The UN’s rot laid bare in Israel-Hamas war
Washington Examiner
Video Embed
The United Nations is again underlining its systemic moral and political rot. Since Hamas‘s Oct. 7 atrocity, an assault of murder, rape, and kidnapping which took approximately 1,200 Israeli lives, the U.N. has utterly failed in its core mission to preserve international peace and justice in service of sovereign nations.
Instead, under the waffling weakness of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the U.N. has presented Israel as the guilty party in this crisis. Disregarding Hamas’s battlefield tactic of using schools and hospitals as arms depots and closing his eyes to Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, the U.N. chief claims that Israel is committing war crimes. Addressing Israeli military action in Gaza, he asserted this week that “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been secretary-general.”
A WELCOME TURN RIGHT IN ARGENTINA
Those who care for Guterres might suggest that he seek immediate assistance from a neurologist. The former Portuguese prime minister has evidently forgotten some important history that has occurred since he took his present post on Jan. 1, 2017.
How about the Tigray War in Ethiopia? That brutal conflict has taken hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. Guterres similarly appears unaware of Bashar Assad’s starvation, barrel bombing, and gassing of tens of thousands of Syrians since 2017. Another Guterres slip of the mind? The killing, under his watch, of tens of thousands of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. Perhaps Guterres might also want to pay attention to China’s genocidal program targeting more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims? Or the thousands of Ukrainian civilians Russian President Vladimir Putin?
Guterres’s slips of the mind are entirely typical of the U.N.’s abiding bias against the Jewish state. This bias is an addiction.
While Guterres slams Israel, he offers no condemnation of nations that provide financial support and safe haven to Hamas. Or contrast what Guterres is saying now about Israel with what he said when Iranian security forces brutally crushed women’s rights protesters in Iran last year. Now Guterres sees atrocities, whereas last year he was only “concerned” with the ayatollah’s onslaught. He even lent legitimacy to the Iranian crackdown, declaring then that the regime should not use “disproportionate force.” Proportionate force against women’s rights protesters is OK now at the U.N.
This rot is instructive. It shows that the U.N. is in desperate need of systemic repair and reform. The U.S. should not be an idle witness to this disgraceful state of affairs. Providing an outsize measure of the U.N.’s budget — U.S. taxpayers gifted the U.N. $12 billion in 2021 — Washington can exert real influence. It only need acquire the will to use that influence. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has shown a tendency to believe that providing a blank check to the U.N.’s bloated bureaucracy is the best way to make it more effective. This must change. If Biden won’t take the necessary action, Republican presidential hopefuls should pledge to do so.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
One key area of focus should rest on denying regimes such as Iran membership of the U.N. Human Rights Council. The absurdity of its presence there is obvious. The U.S. must demand greater moral clarity from U.N. leaders. That has to start at the top with Guterres. Where U.N. Security Council members draw false equivalency between a democracy acting in its own defense and terrorists warring to eliminate it, the U.S. should make the difference crystal clear.
Much is at stake in the war between Israel and Hamas. The conflict will help shape whether democracies under the rule of law or terrorists bound to fanaticism set the terms of international order. If, facing this question, the U.N. sees Israel as the immoral culprit, the U.S. should take action to set the international organization straight.