The UN’s Effort to Delegitimize Israel

Another resolution has been approved by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) deploring the “civilian deaths that resulted from the conflict in and around the Gaza Strip in July and August 2014.” The report condemns the killing of 1,462 Palestinian civilians, including 551 children and 299 women, and six Israeli civilians,” according to the inquiry. Many have criticized the resolution, including Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Eviator Manor, calling it “an anti-Israeli manifesto.”

However, as University of South Carolina professor Josef Olmert points out, the resolution fails both politically and morally by recognizing one important fact of the situation in Gaza: Hamas, a  terrorist organization, is engaged in a permanent war of aggression against Israel and violates international law deliberately and persistently. The resolution creates a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, who is acting in self-defense. Rather than stopping human rights violations, the resolution gives Hamas a license to continue its aggressive and inhumane actions, which the UN has subsequently reinforced.

Ambassador Richard Schifter has years of intimate experience with the United Nations, having served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights as well as the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. There are few people who have witnessed and understand the UN dynamics better than Schifter. Considering his notable background and achievements in the organization, Ambassador Schifter’s evaluation of the recent Gaza resolution should serve as a valuable tool in understanding what is happening at the United Nations, particularly with regard to Israel.

According to Ambassador Schifter, the recent resolution adopted by the UNHRC is intended to placate those who wanted a more balanced and evenhanded resolution. But the intention of the drafters was to target Israel:

“When reading it, you will note how the game is played at the UN to affect vote changes.  That the intent of the drafters of the resolution is to initiate proceedings against Israel in the International Criminal Court is clear.  But the way this revised text is written one could argue that the legal proceedings mentioned in the text could be directed against Hamas.  As it is, a truly sound case can be made against Hamas for having violated Article 58(b) of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which provides the parties in conflict not to place weapons in or close to densely populated areas. The wording of the resolution suggests that the UN should proceed against Hamas now, but of course no one will. The resolution reflects the intellectually dishonest way in which things get done at the UN.”

The Ambassador explained that United Nations spends a grossly disproportional amount of time focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Commission on Human Rights has spent more time on Israel than any other country, making up about 27 percent of country-specific resolutions per year. 11 percent of total substantive meeting time has been on Israel, while 24 percent has been spent on all other UN states combined. Meanwhile, the UN has spent considerably less time examining issues such as the upwards of 2 million displaced in South Sudan, at least 15,000 individuals killed by Boko Haram since 2009, not to mention the atrocities against humanity committed by ISIS on a daily basis.  This only scratches the surface of human rights violations that occur throughout the world, while the UN is willfully blinded by the war against Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.

The U.S.-Israel Convolution

While there is no doubt that the UN holds Israel to a double standard, the diplomatic hostility towards Israel and the United States is blurred. “When I was in the UN, I felt that anti-Israel and anti-US sentiments were intertwined,” said Schifter. Therefore, the fact that the U.S. stood alone in backing Israel on the recent resolution quite possibly says more about the nations’ feelings towards the United States than it does about Israel’s alleged war crimes. Ambassador Schifter highlights one of the more conspicuous examples of this trend:

“China, for example, is not at all against Israel. There is no history of anti-Semitism. But they’ve voted against Israel in every opportunity because it is voting against the US.”

When the UN becomes a mechanism of undermining global power, rather than legitimately evaluating human rights’ violations, the entire institution loses its credibility.

Origins of the System

Biases are fundamentally engrained in the nature of the UN and this can be traced all the way back to the Cold War and the beginning of the Non-Aligned Movement, which was largely influenced by the Soviet-backed Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. He stated in 1979 that the mission of the movement was “to struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.” And thus began the diplomatic war against the United States, according to Ambassador Schifter:

“In 1974, Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi got together, they were both competing for the leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement.  They worked it out to join in taking over the UN and that is what they did. Castro recruited all of those countries friendly to the Soviet Union and unfriendly to the United States, while Gaddafi mobilized all of the states of the Islamic Conference who were unfriendly to Israel. The two then went out to literally buy additional votes. While  Cuban diplomats organized the subornation, Gaddafi provided the funds for the mass bribery of countries and ambassadors.”

Since then, the Non-Aligned Movement has fought a two-front war: Castro’s massive propaganda campaign against the United States on one hand, and Gaddafi’s effort to delegitimize the state of Israel, equating it with the Apartheid State of South Africa on the other hand.

Yet with both regimes weakened, the nature of the United Nations has not changed. To this day, countries vote against Israel in fear of being boycotted by Arab nations.

Deterioration of the UN ‘s Core Principles

According to the United Nations Charter, the UN mission is “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.”

However, the United Nations has not only turned a blind eye to systematic human rights violations across the globe, but it has in fact rewarded such behavior. For example Saudi Arabia, a country known for subjugating women and carrying out public beheadings in adherence with Sharia law, has been rewarded a high position on the Human Rights Council.

It has been evident for many decades that the United Nations has distanced itself from the core principles of human rights and the Charter, and has instead focused on serving its many individual and self-serving agendas. The most extreme example of UN Charter violations is the funding of the year-round global campaign to delegitimize Israel.

“There are some things that the UN does do successfully and accomplishes, but as far as the center is concerned, it is controlled by people who have no commitment at all to the basic principles of the UN charter. It.is not interested in the principles in the UN, its not interested in human rights, it’s there to embarrass the US and essentially lead the foundation for the end of Israel,” says Schifter.

Changing the Nature of the  UN

The American Jewish International Relations Institute, of which Ambassador Schifter serves as Chairman, has been committed to persuading UN members who are friendly to the U.S. yet often vote against U.S. positions, to vote against unbalanced and punitive resolutions directed against Israel which the U.S. opposes:

“The AJIRI is working with members of Congress to get them to change votes and this has worked. We have succeeded in getting a number of countries to change from “yes” on anti-Israel resolutions to “abstain” by having individual members of the U.S Congress with connections to those countries, persuading them to change their positions.”

It is quite evident that the UN no longer values the core principles of its charter and has been transformed into a farce and an illusion of global cooperation. “I’ve never quite experienced an institution that is as much characterized by cynicism, make-believe, and dishonesty, both intellectually and financially,”concluded Schifter. Supported by the Non-Aligned Movement, including the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the United Nations has been used as a tool to undermine United States’ interest and delegitimize Israel.  As Dr. Josef Olmert put it,  “now is the time when the drums of propaganda and hatred will reign supreme, not the voices of reason and reality.”