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 others, the United Nations decided last Thursday that only one country merits 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 U.N. condemnations than all other countries combined.
Oh, the usual. Last May, Israel decided it didn’t want to see thousands of its citizens—Jews and non-Jews alike—killed by Hamas 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 airstrikes.
Israel’s defense of its people triggered Jew-haters everywhere, including at the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, the world’s anti-Israel headquarters, which voted to investigate Israel for possible “war crimes.”
Thursday’s vote in the General Assembly makes this investigation official and open-ended. The resolution, which Israel’s U.N. envoy Gilad Erdan called “despicable and biased,” called for the creation of a permanent “Commission of Inquiry” to monitor and report on 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 United Nations 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 percent of respondents hold the Palestinian Authority responsible for the perennial crises in the Gaza Strip, with 25 percent saying they hold Hamas responsible. Only 15 percent of Palestinians blamed Israel.
Maybe, after all these years, more and more Palestinians are realizing that their leaders have used hundreds of millions of dollars in 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 in the world.
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 to what 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 United Nations, which understands the number one rule of international diplomacy: No one ever gets punished for discriminating against Israel. Quite the contrary—targeting Israel may even get you promoted.
There’s a special irony in the United Nations targeting a country already marinating in internal criticism and dissent thanks to its free press. The way the United Nations 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 U.N.’s credibility, it adds fuel to Jew-hatred everywhere.
In the spirit of looking for silver linings, we can hope that time will be on Israel’s side, if only because facts on the ground are on its side. Eventually, many of the countries that automatically vote against Israel may realize that it is in their best interest to be friendly with Israel. The Abraham Accords are Exhibit “A.”
I wonder if those countries read another announcement that came out on Thursday: A phase two trial showed that an Israeli drug prevents 100 percent of COVID patients from deteriorating. Imagine that. The country most maligned at the United Nations is doing all it can to save lives in the countries that keep voting against it.
Maybe we should set up a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the United Nations.
{Reposted from the JNS website}