By nominating Rep. Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the United Nations, President-elect Donald Trump has sent a clear message that we will stand by our cherished ally Israel and fight back against the vile antisemitism running rampant in Turtle Bay.
For years, the UN has sought to isolate Israel and deny it the opportunity to defend itself from terrorists determined to destroy it. However, the UN’s antisemitism has sunk to new depths since the October 7 terror attack. Instead of supporting Israel in its time of need, the UN has served as a willing tool for Hamas and its puppet masters in Iran.
In the aftermath of October 7, the UN failed to pass a basic resolution that condemned Hamas’s terror attack and call for the safe return of all hostages.
Just weeks after the attack, in remarks to the UN Security Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attempted to rationalize the violence, calling for the international community to “recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum” and asserted that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
Further, the UN has failed to root out its own agency’s ties to terrorism.
UNRWA-Hamas ties
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been extensively linked to Hamas, with some of the agency’s own employees found to have taken part in the October 7 massacre.
UNRWA has also operated schools in Gaza that have brainwashed a generation of Palestinians to hate Jews.
While the UN has gone down a path of detestable antisemitism, in recent years, American leadership has been nowhere to be found. The vacuum of US leadership under President Joe Biden has been a betrayal of one of our closest allies.
Unlike the Biden administration, Rep. Stefanik has stood by our nation’s ally and condemned the UN’s “cesspool of antisemitism.” She is clear-eyed about the antisemitism plaguing the UN and the need for American leadership. In her remarks before the Knesset, Rep. Stefanik declared “When the enemy is inside the gates of the United Nations, America must be the one to call it by its name and destroy it.”
President Biden restored UNRWA’s funding and sent the agency hundreds of millions of dollars after President Trump had cut off funds over its ties to terrorism. While Congress passed a one-year ban on further funding of UNRWA last spring, the Biden administration admitted that it was looking to restore funding once the ban expired in 2025. Thankfully, President Biden will no longer be in office when that happens.
Under Biden, the US rejoined the UN’s so-called “Human Rights” Council after President Trump had rightly withdrawn its membership. This farce of a council counts some of the worst human rights abusers in the world among its members. Instead of truly working to protect human rights across the globe, the council has spent its time unfairly targeting Israel.
As Rep. Stefanik wrote, the Human Rights Council “has a standing antisemitic agenda item related to Israel and adopted a resolution stating that Israel should be held responsible for war crimes, all while failing to condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas.”
The Biden administration eased sanctions on Iran and gave the regime access to billions of dollars, further enabling them to sow chaos and terror across the region. At the UN, Rep. Stefanik will be a strong voice for protecting American security once again and holding the Iranian regime accountable for its malign activities. She will continue to meet her words with action and deliver on President Trump’s promise to restore American leadership on the world stage.
Matt Brooks is the Republican Jewish Coalition CEO and Norm Coleman is RJC national chairman.