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[karynnj]

9. The UN has not been silent on Syria

1) A UN envoy has taken the lead for several years in trying to get peace talks and to coordinate whatever aid they can get into Syria. They have been unsuccessful, but not silent.

2) I seem to remember many UN meetings dealing with Syria - in 2 recent ones, Samantha Powers and John Kerry respectively were not silent at all.

3) It IS true that there were no recent resolutions. The reason is pretty obvious - Russia has a veto. (This would be like saying that until this week, the UN was silent on Israel for the 8 year Obama term. We vetoed every other resolution. The last Syrian resolution was a very hard fought one initiated by John Kerry and worked on by many countries including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran. That resolution was the basis for much that the UN tried to do.

The US and EU DOES call the settlements in Crimea etc illegal -- that is why fairly onerous sanctions are in place. There is no UN resolution because they have a veto. Seriously, the US sanctions on Russia are FAR MORE SEVERE a response than the US abstaining as the rest of the Security Council votes for a resolution.

It is a jump in logic to think praying at the Western Wall is illegal. Though the Knesset has worked hard to make it illegal for reform or conservative rabbis to lead any prayer at the Western Wall -- much less women doing so. Not all Jews wanting to pray are male and Orthodox.