While tens of millions of poor souls are dying and starving under brutal regimes in places like Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Congo and Somalia, among many others, the United Nations decided on Dec. 30 that only one country merited an open-ended investigation.
If you haven’t been living on Mars the past few decades, you’ve already guessed the name of that country—Israel—the recipient of more UN condemnations than all other countries combined.
So, what did the world’s only Jewish state do this time to deserve such a staggering level of discrimination from a world body that claims to champion justice, fairness and human rights?
Oh, the usual. Last May, Israel decided it didn’t want to see thousands of its citizens—Jews and non-Jews alike—perish at the hands of Hamas terror rockets. As Hamas was launching 4,000 rockets at Israeli civilians, Israel defended itself with everything it had, including the Iron Dome, civilian bomb shelters and targeted air strikes.
Israel’s defense of its people triggered the scourge of Jew-haters everywhere, including at the UN’s Human Rights Council, the world’s anti-Israel headquarters, which voted to investigate Israel against possible “war crimes.”
The way the UN treats Israel significantly worse than the most murderous and evil regimes on earth is itself a crime. Not only does this gross singling-out undermine the UN’s credibility, it adds fuel to Jew-haters everywhere and endangers Jews.
The Dec. 30 vote in the General Assembly made that investigation official and open-ended. The resolution, which Israel’s UN envoy Gilad Erdan called “despicable and biased,” calls for the creation of a permanent “Commission of Inquiry” to monitor and report on Israel’s rights violations in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
True to form, this is the first such commission of inquiry with an “ongoing” mandate, unwrapped exclusively for the Jewish state as a holiday present.
The irony of ironies is that on the same day the UN accentuated its maniacal singling-out of Israel, a poll came out showing that Palestinians blame their own leaders for their misery. The Palestinian Atlas Center for Studies and Research found that 45% of respondents hold the Palestinian Authority responsible for the perennial crises in the Gaza Strip, with 25% saying they hold Hamas responsible. Only 15% of Palestinians blamed Israel.
Maybe, after all these years, more and more Palestinians are realizing that their leaders have used hundreds of millions of foreign aid not to build schools and hospitals but tunnels and bomb factories.
Maybe they’ve stopped ignoring that Hamas terrorists hide behind women and children when they launch rockets at Israel so that Israel will be blamed for any Palestinian casualties.
Maybe they read somewhere that the Israeli army has the lowest wartime civilian casualty ratio of any army.
Maybe they saw a YouTube video of fellow Arabs in Israel who are grateful that Israel defends them and their families from indiscriminate terror rockets launched by Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel.
Or maybe they’ve been seeing news reports of their Arab brethren from the Gulf States and Morocco saying the exact opposite they’ve been hearing for years about Israel from their leaders—instead of being a demonic state, Israel is actually a vibrant and productive nation that can benefit all the people of the region.
None of that mattered, of course, to the UN, which understands the number one rule of international diplomacy: No one ever gets punished for discriminating against Israel.
Seekers of justice everywhere must demand a Commission of Inquiry to determine how this discrimination against Israel took place, who is behind it, and what will be the remedies.
There’s a special irony in the UN targeting a country already marinating in self-criticism and dissent, thanks to its free press. But beyond that, the way the UN treats Israel significantly worse than the most murderous and evil regimes on earth is itself a crime. Not only does this gross singling-out undermine the UN’s credibility, it adds fuel to Jew-haters everywhere and endangers Jews.
There is a movement afoot to fight back against this latest UN assault on Israel, and for good reason. This blatant discrimination against Israel violates the UN charter and the UN’s own laws and guidelines. The anti-Israel bias of many of the officials behind this calumny is also well established.
But to really get the UN’s attention, we must go beyond condemnations and refutations and call for an investigation. Seekers of justice everywhere must demand a Commission of Inquiry to determine how this discrimination against Israel took place, who is behind it, and what will be the remedies.
The UN will never reform until it gets a taste of its own medicine.
