The impotence of the UN has been evident for a long and, perhaps due to its anachronistic structure, the UN has n been unable to make any impact on the Syrian Civil War or the ongoing Ukrainian crisis.
However, there is a difference between impotence and moral abandonment.
In recent weeks we have been witness to the malpractice and utter moral bankruptcy of the UN and senior UN officials, starting with the organization's CEO, Antonio Guterres, concerning events unfolding in Israel and Gaza, and especially regarding the October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians in southern Israel.
The anti-Israel and pro-Hamas public statements of UN officials are not merely the biased proclamations that we have come to expect from the UN. What we are now seeing is something far more sinister. Statements coming out of the UN constitute selective humanitarianism at best, and, at worst, echo age-old antisemitic canards against Israel and the Jewish people. This from a global institution, founded after WWII on the principle of “Never Again” and charged with maintaining international peace, security and human rights.
The pointed public statements and omissions by the Secretary General and senior UN leadership serve neither the Palestinian women and children of Gaza nor Israeli civilians. When the top executive of the UN says, “It is important to… recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum," he is, in essence, justifying and legitimizing the October 7th massacre. These declarations serve only Hamas and their nefarious ends. UN statements blaming the Israeli victims of October 7 for the murder, torture, rape and pillaging inflicted upon them, encourage barbarism and violence, and certainly do not fulfill the UN’s mission of promoting world peace
While Secretary General Guterres frequently bemoans the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, he fails to mention the fact that Hamas uses Palestinian women and children as human shields, thus deliberately and cynically increasing the number of Palestinian casualties. Repeatedly, he has failed to note that Hamas syphons off large quantities of fuel and vital goods intended for Palestinian civilians to support its terrorist activities. He has also failed to acknowledge that Hamas military infrastructures are located in a complex network of underground tunnels directly below civilian buildings. Guterres has repeatedly failed to mention, even in passing, the barbaric acts of violence perpetrated on Israeli civilians on October 7th or the kidnapping of about 240 Israeli and foreign nationals, who are being held in Gaza and whom the International Red Cross has not been allowed to visit, contrary to all international humanitarian standards.
The Secretary General’s one-sided defense of barbarism and disregard of the need to put an end to Hamas’s reign of terror, is not the UN's only failure. Sadly, there are others.
UN Women, for example, the group that serves as the global champion for gender equality has as one of its strategic priorities to ensure that all women and girls can live free from all forms of violence. And yet, this organization was completely silent for over 40 days regarding the premeditated, systematic rape of Israeli women and girls on a mass scale, as well as the rampant acts of sexual violence and torture perpetrated by the Hamas terrorists. UN Women waited a week before issuing a meagre condemnation of “attacks on civilians in Israel." This, despite receiving graphic visual evidence of the rampant sexual violence from both Israeli officials and civil society groups.
Likewise, while UNICEF's motto is "For every child," Israeli children apparently do not fall under this rubric. On October 7th, Israeli children and infants were brutally tortured, burned, kidnapped, and murdered in cold blood. Hamas terrorists proudly videotaped and broadcast themselves holding small Israeli children hostage and abducting them. Those children remain kidnapped by Hamas.
And yet, on October 7, immediately following the massacre, UNICEF, instead of condemning the shockingly horrific acts that were perpetrated by invading Hamas terrorists on innocent Israeli children or acknowledging that Israeli infants and children are being held in the dark dungeons of Gaza, chose to issue a mild message of "concern" for both the "children in Israel and the State of Palestine." For over a month there was absolute silence on the part of the organization and its leadership concerning the heinous crimes against humanity that were perpetrated against Israeli children. Hamas’s crimes against their own, Palestinian, children also go unnoticed or ignored by UNICEF. Using children as human shields in war zones, and storing rockets in schools, hospitals, and youth compounds does not elicit condemnation by UNICEF.
Statements and omissions made by UN officials and its committees that fail to condemn violence and terrorism and to uphold the values of civilized society, and which pervert the truth in an effort to placate one side of a conflict, are both dangerous and destructive. Whether intentionally or not, these statements embolden Hamas and other terrorists, and thus directly endanger civilian lives, including Palestinian lives, Israeli lives and lives of civilized people across the globe.
This moral failure of the UN furthers the cause of Hamas, and its sponsor, Iran, who seek the destruction, not just of Israel, but of the entire free world.