The Next Logical Step
BY ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN
August 4, 2005
At United Nations headquarters, the talk is of modernization and reform, of adapting to new challenges, and of renewing the core purpose of the organization as it prepares to mark its 60th anniversary. Even when it comes to the United Nations' role in the Middle East, and specifically the charge of endemic bias against Israel, there is a sense that change might be in the air. In that regard, some encouraging statements have been heard, particularly from Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Earlier this year, Mr. Annan became the first secretary-general to travel to Israel, where he attended the inauguration of the new Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. That was a moment of enormous significance, especially when it is recalled that the United Nations was created in the wake of the Nazi atrocities. Since then, Mr. Annan has made clear that he recognizes there is some truth in Israel's claim that it has not been treated fairly in various forums, such as the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission, which habitually condemns Israel while disregarding grave abuses in countries like Sudan. Notably, in early July, Mr. Annan went so far as to personally criticize Jean Ziegler, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the right to food, who spends much of his time eviscerating Israel while ignoring famine and starvation in other parts of the world, for remarks that compared the Gaza Strip to a concentration camp and Israeli soldiers to Nazi guards.
The discernible change in tone toward Israel at the upper levels of the U.N. Secretariat, as well as the appointment of Israel's U.N. ambassador as one of the vice presidents of the General Assembly (the first time an Israeli has held such a position in more than half a century), has persuaded some Israelis and Jews that the United Nations should be given another chance. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that Mr. Annan's general package of reforms will aid the goal of securing fairer treatment for Israel.
Nevertheless, there are days when the United Nations gives the impression of being stuck in a time warp where Zionism is racism and Israel is the world's greatest offender. The reason for that is institutional: There is a structural bias favoring the Palestinians that is embedded in the United Nations system. If the United Nations is to play an honest broker's role in the Middle East, its officials need to cast a critical eye over the organization's own web of Palestinian propaganda outlets.
The recent Paris conference held by the United Nations' Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People - disingenuously billed as a civil society conference on Middle East peace - is a perfect example of how the United Nations has been harnessed to the Palestinian agenda. The conference described Israel's security fence as the annexationist apartheid wall and a U.N. Information Service press release highlighted the demand for a global campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Such expressions of extremism do not sit comfortably with the vision of a reformed United Nations. Nor do their maximalist demands, for example, on the return of Palestinian refugees, conform to internationally accepted principles for peace in the region - principles accepted by the Americans, the Europeans, and the Russians, as well as the United Nations. Yet events such as the Paris conference have become a routine part of the U.N. process. They are a legacy of the 1960s and 1970s, when denunciation of Israel became a U.N. ritual.
The denunciation was institutionalized in 1975, with the creation of the CEIRPP by a General Assembly resolution. Later that year, the General Assembly passed the infamous Zionism is racism resolution, since rescinded. In 1977, another General Assembly resolution created an entire Division for Palestinian Rights. That resolution also earmarked November 29 - the anniversary of Resolution 181 of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, which was rejected by the Arab side - as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
With the creation of a Palestine infrastructure at the United Nations, a steady stream of conferences and reports and communiques condemning Israel has followed over the last 30 years, reinforcing the United Nations' image as a bastion of hostility toward Israel, to the point of obsession. It is the formidable influence of the Arab and wider Islamic bloc within the General Assembly, and the historic reluctance of other regional groups to oppose it, that drives the United Nations' Palestine machinery.
In any case, say those who would rather not rock the boat, the United Nations' various activities on Palestine have no significance beyond the symbolic and cost only a few million dollars a year. To the former point, it is worth restating that such symbolism has severely compromised the United Nations' impartiality. To the latter point, the money is not insignificant; rather than paying for junkets to Paris, it could be spent on one of the many humanitarian emergencies that the United Nations is involved with.
The United Nations' Palestine infrastructure was borne of a political imperative during a particularly ignoble period of that organization's short history. Two greater imperatives - lasting peace in the Middle East and a United Nations that is relevant to the demands of today's world - suggest that the time has come to dismantle that infrastructure once and for all.
Mr. Annan is being both honest and brave when he commits himself to better relations with Israel. That is why getting rid of the Division for Palestinian Rights and its associated bodies is the logical next step.