The United Nation's War Against Israel
by David Harsanyi (May 27, 2002)

After Delegates to the United Nation's World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa finally settled on their bizarre name, they swiftly voted to brand Israel a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "systematic war crimes, acts of genocide, and ethnic cleansing."

This, a few days before 19 Arab terrorists attacked the U.S. on September 11.

The United Nation is having a difficult time living up to its charter, which pledges to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…to practice tolerance and live together in peace as good neighbors, to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security." The proliferation of terror, war and famine is of secondary importance to this mob of third world tyrants who have made passing resolutions against Israel and undermining United States foreign policy their highest priority.

The most repugnant of these anti-Semitic resolutions came in November 1975, when the U.N. ruled that Zionism was a" form of racism." Curious, that just a few years later these "racist" Zionists transported 51,000 Ethiopians in danger of being wiped out by massacre and man-made starvation to Israel. In December 1991, the General Assembly voted 111-25 to repeal this venomous attack. No Arab country voted to repeal the resolution. It was a bittersweet victory because on that same day, the UN voted 152-1, with the U.S. abstaining, to call on Israel to rescind a resolution declaring Jerusalem its capital. Fortunately, U.N. resolutions cannot erase 3,000 years of history.

Prior to the Madrid Conference in 1991, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir commissioned an analysis of U.N. voting towards Israel. The results are not surprising. From 1967 to 1988 the security passed 88 resolutions directly against Israel, zero resolutions criticized or opposed the actions or perceived interests of an Arab state or body, including the PLO. During that span, Israel was "condemned" 49 times, Arab countries not once. In the General Assembly, 429 anti-Israel resolutions were passed in that span. Israel was "condemned" 321 times. Arab nations? Not once.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission (it really takes a lot of self-control not to put facetious quotation marks around all U.N. titles) now includes Zimbabwe, China, Ukraine, Algeria, Bahrain, Congo, Libya, Sudan, Russia, Syria, Uganda and Vietnam -- all strongholds of civil liberty. This April, the commission passed a pro-terrorist resolution condoning "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. Six European Union members joined the 57 nations of the Islamic Conference in legitimizing suicide bombers.

A human rights commission that condones "armed" struggle may seem a bit anomalous, but the resolution shouldn't be a shocker to anyone paying attention. Of all condemnations by the commission, 26 percent single out Israel. Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia evidently possess spotless human rights records, as they have been immune to denunciation.

The Women's Conference organized by the U.N. has adopted numerous resolutions condemning Zionism as one of the most serious obstacles for the emancipation of women. The first one of these resolutions was passed in 1975, a year after the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. A woman, of course, has yet to lead an Arab nation.

Last week, Israel was again asked to have confidence in this antagonistic organization. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had appointed a three-person "fact finding team" to investigate the imaginary war crimes perpetrated by Israeli Defense Force in Jenin. (Incidentally, Jenin was the previous home to 28 known suicide bombers, 23 who succeeded in their attacks.) The UN's secretary general has since called of this investigation but added that he regretted that without a fact-finding mission ''the long shadow cast by recent events in the Jenin refugee camp will remain.'' In other words, the U.N. will insinuate Israel's guilt forever.

While claims of massacre were quickly discarded truly professional members of the press, the UN choice of "investigators" exposes plenty about its unbalanced approach towards Israel. Terje Roed-Larsen, who after a personal investigation of the Jenin refugee camp concluded without a hint of historical neutrality that "no objective can justify such action, with colossal suffering," was the first member of the team. Proposed committee chair Martti Ahtisaari, is the former prime minister of Finland and one of Arafat's closest European allies.

Cornelio Sommaruga was the third member. After a 1999 speech made at a federation meeting by then-American Red Cross President Bernadine Healy, in which she criticized Israel's 50-year exclusion from the ICRC and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Sommaruga said: "If we're going to have the shield of David, why would we not have to accept the swastika?" In a way, they have accepted the swastika, as Red Cross and Red Crescent ambulances have been a vital means of transportation for Jew killers originating from the West Bank.

Appropriately fearing bias would produce a critical report on the military operation in which the IDF sent soldiers house-to-house to minimize civilian casualties, Israel refused to allow the investigators access to the refugee camp. Original claims of "hundreds" dead could be found in all major newspapers -- apparently the persistently high-quality work of Palestinian propagandists and their Western partners. Kadoura Mousa Kadoura, the director of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement for the northern West Bank, put the death toll at 56. Conversely, 33 Israeli soldiers died in the operation to extract terrorists.

Despite the facts, Arab school children will surely learn of a Jenin massacre on par with the myths of Deir Yassin and Sabra/Shatila. Annan's "long shadow" will further propel this myth for anti-Semites worldwide.

"To the Israelis I say: You must end the illegal occupation," Annan said, following a long-standing U.N. agenda. "More urgently, you must stop the bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions, and the daily humiliations of ordinary Palestinians."

Annan has very little to say about the humiliation of Israelis who hide in their homes in fear of suicide bombers. In true U.N tradition, Annan ignores the action of gunmen that murder five-year old girls in cold blood, of teenage bombers programmed to indiscriminately kill Jews and of the Palestinian soldiers that cower in teeming population centers, allowing woman and children to suffer the consequences of their actions -- all clear violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It's all in good fun to allow third-world delegates to play dress up in Western-style garb, live their lives in the West's richest city and enjoy the fruits of Western-style democracy, but to permit nations that have trouble constructing a three-story building to undermine a thriving democracy with biased resolutions and fabricated histories is unacceptable.