Bolton's Back
New York Sun Staff Editorial
August 19, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/18887
It's hard to imagine a more dramatic welcome to Ambassador Bolton than the one that confronted him at the United Nations this week. The man who rose to political and policy fame by leading the effort to repeal the U.N. resolution equating Zionism and racism was met upon his return to Turtle Bay by the disclosure, pressed by an enterprising American Jewish Congress, that the world body has been siphoning the taxpayers' money into funding Palestinian Arab propaganda designed, in connection with Israel's disengagement from Gaza, to incite Palestinian ambitions to go on to take Jerusalem.
Yogi Berra might have called it deja vu all over again, but it certainly is an example of where experience counts. The anti-Israel propaganda - which included a banner bearing the slogan Today Gaza, Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem - was underwritten by the United Nations Development Program,* which has been headed in recent years by Mark Malloch Brown, who is now chief of staff to Secretary-General Annan. The UNDP reacted to the expose with a letter from its new administrator, Kemal Dervis, back to the American Jewish Congress, saying that it was not at all acceptable that the agency's logo was placed on the propaganda. We cannot be involved in political messaging, Mr. Dervis wrote.
Mr. Bolton recognized a dodge when he saw it, letting the UNDP know, as our Jacob Gershman put it in his dispatch yesterday, that the most serious problem for his office was not the logo, but the fact that the agency supported that message with its checkbook. In other words, it's not the form but the substance. American law calls for Jerusalem to be recognized as the undivided capital of Israel. William Orme, a spokesman for the UNDP, told The New York Sun, We've seen Ambassador Bolton's comments, and we are taking this matter seriously. So his own personal credibility as well as the Development Program's is on the line now. Our guess is that before this fracas is over, Congress is going to have to cut back funding for - and insist on more rigorous oversight of - the UNDP.
Not to mention the United Nations itself. Where, after all, is Mr. Annan? It was on his watch that the United Nations turned out to be funding this kind of propaganda, which everyone seems to agree is inappropriate. No doubt much of his time now is spent huddling with lawyers about the burgeoning oil-for-food scandal and, perhaps, his own possible exposure, now that one U.N. official has pleaded guilty to criminal activity and another is being investigated. Given the possibility that, with all this, someone is going to turn state's evidence, it may just be that Mr. Annan has his hands full. All the more important to have an envoy like Mr. Bolton at the United Nations. There are tens of thousands of New Yorkers hanging on his every word, glad to have someone on the job who understands not only the United Nations, but the kinds of games that are played there.
* It was a sharp-eyed foreign correspondent of the New York Times, James Bennet, who, in a dispatch issued August 15, first reported that the banner with the threat to Jerusalem had a tag line saying it had been paid for by the U.N. Development Program. This was spotted in Mr. Bennet's dispatch by Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress, which wrote to the United Nations. It was the AJC's director of international affairs, David Twersky, who recognized the news implications of the UNDP's blunder and who, though he is a contributing editor of The New York Sun, rushed out a press release to all papers at the same time. Fox News put the story on the air. It was a source at the United Nations who brought the matter to the attention of the Sun, which put the story on its front page, igniting the Web logs and proving, once again, the adage, It's not a scoop until it's played like a scoop.