The spectacle of the UN Security Council engaged in one more Israel-bashing exercise, while the the Iranian and Arab world burns, is a stark example of the organization’s moral turpitude and irrelevance for the 21st century. The Council is set to convene this afternoon to consider a resolution condemning all Israeli settlements built on what Arabs claim is their land. The Obama administration is doing everything possible to placate Israel’s foes, and may well decide to refuse to exercise its veto power, though the resolution promotes a grossly one-sided distortion of fact and law. The wrong side of history is close at hand.
Despite the talk about the president, the secretary of state, and the director of national intelligence being in the dark on most things going on in the Middle East, like the “secular” Muslim Brotherhood, there is nothing mysterious about today’s events. Serving up Israel when the going gets tough is what Arab dictators and demagogues do at regular intervals. Since the same bunch dictates virtually all outcomes at the UN, but for the Security Council, it is also what the UN does. If the president decides to join them, therefore, he is betting against democracy with his eyes wide open.
Already, via U.S. UN Ambassador Susan Rice, the administration has capitulated and agreed to a unanimous Security Council “presidential statement” condemning Israel. That strategy just whet the appetites of Muslim and Arab negotiators who can recognize weakness as well as every other observer.
To understand just how evil the scene is, it is necessary to talk about what happened to Lara Logan. The CBS reporter was in Cairo last week covering the aftermath of the overthrow of Mubarak, when she was brutally sexually assaulted by democracy-celebrating Egyptians heard yelling “Jew, Jew.” It does not matter that she wasn’t Jewish. It does matter that the hatred and anti-Semitism which runs so deep among the masses screaming for tolerance, for everybody but Jews, is precisely what is driving the diplomatic mobs at the UN. Ganging up on Israel at the UN Security Council is an ugly and contemptible scene.
Iranians are rioting today against a vicious government that stones women for alleged adultery, murders homosexuals for the crime of existing, amputates limbs by judicial decree, brutalizes anyone wanting free speech, and is currently holding two Americans hostage for hiking. Is there a Security Council resolution in the works on the dying and the dead in Iran? Bahrain? Libya? Tunisia? Egypt? Algeria? Not the slightest possibility.
The only thing on the table at the UN is a statement that it is illegal for any Jew to live on any land that is claimed by Palestinian Arabs. Not only is this a racist recipe for an apartheid Palestine, it is also a direct violation of the American and UN-sponsored “Middle East Roadmap.” The Roadmap states that the settlement issue will not be finally resolved until final status negotiations – “Phase III:… a final, permanent status resolution . . . on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements.” This Security Council resolution is intended to take the settlements issue off the table and pre-determine the outcome without having to negotiate or actually live with Jewish neighbors.
It is a familiar pattern. The Obama administration has repeatedly used the UN to do its diplomatic dirty work of backstabbing an ally while assuring voters of the reverse. Last May, it agreed to Arab demands to hold Israel up as the world’s gravest nuclear threat at a major 2012 international meeting. Last August, it foisted upon Israel a UN Secretary-General investigation over nine Turkish extremists killed on a boat while attempting to pave the way for an Iranian port on the Mediterranean. In 2009, it joined the UN Human Rights Council, the most notorious anti-Israel UN body of them all, immediately lending it undeserved credibility. And it is still refusing to pull out of the UN’s latest “anti-racism” bash known as Durban III — scheduled for New York City in September — though demonizing the Jewish state is the meeting’s raison d’etre.
Last week UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay held a news conference in Jerusalem to make it clear that her first priority was to condemn Israelis for building and living, not Arab states for destroying and killing.
We know the UN is on the wrong side of history. To watch America go down the same path is heartbreaking.
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