Your UN: Making the World Safe for Anti-Semitism

Usually I’m against the U.S. government spending more money on the United Nations. But after the latest round of UN “human rights” activity, there’s one shovel-ready project that deserves action right now. In the interest of providing the UN with truth in advertising, the Obama administration ought to issue itself the permits and pony up the funds to erect a gigantic billboard in front of the UN’s New York headquarters. This billboard should be truly enormous, and it should be covered with flashing neon lights, spelling out for all visiting schoolchildren, hapless tourists, and chauffeured politicians the message: The United Nations: Anti-Semitism is Us.

No doubt there are some regular UN visitors — Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes to mind — who don’t need a flashing sign to understand that virulent anti-semitism is one of the basic themes of today’s UN. But there’s at least a chance that putting that ugly truth right up there in neon lights, in front of the flags and fancy UN building (now enjoying a $2 billion makeover, in big part on America’s tab), would help alert Americans to the monstrous doings within.

The latest twist involves that perpetual sinkhole of UN values, the Human Rights Council. Quick background: Recall that the current Human Rights Council was set up in 2006 as a “reform” measure, after the old, Israel-fixated, despot-packed UN Human Rights Commission disgraced itself with Libya serving in 2003 as the chair, and such features as Sudan, mid-genocide, holding a seat. The new Human Rights Council was set up amid promises from various UN poobahs that it would perform as an actual human rights body — though such clear-eyed experts as former Ambassador John Bolton were skeptical from the start.

The Human Rights Council, like its festering predecessor, was fashioned as a creature of the UN’s thug-friendly General Assembly. In no time flat, courtesy of that same General Assembly, it was decked out with its own roster of human rights abusers, and had defaulted to the General Assembly’s usual obsession with condemning, in particular, the sole robust democracy in the entire Middle East. You guessed it. Israel.

This past week brought the culmination of a UN review of the first five years of the “reformed” Human Rights Council, and on Friday the General Assembly voted to keep the Council rolling along. This included the following piece of business, as adeptly summarized by the Geneva-based watchdog nonprofit, UN Watch:

The UN Human Rights Council has an agenda that defines the work of all its meetings. Only Israel is subjected to its own standing item, so that condemnation of the Jewish state is a required feature of every single session.

And on June 17, in deciding to maintain the Human Rights Council as one of its subsidiary bodies, the 192 member General Assembly voted to keep this item, singling out Israel for chronic condemnation, as an integral part of its agenda. Not all of the UN’s 192 member states cast a vote. But enough of them did so to tell you all you need to know about  the mix of moral rot and craven behavior that shapes the doings of the UN’s leading “human rights” body. The vote was 154 in favor, and four against — the four being Canada, Israel, Palau and the United States.

So much for the Obama administration’s promises of reforming the UN by gracing it with stepped-up U.S. engagement, bathing it in billions of U.S. tax dollars, and stooping to join the Human Rights Council. This is just the latest big reason why it’s time to stop the engaging and funding in areas that actively damage the interests of America and America’s allies, and start telling the truth — if necessary, in neon lights.