The hypocrisy and double standards of the United Nations reached a new level last week. And they did it quite brazenly, from the very top.
Following the abduction of eight UN workers in Yemen and the death of a UN employee in a Houthi prison there, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared the suspension of aid to the area until the workers were released. That’s the same Guterres who has been insisting that Israel permit the flow of hundreds of trucks of aid a day to Gaza, even though the Hamas regime is still holding Israelis (and other foreign nationals) hostage.
When it comes to Gaza, withholding aid is a “crime against humanity” and a war crime for which Israel is being prosecuted by both the UN’s International Criminal Court and its International Court of Justice. When Hamas committed its mega-atrocity on October 7, 2023 – invading southern communities in Israel, committing a frenzy of rape, torture, arson, and the murder of more than 1,200 people – Guterres declared earnestly that it “did not happen in a vacuum.”
The fate of the 251 people abducted that day did not merit any special UN sessions, let alone a decision to halt aid to try to force Hamas to speedily release them. At the time of this writing, Hamas is still holding 73 hostages, roughly half of whom are alive and suffering unfathomable torment. The fate of Shiri Bibas and her two sweet sons has yet to be officially confirmed.
By the end of the weekend, the number should have dropped to 63 with the planned return of the bodies of four murdered hostages on Thursday and six live hostages on Saturday. According to Palestinian reports, Israel will release another 602 terrorists under the deal.
The war in Gaza is not over. Last week, Hamas launched a rocket on Israel. It fell short, killing a 14-year-old Palestinian in northern Gaza. I’m sure Israel is being blamed for his death in certain circles.
Last Thursday, Jerusalem Post Middle East affairs correspondent Ohad Merlin covered another UN story stretching from absurdity to travesty. Merlin noted that UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Farida Shaheed said she’d be “more than willing to write a report on antisemitism… Unfortunately, I do not know antisemitism is actually on the rise.”
According to the UN’s website, Shaheed, a Pakistani sociologist, has dedicated her research and work “to promoting and protecting people’s rights, in particular marginalized groups such as women, persons of non-binary identities, those living with disabilities, religious and ethnic minorities, and the economically marginalized.” Jews, it seems, don’t count.
Shaheed said she needed the information to be delivered to her; she wouldn’t reach out to find the facts herself. Not that she would need to look too hard. Merlin’s article included figures from Hillel International noting “a more than eight-fold increase in antisemitic instances, from 135 in July-December 2022, to 1,088 in those months of 2023, and 978 in the same period last year.”
ADL antisemitism statistics
The ADL “reported that between the start of the fall 2023 semester and early November 2023, 73% of Jewish students witnessed or experienced antisemitism.”
The UN is itself under physical attack – not only in Yemen. On February 14, UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, issued a statement saying: “This evening a UNIFIL convoy taking peacekeepers to Beirut airport was violently attacked, and a vehicle was set on fire. UNIFIL’s outgoing deputy force commander, who was returning home after ending his mission, was injured.”
What was missing from the statement? A culprit. If you can’t blame the Jews, don’t bother naming anyone else.
Despite its denials, there is little doubt that Hezbollah carried out the attack. It coincided with a protest against a decision by the Lebanese government to bar two Iranian planes suspected of carrying weapons and funds for the terrorist movement from landing at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri Airport.
The airport, it’s worth remembering, is named after the former Lebanese prime minister and businessman assassinated 20 years ago by Hezbollah with the backing of Syria’s Bashar Assad, who recently fled to Moscow as his regime collapsed.
The UNIFIL statement described the attacks as “flagrant violations of international law” and possibly war crimes and demanded a full investigation by Lebanese authorities.
The current Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, left his position as president of the International Court of Justice when he was appointed premier. As ICJ head, he focused on the alleged crimes of Israel as the country tried to defend itself instead of the actions of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed terrorist groups openly dedicated to wiping Israel off the map.
The incident reminded me of a faded souvenir of my military service – a piece of paper certifying that the bearer “has been fired at by the Syrians while on duty and is hereby admitted as a member of ‘The Order of the Sitting Duck.’”
The document was printed by (and for) UN peacekeepers and I acquired one when I served in the IDF Liaison to the UN Forces in the North. It was during the tense period leading up to the 1982 Operation Peace for Galilee (The First Lebanon War), characterized by rocket fire on Israel’s northern communities and occasional terrorist infiltrations.
The members of UNIFIL and UNDOF (the UN Disengagement Observer Force), who operated along the Syrian border, might be armed with a self-deprecating sense of humor but clearly that is not enough to ensure their safety, or ours.
Incidentally, Israel came to the rescue more than once when UNDOF peacekeepers were kidnapped by jihadist forces during the civil war in Syria that followed the Arab Spring. Assad survived that war with the help of his friends, Russia and Iran. If the border between Israel and Syria was mostly peaceful in the past, it’s more a reflection of the way Syria used Lebanon as its launching ground than support for the Jewish state.
The day after the October 7, 2023 Hamas onslaught, Hezbollah joined the war, launching hundreds of rockets on Israel from Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s threats to “conquer the Galilee” were not idle. Nasrallah had been busy constructing terror tunnels and stores of weapons, including precision-guided missiles.
During the current war, Israel has succeeded in eliminating most of the Hamas leadership and the Hezbollah top cadre, including Nasrallah. Although he was killed in September, Hezbollah has not been able to hold a proper funeral for its late leader; it’s scheduled only next week.
Despite significant achievements, Israel’s war is not over. Earlier this week, an Israeli drone killed Muhammad Shaheen, head of Hamas’s operations in Lebanon. The ties between Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen point to the overall orchestrator of terrorism: Iran.
On Tuesday, Israel completed its withdrawal from Lebanon, apart from five strategically placed outposts aimed at protecting Israeli communities close to the border. Although there has been massive international attention on Palestinian refugees, little notice has been paid to the 50,000 displaced Israelis who are only now making their way back to their homes, which came under heavy rocket attack and threat of terrorist infiltration since October 7, 2023.
The real test still lies ahead. Hezbollah, though weakened, has not been eliminated. It remains to be seen whether it will try to attack IDF forces and Israeli communities either by rocket fire or more directly.
Similarly, in Gaza, Hamas continues its barbaric ways. This was on display last Saturday in another of its hostage release rituals. Among the parting “gifts” Hamas gave the three captives was an hourglass with the pictures of Einav Zangauker – a particularly vocal anti-government activist who demands the immediate release of all the hostages, no matter the price – and her son, Matan, still in captivity. The hourglass was inscribed: “Time is running out.”
The stage was decorated with a Hamas banner with the message: “No migration except to Jerusalem,” a clear refusal of US President Donald Trump’s plan for revitalizing the Gaza Strip and a declaration of intent to carry on attacking Israel.
Both North and South, Israel will need to remain on high alert, prevent anyone approaching the border, and react swiftly to rocket fire and other acts of aggression. Israel cannot rely on international peacekeeping forces. The UN is not so much a sitting duck as a lame one. And a lame joke.