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Nearly a hundred years ago, the nations of the world formed an organization called the
League of Nations. Seventy years ago, the nations of the world tried again, and named the organization
the United Nations, U.N. for short. Today, the nations of the world have created a new organization which
should be named the Anti-Israel United Nations or A.I.U.N.
“It’s appalling to see how Israel is treated by a totally different standard than other
countries in the international system. Of course, Israel deserves scrutiny, as does every other nation. But it
also merits equal treatment — nothing more, nothing less.” (Ref. 1)
However, Israel is unique in that it is the one nation in the whole world that is vilified and discriminated
against on an almost-daily basis in the world body that recommended its creation in 1947 and in which it has been
a member since 1949. There are at least ten ways in which Israel is treated differently in the U.N. than any other
nation. Listed below are these ten ways Israel is treated differently as abstracted from Reference
1
- Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge and where there’s a
relentless chorus of nations, institutions, and individuals denying Israel’s very political legitimacy. No one
would dare question the right to exist of many other countries whose basis for legitimacy is infinitely more
questionable than Israel’s, including those that were created by brute force, occupation, or distant mapmakers.
Just look around at how many nations fit those categories, including, by the way, quite a few Arab countries.
Why, then, is it open hunting season only on Israel, the only Jewish-majority country in the world? Does the
term anti-Semitic come to mind?
- Israel is the only UN member state that’s been targeted for annihilation by another UN member state. Think
about it. The leadership of Iran, together with Iran-funded proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, has repeatedly called for
wiping Israel off the map. Is there any other country facing the threat of genocidal destruction?
- Israel is the only nation in the entire world whose capital city, Jerusalem, is not recognized by other
nations. Imagine the absurdity of this. Foreign diplomats live in Tel Aviv while conducting virtually all their
business in Jerusalem. Though no Western nation questions Israel’s presence in the city’s western half, where the
prime minister’s office, Knesset (Parliament), and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are located, there are no embassies
there.
- The U.N. has two agencies dealing with refugees. One, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), focuses on all the world’s refugee populations, save one. The other, the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), handles only the Palestinians. Interestingly, these two agencies
have vastly different mandates. UNHCR seeks to resettle refugees; UNRWA does not – it works to maintain
their refugee status. When in 1951, UNRWA proposed resettling up to 250,000 refugees in nearby Arab
countries, those countries were enraged and refused. The message got through. No U.N. official since has pushed
for resettlement. Also, the UNRWA and UNHCR definitions of a refugee differ markedly. UNHCR targets only those
who’ve actually fled their homelands, but UNRWA’s definition covers “the descendants of persons who became
refugees in 1948,” without any generational limitations.
- Israel is the only country that has won all its major wars for survival and self-defense, yet is confronted by
defeated adversaries who insist on dictating the terms of peace. Unlike many other U.N. member nations, Israel has
never retained any foreign territory over which it gained control while defending itself from those nations
that were trying to detroy it – Egypt, the Sinai, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan.
- Israel is the only country in the world with a separate – and permanent – agenda item, #7, at the Geneva-based
UN Human Rights Council. No other member state, including serial human-rights violators like North Korea, Syria,
Iran, and Sudan, gets its own agenda item. Only the sole liberal democracy in the Middle East is treated in this
blatantly biased manner because that’s the way it works — the bad guys circle the wagons to protect one another,
and, at the same time, gang up on Israel, creating an automatic majority against it.
- Israel is the only country condemned by name in 2015 at the World Health Organization annual assembly as a
“violator” of health rights. This blatantly ridiculous canard takes place despite the fact that Israel provides
world-class medical assistance to Syrians wounded in the country’s civil war and Palestinians living in Hamas-ruled
Gaza; has achieved one of the world’s highest life expectancy rates for all its citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish
alike; is among the very first medical responders to humanitarian crises wherever they may occur, from Haiti to
Nepal; and is daily advancing the frontiers of medicine for everyone, something that can’t be said for too many
other nations.
- Israel is the only country that’s the daily target of three UN bodies established and staffed solely for the
purpose of advancing the Palestinian cause and bashing Israel — the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable
Rights of the Palestinian People; the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human
Rights of the Palestinian People; and the Division for Palestinian Rights in the UN’s Department of Political
Affairs. More than 250,000 Syrians have died so far and millions more are refugees, but the U.N. is only concerned
with Palestinians who are not in danger!
- Israel is the only country annually targeted by up to 20 U.N. General Assembly resolutions and countless
measures in other U.N. bodies. Indeed, each and every year, the number of such attacks against Israel
are more than those on the other 192 UN member states combined. No one can seriously argue that
this is remotely warranted, but it’s a reality because in every U.N. body, except the Security Council where
each of the five permanent members has a veto, it’s all about majority voting. When close to two-thirds of the
world’s nations today belong to the Non-Aligned Movement, and when they elect a country like Iran as its chair,
with Venezuela on deck, that just about says it all.
- Israel is the only country targeted by the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement. Has anyone seen
any significant campus activity that takes aim at true human rights offenders, including some in Israel’s
neighborhood, who behead, forcibly convert, and expel Christians; drop chemically-laced barrel bombs on civilians;
deny Palestinians full rights; and use capital punishment, including for minors, with abandon? Turkey, as but one
example, has occupied one-third of the island nation of Cyprus for 41 years, deployed an estimated 40,000 Turkish
troops there, and transferred countless settlers from Anatolia, yet there’s not a peep against Ankara from those
who purport to act in the name of “justice” and against “occupation.”
The pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel bias of UNRWA was further exposed during the 2014
fighting in Gaza. “Critics from Israeli officials to Middle East experts to local analysts say the U.N. agency,
which is internationally funded, serves a one-sided Palestinian narrative that is biased, implicitly anti-Israel
and exhaustively emotional. And fueling even greater criticism, it recently discovered rocket caches of unknown
provenance in three of its schools.” (Ref. 2)
The supposedly neutral UNRWA has gradually adopted a distinctively non-neutral political
viewpoint that strongly supports the Palestinian and Arab narrative of events in the Middle East – whether true or
untrue. It strongly espouses the Palestinian political demand of a “right of return” which encourages Palestinians
to re-fight “long-lost wars” and which poses a road block to any peace settlement between Israel and the
Palestinians. Rather than resolving a refugee problem that occurred nearly 70 years ago, UNRWA has perpetuated the
refugee crisis and expanded it from around 650,000 in 1949 to about 5 million “refugees” today, 2015. Its current
mission in life is not to end the refugee problem but to expand it and, at the same time, grow itself into the
largest agency of the United Nations with a self-perpetuating $1.1 – $1.2 billion dollar a year budget and a
bureaucracy of 30,000. Of the $1.1 billion in UNRWA funding in 2013, $294 million was contributed by the United
States.[3]
During its nearly 70 years of existence and unlike all other refugee relief agencies,
UNRWA has not resettled the residents of the refugee camps it operates and it has no interest in doing so. To close
its refugee camps would obviate the need for UNRWA and deprive the Arab world of a propaganda tool against Israel.
UNRWA is the only U.N. relief organization that exists for the sole purpose of keeping those who is supposed to
help in eternal refugee status. Every other refugee relief agency in the world, except UNRWA, operates with the
goal of making their wards self-sufficient and resettling them.
“Anti-Israel bias at the UN is not new. But when this bias is allowed to go unchecked and
unopposed at an institution as prestigious and powerful as the United Nations, it sends a chilling message to
governments around the world that the vilification of Jews is okay.
“Just recently, we were reminded that anti-Israel bias is alive and well at the UN when
the Palestinian Return Center (PRC) – a group with ties to Hamas – was granted NGO status by the UN Committee on
Nongovernmental Organizations.
“Recognizing the PRC, which denies Israel’s right to exist, as an NGO is another step
down the slippery slope towards legitimizing Hamas, a ruthless terrorist organization. This vote is a victory for
terror and a setback for peace in the Middle East and beyond.
“Jews must be able to depend on the United Nations to stand firmly against hate, terror
and violence toward Jews. But as it stands today – and for quite some time -- Jews are unable to trust the U.N.
to protect {their} safety.” (Ref. 4)
“Since 2006, the UNHRC has condemned Israel nearly 50 times – far more than Syria, Sudan,
North Korea, Congo, Myanmar, Somalia Libya and Iran combined. Feel free to criticize Israel, but if you think its
human rights record is worse – than Syria’s or North Korea’s, you’re a fool.” (Ref.
5)
Who can forget that, in 1975, “the majority of the {U.N.} General Assembly adopted the
‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution. At the same time, it instituted a series of related measures that together
installed an infrastructure of anti-Israel propaganda throughout the UN.” (Ref.
6)
Most recently, the United Nation Human Rights Council’s issued a report “accusing Israel
of potential war crimes after the Jewish state was attacked by Hamas last summer . . .
- - -
“Clearly, the United Nations needs to change. . . .
“This obsession {against Israel} is not only wrong and unfair, it is destructive, and it
stands in the way of an effective human rights policy {for those nations that are the real abusers of human rights}
that is so badly needed.
‘Whenever Israel is forced to utilize its legitimate right of self-defense against the
thousands of rockets fired onto its territories, or when it tries to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of
Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza, it is immediately accused of war crimes and human rights abuse by the
United Nations.
“It is Hamas that violates human rights. It violates the sanctity of schools, of mosques,
of hospitals. It uses civilians, including children, as human shields. And it executes people publicly without
benefit of a fair trial.
“Yet many in the United Nations continue to blame Israel for everything that goes wrong
in the area. That’s because blaming Israel for every woe has become a sport.
- - -
“Stop applying double standards towards Israel — it’s unfair.
“Stop portraying Israel as a serial violator of human rights — it’s wrong.
“Stop putting the democratic State of Israel on the same level as the terror regime of
Hamas — it’s an insult.
“Make no mistake...Israel has the best human rights record in the Middle East and is the
only democratic nation in the region.” [Emphasis mine] (Ref.
7)
In many respects, the United Nations has failed to live up to its promise, but none so
horribly as in its dealings with the State of Israel. It has permitted anti-Semitism, anti- Zionism and anti-Israel
actions to become commonplace in its chambers and it has miserably failed to help the people that its original
charter promised to protect, both Jewish and Muslim. It has kept Arab refugees in squalid refugee camps for more
than 6 decades and offers them no hope of escape. Its peace keeping forces have proven totally ineffectual in
maintaining peace and, as a supposedly impartial body, it has become a one-sided propaganda forum for those
nations harboring an ingrained hatred of Jews and Israel. The U.N. has morphed into the A.I.U.N. –
the Anti-Israel United Nations.
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References:
- Ten Ways Israel Is Treated Differently, David Harris,
Times of Israel: The Blog, 14 June 2015.
- The controversial U.N. agency that found rockets in its Gaza schools,
Terrence McCoy, The Washington Post,
1 August 2014.
- TOP 20 DONORS TO UNRWA IN 2013, Sadallah Bulbul,
19 March 2014.
- The UN has gone too far, World Jewish Congress,
24 July 2015.
- World’s democracies deserve League of their own, Jonah Goldberg,
Boston Herald, Page 21, 28 July 2014.
- UN, Israel & Anti-Semitism, UN Watch,
Accessed 5 August 2015.
- World Jewish Congress petition urging UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to stand up
against the constant bias Israel faces at the UN and the UN Human Rights Council,
Robert Singer, World Jewish Congress, 5 August 2015.
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