by Mark Regev
In facing this undisguised institutionalized prejudice, Israel has a crucial friend in the United States.
 |
THEN-US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council in 2018.
(photo credit: CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS)
|
There are clear signs that Arab hostility towards the Jewish state is on the wane. The Abraham Accords
normalized Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates and
Bahrain, an Israeli Defense Minister can make a very public visit to
Morocco and even Saudi Arabia allows flights to and from Israel to cross
over its territory. But there remains at least one bastion of
anti-Israel enmity, the United Nations, where systematic, organizational
prejudice against the Jewish state reigns supreme.
The
opening act: Though not representing a member state, in 1974 Yasser
Arafat was issued an extraordinary invitation to address the UN General
Assembly (UNGA). His speech included a call for an end to Israel. The
Jews, he said, could become citizens in the PLO’s “democratic
Palestine.” Extreme content notwithstanding, and the fact that he spoke
soon after his PLO massacred 25 hostages in Ma’alot, mostly high school
students, Arafat received a standing ovation.
Infamously,
the following year, the UNGA adopted Resolution 3379 which declared
Zionism a “form of racism and racial discrimination”. Although that
travesty was officially repealed in 1991, its annulment did not mark the
end of the UN’s anti-Israel obsession – far from it.
Every
year the UNGA routinely passes, with massive majorities, a series of
blatant anti-Israel resolutions; in 2021 17 were enacted. Earlier this
month, for example, the UNGA called upon Israel to withdraw from the
“occupied Syrian Golan,” with delegates voting to hand over the Golan to
Bashar Assad’s murderous regime.
But
the story doesn’t end with these multiple resolutions, as some of them
establish UN organs whose sole mission is to further propagate an
anti-Israel agenda. The Special Committee to Investigate Practices
Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People is one such body.
The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the
Palestinian People, which every year organizes the UN’s annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, is another.
The United Nations. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
To
augment the work of these committees, the UN secretariat contains a
Division for Palestinian Rights, the only part of the Department of
Political Affairs devoted to a single conflict. And to ensure the
message gets out there is the “special information program on the
question of Palestine” in the Department of Global Communications.
Numerous
UN agencies have also demonstrated anti-Israel prejudice. The UN’s
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has adopted
positions that ignore Jewish historic, cultural and religious ties to
the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in Jerusalem as well as to the
Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
The
UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) partners
with organizations connected to the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (designated a terror group by Israel, the US, the EU,
Australia, Canada and Japan).
The UN’s Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been accused of
touting both antisemitism and terrorism. While UNRWA deals with a
self-declared list of five million Palestinian refugees, the over one
hundred million non-Palestinian displaced people worldwide suffice with
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Although the
latter agency helps to resettle refugees, UNRWA works to perpetuate
refugee status, endorsing the maximalist Palestinian demand for the
“right of return” to pre-1967 Israel.
Probably
the most egregious example of a UN body plagued by anti-Israel mania is
the Human Rights Council (UNHRC) which has a permanent agenda item
targeting one country alone, Israel, and has passed more resolutions
condemning the Jewish state than against all other countries combined.
UNHCR’s repeated kangaroo court “investigations” of Israel are
characterized by biased mandates equaled only by the anti-Israel
partisanship of its special rapporteurs. The current multi-million
dollar “Commission of Inquiry” into last May’s Gaza conflict is no
exception.
In
facing this undisguised institutionalized prejudice, Israel has a
crucial friend in the United States. For it is only America that has the
motivation and capability to stand up to UN bigotry. America has done
so regularly, using its superpower political and financial clout to
combat the endemic discrimination of the Jewish state.
The
US has accomplished this through effective behind the scenes diplomacy,
as well as overtly, when it has chosen to leave UN bodies (UNESCO and
UNHRC), to cut off funding (UNRWA) and to use its UN Security Council
veto to prevent the adoption of discriminatory anti-Israel texts. The
latter is of primary importance, for while much of what happens at the
UN is declarative, the UNSC has the unique authority to issue binding
resolutions.
Of
course, there have been aberrations when Israel has been disappointed
with positions taken by the US. In 1980, the Carter administration
abstained on UNSC Resolution 478 denouncing the Knesset’s Basic Law on
Jerusalem being Israel’s capital. In 1981, the Reagan administration
joined all 15 UNSC members in support of Resolution 487 condemning
Israel’s attack on and destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear
reactor. Most recently, in 2016 the United States abstained on UNSC
Resolution 2334 castigating Israeli construction over the 1967 lines,
including in Jerusalem.
That
American decision created much friction between Jerusalem and
Washington, with the Prime Minister’s Office protesting that the Obama
administration failed “to protect Israel against this gang-up at the
UN,” and in fact “colluded with it behind the scenes.”
And
herein lies the bottom line. When America stands up for Israel, it
evens out the playing field. But if America does not, it allows the UN’s
inherent anti-Israel animosity to monopolize decision-making.
Over the years, American UN ambassadors have taken a special pride
in defending Israel. From Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Republican
Nikki Haley, US ambassadors to the UN have earned the respect and
affection of Israelis and American Jews alike for leading the fight
against the singling out of the Jewish state.
Even
Donald Trump’s many critics can acknowledge that his four-year term
excelled in its unwavering support for Israel at the UN. The Biden
foreign policy team has pledged to do likewise, stating that “Israel can
continue to count on the US to do everything possible to shield it from
discriminatory and unbalanced criticism whether at the UNHRC or
elsewhere in the UN system.”
Undoubtedly
there will be demands on the administration to renege on that
commitment. American Jews, who overwhelmingly voted for the Biden-Harris
ticket, may need to apply countervailing pressure, making the case that
in fighting the UN’s anti-Israel prejudice the US is not only standing
up for a trusted ally, but, as in all struggles against institutional
discrimination, doing the right thing and demonstrating America’s global
moral leadership.
Mark Regev, formerly an adviser to the prime minister, is a senior visiting
fellow at the INSS. Follow him at @MarkRegev on Twitter.
Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-690226
No comments:
Post a Comment