Douglas Murray
The Spectator, Dec. 9, 2023
“A released Israeli hostage has said they were themselves held for almost 50 days by an UNRWA teacher”
There’s an old joke about the United Nations having a football team. ‘But who would they play?’ it goes. ‘Why, Israel of course.’
There may not be much humour in it, but there’s plenty of truth. Despite Israel being set up by UN vote, it has been the world’s premier forum for Israel-bashing, particularly since the country won wars of self-defence in 1967 and 1973.
Perhaps the most notorious moment was the ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution in 1975, when the foundations of the Jewish state were suddenly under assault.
On that occasion the late great Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave one of the best counter-blast speeches ever given on the floor of the UN. As did Chaim Herzog, the father of Israel’s current president. But at that point, as at so many other times, Israel’s enemies were greater in number than its friends by a significant margin. The victorious majority was led by that great campaigner for social justice Idi Amin. A party for the anti-Israel delegates was thrown by Kurt Waldheim of Austria, who turned out to have spent his war years serving in a Nazi unit.
In any case, ever since then Israel has been the main source of international ire at the UN, from non-aligned countries as well as much of the Muslim world. The farcical UN Human Rights Council in Geneva does little else but knock Israel around. I’ve known some people who spent their lives in that Alice in Wonderland world in Geneva and noticed it isn’t good for their long-term health. How can you sit there day after day and listen to, for instance, the representative from North Korea claiming human rights abuses in western democracies?
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