The UN’s Long War Against Israel

Clifford May, the founder and head of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, recently wrote about the UN’s long-running antipathy to Israel, beginning with the infamous 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution.

As a foreign correspondent roving around Africa years ago, I often met United Nations personnel. Most were pleasant dinner companions.

What they were achieving was usually a mystery.

To understand what I mean, check out the website of the United Nations Development Programme. Look at the sections marked “Our Impact” and “Results.” Let me know if you find any useful missions accomplished

I came to regard the United Nations as ineffectual but harmless, with one notable exception: It has long been hostile toward the nation-state that became its 59th member in 1949.

As far back as 1975, the U.N. General Assembly, steered by the Soviet Union, adopted a resolution calling Zionism “a form of racism.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, knew that Zionism implies nothing more than supporting the right of Israel not to be annihilated and the right of Israelis not to be exterminated.

He denounced the U.N. General Assembly resolution as “a lie” and an expression of “antisemitism.” Some 16 years later, driven by the end of the Cold War, U.S. diplomatic pressure and the Madrid peace process, the General Assembly repealed it.

…Earlier this month, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. “special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza,” remarked that “Hamas is a political force that won the 2005 elections.” She neglected to mention that Hamas has permitted no elections in the 20 years since then.

She added, “When you think of Hamas, you should not necessarily think of cutthroats, people armed to the teeth, or fighters. It’s not like that.”

At the same time, she accused Israelis of “apartheid” and “genocide.” Do I need to remind you that Arab citizens of Israel have more rights than Arab citizens of Arab countries, and that since 1948, Gaza’s population has increased tenfold?…

No, of course not, that would be unfair. True, 6,000 Hamas members crashed into Israel on October 7, 2023, and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1200 Israelis, tying family members together and then burning them alive, decapitating children, raping girls in front of their parents, slicing off of women’s breasts and cutting into their genitalia, gouging out the eyes and cutting the genitalia off of men before killing them. But, after all, more than two million Gazans did not join in that attack, not having been asked, although many were delighted to hear of Hamas’ great exploits on that day, so Federica Albanese wants to make sure we not tar them with the same brush.

Israeli Arabs have all the political rights as Israeli Jews. They serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, go abroad as diplomats. A recent head of Israel’s biggest bank, the Bank Leumi, was an Arab. Jews and Arabs work in the same offices and factories, are treated by the same medical personnel, play on the same sports teams and in the same orchestras, run restaurants and work in tech start-ups together. The only difference in the treatment of Israel’s Jews and Arabs is that Jews must, while Arabs may, serve in the military. Yet Federica Albanese and so many other UN officials insist that Israel practices “apartheid.”

One more fact: Since May, more than 10,000 aid trucks have entered Gaza, with eight out of ten bringing food. This has resulted in wider availability of essential foods at reduced prices in Gaza markets.

Since May, the Israel-and-US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GGHF) has delivered more than one hundred million meals to Gazans. So much aid has flooded into Gaza that the black market prices of flour, sugar, milk, pasta and other staples have dropped precipitously.

Of the emaciated Gazans — all but one a child — who have been presented by Hamas to the world as victims of a “famine” supposedly caused by Israel, at least a dozen of them were not in late stages of starvation, but rather, were suffering from congenital diseases, including Fanconi’s disease, cerebral palsy, and leukemia, that gave them that appearance. The single emaciated adult who was shown in Hamas videos was flown out of Israel for treatment in Italy; her Italian doctors confirmed that she was not starving, but had a rare form of leukemia; she died in an Italian hospital.