded projects to repair water distribution and wastewater collection systems in Gaza.

Abbas needs to bring home “a means of easing the siege on Gaza that helps the ordinary people but does not help Hamas politically or in terms of PR,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow with the American Task Force on Palestine. But Abbas isn’t wedded to any specific mechanism for lifting the siege. “ATFP has been saying since the borders were closed in 2007 that the best way to open them is to have PA forces with international monitoring, supervision and participation on the Palestinian side, combined with a major effort to shut down the smuggling tunnels,” Ibish continued. Carnegie’s Henri Berkey thinks that such a plan is in both the Israeli and Palestinian Authority interest.

But Gaza is an inflection point for the fragile peacemaking efforts of the administration. It’ll be up to Obama to expand the Gaza crisis into a full-fledged strategy for negotiations. That’s what Abbas needs Obama to say today. “He needs [Obama] to reassure the Palestinians that even use all his leverage, especially his new leverage after his partial defense of Israel from international pressure over the flotilla attack, to move them into a more serious engagement on the real issues in the negotiations,” Ibish said. “He needs deeper understandings with the United States on the need to pressure Israel to really engage with permanent status issues and not just procedural matters or minor matters like water in the proximity talks.”

To some degree, the real test of Abbas’ visit won’t come today. It’ll come when his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrives in Washington. Abbas doesn’t have the power to ease the siege of Gaza. And he doesn’t have the power to expand the aperture of the proximity talks. The past year-plus of Netanyahu’s tenure as premier has seen Netanyahu resist Obama’s power to press Israel on peacemaking. So what will Netanyahu say to Obama?