Hey United Nations, keep Israel out of your mouth.
Hey United Nations, keep Israel out of your mouth.
The UN seems to be blaming Israel for the organization's own failures, a classic antisemitic ploy.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
In 1952, an Israeli initiative at the United Nations for a ceasefire in Korea, put forward by representative Abba Eban, encountered serious opposition, only to easily pass once Norway replaced Israel as the sponsor.
Eban went on to famously say: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”
Today, the sentiments felt nauseatingly familiar: The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel “brings to an end without delay its unlawful presence” in what it calls “Occupied Palestinian Territory” within 12 months, including all soldiers and civilians.
The measure was sponsored by the “State of Palestine” — even though no such state exists — as well as 29 other countries, mostly Muslim ones. There was some good news, though: The United Arab Emirates was the only Arab country which recognizes Israel that declined to add its name to the sponsors.
None of this is surprising, unfortunately. Since October 7th, the UN has continued to use hard-earned taxpayer money to produce no-good nothingness and utter irrelevance, while continuing the organization’s penchant for disproportionately chastising the Jewish state.
Ironically, one American woman recently wrote me that her justification for opposing Israel’s response to Hamas’ massacre on October 7th is that she’s “paying for it” — you know, with her tax money. Meanwhile, the U.S. sends some $12 billion a year to the UN, even as it profusely displays one-sided and pro-Jihadist behaviors during this Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war.
The depth of the UN’s obscene bias against Israel can be explained in one recent story: Canada offered an amendment to “unequivocally reject and condemn the terrorist attacks by Hamas that took place in Israel starting on October 7th, 2023 and the taking of hostages.” But it failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to be adopted.
An institution that cannot clearly condemn terrorist attacks and vicious brutality is a morally bankrupt, deeply corrupted institution. Surely, though, it is all kosher as long as the UN keeps up its constant and unabated effort to defame the Jewish state, erode its moral standing among the community of nations, and delegitimize its very existence — going back to the notorious “Zionism is racism” resolution in the 1970s.
Eight years ago, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave words to what Israelis had been feeling for decades, as he criticized the UN for its “obsession with Israel.” True to form, the organization has issued 14 condemnations of the Jewish state this year — double the rest of the world, combined.
But why the UN’s obsession with Israel?
Indeed, it is pretty obvious: The UN is the one place where countries, particularly Arab and Muslim ones, can take swings at Israel without any real repercussions. Whereas the Jewish state has won all its many wars since 1948, becoming a regional superpower and forcing Arab regimes to bow in humiliation, the UN has become the only arena where Israel can be embarrassed.
For more than 70 years, the fixation for singling out Israel has largely been accepted across the world, enabling the Palestinians to hijack the world body and turn it into its lavish welfare system, with unlimited impunity for their decades’ worth of miscalculations, deceit, and fraudulence.
Let’s not forget: The Arabs refused to collaborate with the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in 1947, then attacked Israel mere hours after the Jews declared independence in 1948.
Following Israel’s victory against five Arab states, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established in order to provide shelter, welfare, and health services for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, who refused to be absorbed into the new countries, because they understood that this would mean they had lost the war against Israel.
In 1950, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was established to handle all of the world’s refugees. However, following pressure from Arab countries, the Palestinian refugees remained the sole responsibility of UNRWA — which to this day remains the world’s only refugee agency dedicated to a specific population.
At first, only those who had lost their home and livelihood as a result of the 1948 war were considered refugees (with the definition later broadened to include their children). But beginning in 1982, the right to be defined as a refugee was expanded to include every generation of descendants. In other words, even the great-grandchild of a refugee is also considered a “refugee.”
As a result, in its 74-year existence, the number of UNRWA beneficiaries has grown from 700,000 refugees, to almost six million by 2022 — with an annual operating budget that exceeds $1 billion.
UNRWA is just one example of the UN’s rampant rot and double standards. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN put out a statement saying that “corruption is criminal, immoral, and the ultimate betrayal of public trust.” Sadly, the ubiquitous nature of the UN’s administration is itself the subject of accusations of corruption and various integrity violations.
The most prominent of these was the 1996 Oil-for-Food Program scandal ensuing when, under UN auspices, more than $65 billion worth of Iraqi oil was sold on the world market in violation of the provisions that it was to be sold in quantities necessary only to exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs.
According to a study by Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker, there is a strong connection between the distribution of foreign aid payments and rotating membership of the UN Security Council.
“There are few organizations in the Western world that could survive with the allegations of mismanagement, scandal, and corruption that permeate the United Nations. For many delegates, officials, and employees, particularly those from developing nations, the UN is little more than an enormous watering hole,” wrote industrial psychologist Paul Babiak and criminal psychologist Robert D. Hare in their book, “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.”
Because of this, the UN has become an impotent body, lacking in legitimacy and financial security, thus doomed to go down the same path as its predecessor, the League of Nations. This is why it goes after Israel so much — because the Jews are an easy target to bring down with you. At least the UN is consistent with history, taking a page out of Hamas and Hezbollah, Nazi Germany, Catholic monarchs during the Spanish Inquisition, and the Russian Empire (to name just a few examples).
Of course, the UN is not living in reality. It is operating in some make-believe world, evidenced by a statement released as part of the Security Council’s recent resolution, which stressed that “the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967.”
For those who actually know history, Gaza was under Egyptian control before and leading up to the 1967 Six-Day War (which the Arabs genocidally started against Israel). Egypt wanted to create a pan-Arab state (the United Arab Republic) and unite the Arab populations under it, whereas Jordan (illegally) annexed the West Bank. The two countries were at odds.
Had Israel disappeared in 1967, there would not be peace. There would be a conflict between Egypt and Jordan (and perhaps other Arab countries) over what to do with a stretch of land in which Arab sovereignty known as “Palestine” never existed. Thus, establishing a Palestinian state along the “1967 borders” would not be a “return” to the way things were. It would be the invention of a new regional problem, as if the Middle East needs another one.
But the UN Security Council does not seem to find solace in history lessons. It is merely a microcosm for the more dire and pressing problem across the UN: The council’s lack of membership criteria renders it open to participation and manipulation by the world’s worst human rights abusers.
Tyrannical regimes such as Burma, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Zimbabwe all voted in favor of establishing the council, and the North Korean dictatorship also gave the council its ringing endorsement. When council elections were held in May 2023, leading human rights abusers Algeria, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia were all elected.
As one political analyst aptly noted: “The UN today is best described as a sickly patient awaiting a blood transfusion.”1
“The U.N. is riddled with massive corruption.” Sri Lankan Guardian.
UN has outlived its usefulness. It no longer is, (if it ever was), a neutral arbiter, and it is routinely ignored EXCEPT when a nations’ ax needs to be ground.
It’s long past its “Use By” date.
Great article! Go Israel!