It would appear that President Obama left office at a most propitious time, just weeks ahead of the release of a report by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia which concluded that Israel was guilty of “the crime of apartheid” under international law.
While Mr. Obama had long had Israel’s back at the UN with his regular use of the U.S. veto, his mean-spirited failure to do so at the tail end of his presidency, with respect to a Security Council resolution condemning Israel for settlement building, seemed to signal a tectonic change in his thinking, and we can only imagine what his response to the apartheid calumny would have been. Indeed, ESCWA is known to be developing a broad legal and propaganda offensive to build support for the Palestinians and to undermine Israel.
Happily though, the Trump administration has taken up the cudgels for Israel at the world body. During the presidential campaign, candidate Trump declared that the U.S. would seek to change the viscerally anti-Israel mindset at the UN rather than simply react to individual provocations. And the new U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has repeatedly voiced broad support for Israel.
At her Senate confirmation hearing Ambassador Haley said she wasn’t going to the UN to “abstain when the UN seeks to create an international environment that encourages boycotts of Israel.” She was also instrumental in thwarting the UN’s publication of a database of companies that do business with Israel in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and Golan Heights settlements.
In addition, Ms. Haley blocked the appointment of a former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority as a UN envoy in Libya, declaring “For too long he UN has been unfairly biased in favor of the Palestinian Authority to the detriment of our allies in Israel.”
And she famously said in one of her first speeches to the Security Council, “For those who don’t have our back, we’re taking names.”
More recently, after expressing U.S. outrage at the ESCWA apartheid report, Ambassador Haley persuaded UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to pull it from the UN’s website, which led to the resignation of ESCWA’s executive secretary, Jordanian diplomat, Rima Khalaf.
Ms. Haley responded to that news by saying, “When someone issues a false and defamatory report in the name of the UN, it is appropriate that the person resign.”
Parenthetically, we note that Israeli-Arabs vote, maintain political parties, serve as members of Knesset, and sit on the Israeli Supreme Court. Courts and hospitals do not distinguish between Jew and Arab. If anything, the courts seem to inordinately tilt toward Arabs in land disputes with Jews.
Of course, the situation in the West Bank is more complicated, if only because of the constant threat of Arab violence and the need to impose restrictions to contain that violence. Had the Palestinian Authority availed itself of the many opportunities to seriously negotiate an agreement with Israel, maybe even that would have changed.
All this is a far cry from the notion of “apartheid” as defined in international law: “Inhumane acts…committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”
Earlier this week, the U.S. boycotted a session of the notoriously anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council focusing on Israel and Palestinian areas. Ambassador Haley noted that Israel is the only country that has its rights record examined at every council session – there is a standing “agenda item 7” relating to “Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.”
Not Syria, where the regime has systematically slaughtered and tortured its own people. Not Iran, where public hangings are a regular occurrence. Not North Korea, where the regime uses forced labor camps to crush its people into submission. Only Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East.
The George W. Bush administration refused to join the current council, which was established in 2006 to succeed the discredited human rights commission. President Bush saw no prospect of any improvement in the organization’s obsessively negative view of Israel.
President Obama joined, arguing that the U.S. would be able to effect change from within. And, to be sure, U.S. pressure did result in the adoption of resolutions targeting North Korea and Syria, but there was no change in the council’s reflexive anti-Israel stance.
The stark fact is that the since 2006 the council has condemned Israel 68 times and all other countries combined 67 times.
Significantly, in a letter to foreign policy advocacy groups obtained by the Associated Press, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. will not participate in the Human Rights Council unless there is “considerable reform.”
The backdrop to all of this, of course, is that the U.S. annually contributes $5.4 billion to the UN – 22 percent of its regular budget (from which $70 million goes to ESCWA) and another $8.25 for UN peacekeeping, or 28.5 percent of that budget.
So while the U.S. has long carried a big financial stick, the Trump administration seems prepared to use it to protect American interests and those of Israel in a forum largely dominated by third-rate anti-American and anti-Semitic members.