The U.N. must re-examine its Middle East policy

Friday, April 9, 2010

By Allen Korenevsky
Sports Editor

The United Nations is heavily biased against Israel. It unjustly criticizes almost all of its policies and must shift its focus to the Middle East as a whole.

The most recent example of U.N. bias against Israel is the passing of three resolutions that falsely condemn Israel for the Israeli-Gaza conflict.

The Hamas government, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist organization, will receive no condemnations, even though its soldiers use children as body shields and have fired at soldiers from a U.N. building, war crimes far beyond anything that the Israeli army has ever done.

The U.N. Human Rights Council has also demanded that Israel pay reparations to the Palestinians but has made no orders for Palestinians to repay Israel for damages caused by the rocket bombardment that sparked the war in the first place.

According the U.N. charter, one purpose of the U.N. is “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights.”

The U.N. cannot promote this if it can’t punish non-member governments like Hamas. Since someone has to take the blame for the deaths in Middle Eastern conflicts, the U.N. chooses Israel, a country with an organized, tangible government. The terrorist-controlled government of Gaza has no consequences.

Prejudice against Israel exists partly due to the sympathies for the Palestinians’ quest for home rule. This is a humane opinion, as they deserve sympathy.

However, they shouldn’t receieve more sympathy than the countless other minorities searching for home rule, like the gypsies or the Kurds.

The Palestinians’ plight in particular was chosen solely because the UN perceieves them as “oppressed.” This viewpoint, however, is not based as much in fact as in anti-Zionism, a philospophy that the U.N.’s actions show it supports.

For instance, the Libyan International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination issued a document to the U.N. which alleges that Israeli hospitals harvest the organs of dead Palestinians. Even though there is no evidence to support this claim, the U.N. accepted it in a blatant act of anti-Zionism.

Circulating these unbacked claims hurts the U.N.’s credibility. As a result, the Bush administration refused to join the Human Rights Council because it is an “anti-Israeli forum.”

The council itself proves there is a bias against Israel within the U.N. Members of the council include Cuba, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which are responsible for some of the worst human rights violations in the world today.

These countries have oppressed women and minorities, tortured political enemies and ended free speech. The U.N. should remove countries with despicable human rights records from its Human Rights Council in order to promote liberties of all people.

If the U.N. wishes to fulfill its goal of world peace, it must treat all countries equally in order to prevent wars and ethnic conflicts, instead of allowing anti-Zionism to obscure its vision of peace.