The Iranian mullahs hate women and they’re killing them—and a lot of other people, including children—in the streets of Iran. Iran is also wrecking Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, breaking the United Nations arms embargo on the import and export of weapons technology, and selling drones to Russia.
The U.N. has a big, big job to do.
So, which of those did it take up this week? Not China. Not Russia. Not Iran. Not Ethiopia.
Israel.
One to commemorate Israel’s 76th anniversary next year with a high-level U.N. event marking what the Palestinians call the “Nakba,” the failure of Arab armies to murder the newborn state. They missed the irony of Israel’s founding as a result of a U.N. General Assembly vote. A resolution calling for the “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine,” missing the irony of ignoring Palestinian rocket fire into Israel or the violence and incitement to violence emanating from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza.
The others are “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,” and a “demand that Israel rescind its decision to apply Israeli law to the Golan Heights, captured in a defensive war launched twice by Syria.
It could be said that the U.N. has shamed itself. Yes, it has.
But remember two things: first, General Assembly resolutions carry political, but no legal weight, although they do heavily impact the expenditure of U.N. money. Second, the reason for that is that the General Assembly is not actually a “thing,” it is a collection of countries, all deemed of equal importance and equal weight regardless of size, economy, indexes of safety and security for their people, freedom of speech, believe and religion, or ability to meet their own security challenges. Palau equals the United States. Aruba equals China. The Seychelles equal India.
No dominant country is willing to put real power in the hands of Laos or Belize. And small countries know it.
Real power lies in the U.N. Security Council, the five permanent members who hold veto power—which is why Ukraine has not come up for a vote, nor have the Uyghurs or threats to Taiwan—and a revolving group of lesser members. The United States had, until the Obama administration, made a point of protecting Israel in the Security Council with its veto. Less so, now.
The U.N. is an amoral pit. It has been since the United States invited Stalin’s Soviet Union into what was designed as a forum for democratic countries.
Israel’s place in the U.N. has been precarious since the “Non-Aligned Movement” (read Soviet stooges) came together in 1974 against the United States and its ally Israel.
If the Biden administration falls in line with China and Russia, the potential for real damage to Israel’s security rises—but it will never equal the rise in shame of democratic, free countries that will follow America’s abandonment of Jerusalem.