UN and Israel: A Joke!

On America Online, there is a feature called Judaism Today: Where Do I Fit? People anonymously send e-mails to the author of the feature, Gil Mann, and he selects one letter for a public response in his e-mail column. Earlier this year, in a column about Israel, Mann wrote that the United Nations was "disgustingly anti-Israel."

Hello Gil:

Let's try to be objective when calling the United Nations disgustingly anti-Israel, there are positions that some consider to be neutral, they just sound a little different than the garbage that George Bush spews. Israel can be criticized, like any other nation.

Dear L:

Imagine the following fictitious scenario:

On the border between North and South Korea sit neutral UN peacekeeping soldiers. North Korean troops are on their side of the border and American troops protect the South Korean border. One day, U.S. soldiers patrolling the South Korean border encounter a UN vehicle on the South Korean side of the border. When the Americans approach, they are ambushed by North Koreans who have crossed into South Korea ... blatant violations of international law. Three U.S. soldiers are shot and their bodies dragged away into North Korea.

Nine months later, the United States learns that "somehow" UN "peacekeeping" soldiers on the border had videotaped the ambush. Further, the UN had the video and was concealing this fact. Once the existence of the video is discovered, the UN refuses to let the United States see the tape.

Something like this couldn't happen at the UN, right? Think again. This is what happened, including the video, beginning on Oct. 7, 2000. The border was not Korea, but Lebanon. The soldiers ambushed (and later declared killed) on the Israeli side of the border were Israeli. The ambushers who crossed the border were Lebanese-based Hezbollah soldiers. The UN was ... well, the UN.

When it comes to Israel, the track record of the UN is exactly as I wrote in my prior column: disgustingly biased against Israel!

Did you know that, until recently, Israel was the only country out of 189 member countries that was prohibited from serving on the Security Council (currently chaired by Syria).

How about the UN resolution in 1975 equating Zionism with racism? In 1991, under intense U.S. pressure, the UN finally repealed the resolution, but the damage was done. Over the last decades, misinformation about Zionism has been widespread.

The anti-Israel voting records of the General Assembly and Security Council leave the impression that Israel is one of the only countries on the planet. Of the 175 United Nations Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

Bias goes beyond those two UN bodies. The UN Commission on Human Rights has devoted 25 per cent of their condemnations to Israel. Yet, as noted by David Tell in "The UN's Israel obsession" (www.weeklystandard.com): "There has been a genocide in Rwanda, an ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, periodic and horrifying communal 'strife' in Indonesia's East Timor, the 'disappearance' of a few hundred thousand refugees in the Congo, a decades-long and culturally devastating occupation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China ... but none of those UN member states has ever been subjected to the rebuke of a General Assembly 'emergency special session.' "

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has existed for more than 50 years, spending millions to administer humanitarian services in Palestinians refugee camps. Critics like Irwin Cotler, member of the Canadian Parliament, and U.S. congressman Tom Lantos ask how, in UNRWA schools, do suicide bombers become glorified poster boys? Or how do camps like Jenin (home to 23 suicide bombers) that are serviced by UNRWA become hornets nests of terrorist activity?
How about when UNRWA commissioner Peter Hansen lied to the world's media, claiming that Israel committed a "massacre" in Jenin and that with his own eyes he saw bodies piling up in mass graves? Months later, his quotes were totally discredited.

There are so many other examples of the UN's anti-Israel bias I could give. So, while I agree that "Israel can be criticized like any other nation," given the pathetic track record of the United Nations, any critique of Israel coming from that biased body is a sad joke with no credibility.

Gil

Gil Mann is the author of How to Get More Out of Being Jewish. He welcomes your comments at [email protected].

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