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UN ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS |
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UN ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS |
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UN New York Headquarters |
The United Nations, conceived after World War II as a world body dedicated to peace, justice, and morality among nations, has lost its way. The organization that gave the international legal impetus to the creation of the State of Israel has become the largest single bureaucracy promoting the interests of the Palestinian Arabs against Israel, with no balanced concept of justice or morality or reasonable rules of evidence or procedure. The Palestinian Arabs, supported by other countries with anti-American agendas (almost all of them totalitarian governments), have come to view the UN as an invaluable political tool, much to the long-term detriment of the United Nations and the high hopes for its role in world affairs.
The UN is not monolithic, with multiple bodies receiving funding to work around the world on problems determined to be appropriate for UN investigation or intervention. Since 1948, when a UN resolution set the State of Israel on its way, the UN has has been a part of the on-going evolution of the struggle between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs with binding and non-binding resolutions, peace keeping forces, peace conferences and investigations. Unfortunately, an alliance between Arab states, third-world countries hostile to the developed world, and Cold War politics backed by the former Soviet Union, have created a UN environment that is uniquely hostile to Israel. While Tibet, Cambodia, Rwanda and other world problem areas have come and gone, often without significant comment or action by the UN, Israel has been repeatedly targeted, investigated, denounced, and condemned by one-sided UN agencies or committees with no scintilla of objectivity while at the same time Israel has been denied full participation in UN functions. Meanwhile, nations with horrible human rights violations such as Iraq, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria have escaped criticism from any UN forum.
The UN has played an important role in the Arab-Israel conflict, but has often been either a biased actor, serving Israel's enemies, or has criticized Israel from afar without intervening or condemning acts against Israel. Several examples:
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking to the American Jewish Committee in December 1999, said:
By the summer of 2000, the world had changed significantly. Aside from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist voting bloc in the United Nations, the UN had, in a practical sense, assumed its originally intended role as a peacemaker in a number of conflicts, such as those in Kosovo, Rwanda, and others. Although the UN had been kept out of the Arab-Israeli Peace Process (out of fear of its one-sided, anti-Israel bias), Israel's participation and the seeming convergance toward final status agreements led to a more positive atmosphere at the UN. After the collapse of the Oslo process in 2000, the anti-Israel bias returned.
The following sections provide information on many of the UN bodies and their disgraceful record with respect to Israel.
From its first meetings in 1946, at least one Arab state sat on the UN Security Council in most years, while Israel has been kept ineligible for membership by manipulation of the regional groups. The Security Council has repeatedly adopted one-sided resolutions charging Israel with sole responsibility for human rights violations, violence and deportations. On the other hand, Palestinian and other Arab violations and involvement with such incidents are rarely criticized, or even noted by the Council. In an analysis of the Security Council's record up to 1989, of 175 total resolutions passed by the Council, 97 were directed against Israel, as contrasted with 4 against all Arab states combined. The Council expressed its 'concern,' 'grave concern,' 'regret,' 'deep regrets,' 'shock' etc. about Israeli actions 31 times. Regarding Arab actions, the Council never expressed negative sentiments. Only the veto power of the US prevented these numbers from being even more one-sided against Israel.
Because it has been blocked from membership in any regional group, Israel is the only nation in the world that is denied the right to hold a seat on the UN Security Council on a rotating basis. Israel's recent temporary membership in the Western Europe and Others (WEOG) regional group cannot change this for years.
In October 2000, after the collapse of the Camp David talks and the start of the al-Aqsa intifada, a Special Emergency Session of the United Nations passed a one-sided resolution condemning Israel for the violence. The UN ignored numerous incidents planned and initiated by the Palestinian Authority such as the lynching in Ramallah, the desecration of Joseph's Tomb and the ancient synagogue in Jericho, as well as the ongoing acts of violence on the part of the Palestinians. Only Israel was condemned.
The United Nations General Assembly gives one vote per member country, and there are many more small developing Islamic countries than large non-Islamic developed countries. Because many of these smaller developing countries suffered under Western colonialism, the General Assembly also has an anti-Western bias. These facts, coupled with Cold War manipulations by the Soviet Union, created a solid majority block in the General Assembly that reliably churned out anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian resolutions year after year.
In the years 1947 to 1989, the General Assembly passed a total of 690 resolutions (full or partial). Of these, 429 were against the Israeli position while only 56 were against Arab positions. Of the 56 votes not to the Arabs' liking, 49 concerned the establishment or financing of peace-keeping forces. Absent these, the last anti-Arab vote in the General Assembly, on any issue, was in May of 1949.
The UN General Assembly is still dominated by blocks of third-world countries that are anti-American and anti-Israel. The numerical strength of the Arab states and the Non-Aligned Movement in the General Assembly created the long series of offensive, anti-Israel, anti-American and anti-Western resolutions, capped by the infamous 1975 "Zionism equals racism" Resolution 3379. Except for Resolution 3379 itself, repealed in 1991, these black marks of injustice remain on the General Assembly's record.
In December 1991, the infamous 1975 "Zionism equals racism" resolution was repealed by the General Assembly. The repeal effort, which should have been a self-evident proposition, required an extensive diplomatic lobbying campaign by the United States, Israel and a few others. It included the direct, personal participation of President Bush, Vice President Quayle, and Secretary of State Baker; massive efforts by every regional bureau of the Department of State in Washington, American Ambassadors and their staffs in New York and every UN member capital; and lobbying by private groups around the world. The very difficulty of repealing Resolution 3379 showed just how deeply ingrained in the UN system was its anti-Semitic bias, and why, even after repeal, its effects linger.
The UN has repeatedly held Emergency Special Sessions of the General Assembly on Israeli construction in Jerusalem. The Emergency Special Session was originally convened in 1950 for emergencies like the Korean War. In the last 15 years, these special meetings have only been held regarding Israel. Emergency Special Sessions were not convened over the genocide in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, or with regard to the other major world conflicts, but they were convened to condemn Israelis moving into buildings they own in territory they have a legitimate claim to.
In 1999, the Palestinian Arabs tried another tactic. Forgetting that it was the Arabs who rejected General Assembly Resolution 181 in 1948 and prevented its implementation, they launched an international diplomatic campaign to revive 181 as a basis to create a Palestinian state. They want another 1947 partition vote because the borders of Israel, under Resolution 181, would be smaller than the negotiated borders called for in the later UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, adopted after the Six Day War in 1967 and generally accepted as a reasonable basis for peace with secure borders. Resolution 181 also provides that Jerusalem:
Since West Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since it was founded and the whole city has been the capital since it was reunited in 1967, this anachronism is obviously unacceptable to Israel.
The Palestinian Arabs want to use the UN to rewrite history at their convenience, hoping the world will forget the three major Arab-instigated wars of aggression against Israel and the multitude of terrorist attacks since the Arabs originally rejected Resolution 181.
See the Palestine Facts page Is it true that Israel is in violation of UN resolutions? for more information about the status of the many UN resolutions concerning Israel.
On November 10, 1975, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3237 that conferred on the PLO the status of observer in the Assembly and in other international conferences held under United Nations auspices. This permanent representative status was a special arrangement for the PLO, a terrorist organization not a nation. The "PLO Observer Mission" then opened an office in midtown Manhattan as its UN base of operations.
The Algiers Declaration in 1988 unilaterally proclaimed a Palestine state. Despite legal and historical contradictions in the declaration, the PLO's permanent representative at the UN submitted it to the world body on December 15, 1988 for a vote. Continuing its tradition of anti-Israel bias, the UN General Assembly adopted by a vote of 104-2 (the US and Israel against, with 36 abstentions) resolution 43/177, citing the Algiers declaration, and stating that the Palestinian people have the right to declare a state according to Resolution 181, a resolution that the Arabs had insisted for years was null and void. The UN decision also included a provision elevating the PLO's observer status by replacing references to the "Palestine Liberation Organization" with "Palestine" in all UN bodies.
The workings of the UN are organized around Regional Groups. But Israel has been denied membership in any regional group, the only country so excluded. Exclusion from a regional group at the UN means that Israel is effectively precluded from ever becoming a non-permanent member of the Security Council; it is structurally precluded in many other ways from participating in UN discussions; and it has been and will continue to be seriously under-represented in UN leadership and employment positions.
Opposition to Israel prevented her from joining a regional group despite many efforts by the United States to promote Israel's membership. Membership in Israel's natural place, the Asian Group, has been blocked by the Arab states. Opponents from the southern European states, including Italy, Spain, and Portugal, are believed to have blocked American attempts to admit Israel on a temporary basis to the Western European regional group.
Finally, in June of 2000, Israel became a temporary member of the Western Europe and Others (WEOG) regional group, making it theoretically eligible for appointment to the Security Council and to other important UN bodies for the first time since it became a member state in 1949. The temporary status is limiting, however, and it remains to be seen how this will play out long term.
The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People was created by the UN General Assembly in 1975 and has expanded its activities since then. Among its programs, which are more anti-Israel than helpful to Palestinians, is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, an annual hate festival celebrated since 1977 on the anniversary of the UN partition plan.
Other committees that primarily function as propaganda instruments of the PLO include the Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat, the Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices in the Territories, and the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine. There are dozens more of these special purpose bodies, a situation with no parallel in the rest of the world. Only the Palestinians get this phalanx of committees, spending millions of dollars of UN funds, whose only program is to attack, undermine and delegitimize Israel.
Efforts to delegitimize Israel have also been part of the record of the specialized agencies, especially UNESCO, the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In the 1970s, the Arabs in UNESCO raised questions about archaeological excavations in Jerusalem. Director-General A.M. M'Bow sent a specialist, Belgian Professor Raymond Le Maire, to investigate. Le Maire found the digs were carried out in accord with established international standards. Muslim holy places were protected, and archaeological relics from all periods of antiquity were preserved. Le Maire's report was suppressed by M'Bow, and UNESCO voted sanctions against Israel.
UNESCO again displayed its double standard towards Israel when it refused to criticize archeological and other digs conducted by the Muslim Waqf in the Temple Mount area during the early fall of 2000. Despite UNESCOs criticism of Israel, going against the investigation by their own expert, when the Waqf engaged in work which may have destroyed priceless archeological artifacts relating to the Second Temple, the same UN body remained silent.
The UN has funded anti-Israel propaganda for decades through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)and now through the PA. For example, in March 2001 it was revealed that the UN agency has been funding the publication of an English-language regional map that makes no mention of the State of Israel. Supported by the UN's Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People, the publication also includes a smaller map of the Old City of Jerusalem that shows mosques and churches but no synagogue nor the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. UNRWA's mandate covers 27 Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza and another 32 camps in neighboring countries. UNRWA runs over 250 schools in the West Bank and Gaza where they have introduced scores of textbooks which ignore the State of Israel, rule out peace agreements, and actually glorify the hatred of Israel and Israelis.
The parties seeking to rebuke Israel were most successful within the United Nations Commission for Human Rights (the UNCHR), a functional commission of the UN's Economic and Social Council that has been obsessed with finding fault with Israel. The UNCHR is based in Geneva, and as a body, it has frequently displayed a strong anti-Israel bias. Resolutions condemning Israel are passed by a strong voting bloc of Arab countries, while requests to deal with blatantly anti-Semitic persecution of Jews in Arab and other countries are summarily ignored. At its annual hearings in Geneva in 2000, the Human Rights Commission had a separate agenda item for Israel, while covering 60 other countries in the single other agenda item.
The Commission on Human Rights routinely adopts totally disproportionate resolutions concerning Israel. Of all condemnations of this agency, 26 percent refer to Israel alone, while rogue states such as Syria and Libya are never criticized.
There are increasingly frequent cases of blatantly anti-Semitic remarks by Arab representatives at UN forums. In 1991, Syrian representatives at the Commission on Human Rights accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their rituals. On 11 March 1997, the PLO representative in Geneva, Nabil Ramlani, used the same forum to accuse Israel of injecting 300 Palestinian children with the AIDS virus. In May 2000, the representative of Lebanon declared Zionism to be an "elitist racist movement".
For 50 years the UN condemned racism. It has established programs to combat racism in virtually every conceivable form, but consistently refused to do the same against anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism as a phenomenon has long been ignored or deliberately omitted in resolutions, forums and events throughout the UN, even in commemorations of World War II. It was only on 24 November 1998, 50 years after the UN's founding, that the word "anti-Semitism" was first mentioned in a UN resolution, appearing near the end of GA Res. A/53/623, "Elimination of Racism and Racial Discrimination." Intense US pressure was required to even get this minimal recognition.
In August 2001 the UN held an anti-Racism conference at Durban. The conference became a front for virulent Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism not heard since the days of the "Zionism is racism" resolution. Israel and the US ultimately walked out in protest. Inside and outside the conference hall Jews and Israelis became the targets of hate-filled and politically motivated attacks. Michael Melchior, representative of the Israeli Government at the conference asked:
It is no surprise that the Oslo Agreements were negotiated outside of, and contained no role for, the UN. Though Israel has been the subject of aggressive wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 and the victim of countless terrorist attacks, the Security Council and the General Assembly have never once censured its assailants.
While the Arab-Israeli peace process that was launched in Madrid in 1991 is structured on the basis of direct negotiations between the parties, the UN constantly undercuts this principle. The Oslo Agreements, as well, establish that differences between Israelis and Palestinians should be resolved bilaterally. Nonetheless, the UN General Assembly passes annual resolutions that seek to prejudge the outcome of negotiations by proposing specific solutions to issues like Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, settlements, refugees and other issues meant to be resolved through bilateral talks. Ironically, it was the UN Security Council that proposed these bilateral negotiations in Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), but the UN General Assembly undermines these resolutions every year.
In November 2003, Israel submitted its first UN resolution since 1976 to the UN Humanitarian, Social and Cultural Committee. The draft document called for the protection of Israeli children from Palestinian Arab terrorism acts which purposely target buses, cafes, kindergartens and discos filled with Jewish youth. Israeli officials said the resolution would be a test whether or not the UN was prepared to forego its traditional bias against the Jewish state.
On November 6th, 2003 the same UN Committee approved a nearly identical Egyptian-sponsored resolution demanding protection for Palestinian children from "Israeli aggression." When it came to declaring Israeli children’s right to not be targeted by terrorists, however, Egypt was opposed, notwithstanding its peace treaty with Israel.
"The voice of the immoral majority was once again heard loud and clear," Israeli UN Abmassador Dan Gillerman told the UN Humanitarian, Social and Cultural Committee, after failing to garner enough support to secure a General Assembly vote on the draft. Israel withdrew the draft after a group of nations belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement, led by Egypt, insisted on including amendments that would have transformed the document into an anti-Israel resolution. The changes demanded were the altering all of all references to "Israeli children" to read "Middle Eastern children," and the insertion of harsh condemnation of Israeli "military assaults," "occupation" and "excessive use of force" before any mention of Arab terrorism. The Egyptian-led nations also wanted to change the draft's title from "The situation of and assistance to Israeli children" to "The situation of and assistance to children in the Middle East region." If Israel had not withdrawn the resolution, the amendments would have surely passed, as the Non-Aligned Movement controls a majority of the votes in the UN General Assembly.
On June 21, 2004 the UN sponsored the first ever Conference on Antisemitism at UN headquarters in New York. The conference, formally titled "Confronting Anti-Semitism: Educating for Tolerance and Understanding," was called by officials who were stung by criticism of the UN's dismal record as recorded on this page. Speakers deplored that record in quite explicit terms, the first time the issue was truly aired at the UN. Only time will tell if this conference marks a turning point or if the UN will go back to anti-Israel business as usual.
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