A Round up of News in the Middle East today:

The foxes have once again taken over the UN hen house as the organization has appointed a Saudi Arabian representative as head of a key human rights panel that is tasked with naming experts that determine global human rights standards. UN Watch director Hillel Neuer is among those protesting:

“Petro-dollars and politics have trumped human rights,” he said. “Saudi Arabia has arguably the worst record in the world when it comes to religious freedom and women’s rights, and continues to imprison the innocent blogger Raif Badawi.
 
“This UN appointment is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief, and underscores the credibility deficit of a human rights council that already counts Russia, Cuba, China, Qatar and Venezuela among its elected members.”

Palestinian rock throwing attacks continue. If you still can’t imagine how potentially dangerous these are, read this account of one family’s miraculous escape from a hail of stones on their car.At least 23 rock-throwing and Molotov cocktail attacks against Israelis had been perpetrated by Palestinians in different parts of the country as of 2 p.m. Sunday, the Israeli news site 0404 reported.



Iran’s Supreme Leader has announced a new publication, the Line of Hezbollah, which it said would “allow the revolutionary community to benefit directly from the ideas and declarations of the supreme leader on…current political, social, and economic events.” Included in one edition:

A column headlined “Israel will disappear” refutes [UK Defense Minister] Philip Hammond’s remark that Iran’s position on Israel had “changed a little”. It quotes extensively from Khamenei’s speeches since 1990: “They have brought evil people from all around the world and fabricated a nation called Israel…the Zionist regime is an imposed regime, brought about by force…the struggle against Zionism and its supporters is one of the bases of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s political strategy.”