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The True Face of the United Nations

The United Nations, tasked with ensuring and promoting worldwide peace, has spent its existence being obsessively belligerent toward Israel, one of its member states. Pictured: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 22, little more than two weeks before Hamas terrorists killed 1,400 civilians inside Israel. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The precursor to the United Nations was conceptualized by President Woodrow Wilson, who feverishly traveled around Europe calling for “the making of peace” as well as “the creation of a League of Nations” to accomplish that objective.

This came on the heels of World War I and, for his tireless efforts, Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Ironically, the first worldwide intergovernmental organization whose raison d’être was to maintain world peace failed miserably.

The aftermath of World War II led to the founding of an equally inept organization with the same utopian concept of preventing future world wars: the United Nations.

The 20th century is now known as the bloodiest century in history for the sheer number of wars that plagued the world. One doesn’t need to call upon experts to deduce that the United Nations has failed on this front, among others.

In fact, the U.N. has become an epithet for corruption and ineptitude.

At least other global governing bodies—such as Fédération Internationale de Football Association and the International Olympic Committee—can deliver on their mission despite rampant corruption.

How is that the main intergovernmental organization tasked with ensuring and promoting worldwide peace has spent its existence being obsessively belligerent toward one of its member states?

Since 2015, the U.N.—comprised of 193 member states and two observer states—has adopted 140 resolutions against Israel. In 2022, the U.N. General Assembly adopted more resolutions critical of Israel than against all other nations combined.

To put that into perspective, Israel—the “startup nation of the world”—is slightly smaller than New Jersey. Yet Israel has been forced to withstand abuse from bigger and stronger nations since the Jewish state’s inception on May 14, 1948.

It is no wonder that Israel isn’t fazed whenever the odds are stacked against it.

Back to the topic of the United Nations being the embodiment of corruption and ineptitude: During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when Hutu soldiers slaughtered at least 800,000 Tutsi Rwandans in 100 days, the man in charge of overseeing U.N. peacekeeping efforts—Kofi Annan—failed miserably when it mattered most.

Indeed, Annan ordered Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire of the Canadian army, then the force commander of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda, to stand down. This despite Dallaire’s repeatedly sending battle intelligence stating the provision of additional troops, logistics, and weapons was all that was needed to quell the escalating violence.

Dallaire wrote in 2014 that “preventing this genocide was possible; it was our moral obligation.” The Canadian general added: “And it’s a failure that has haunted me every day for the last 20 years.”

In 1995, the year after the Rwandan genocide, over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred by the Bosnian Serb Army in what is called the Srebrenica genocide. Once again, Annan, tasked with overseeing U.N. peacekeeping efforts, failed when it mattered the most.

Despite these glaring failures, Annan was rewarded with the U.N.’s highest office when he was appointed secretary-general in 1997. To no one’s surprise, both he and the U.N. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.

Determined to emulate his father by walking in his footsteps, son Kojo Annan got embroiled in the oil-for-food scandal in 2004 after receiving payments from a Swiss company that had won the lucrative contract with the United Nations to carry out the program to relieve Iraqi citizens beset by economic sanctions on Iraq.

This all happened under his father’s tenure as U.N. secretary-general. 

Fast forward to late last month, when the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel submit to a “sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities.” This same body failed to pass a resolution condemning the terrorist organization Hamas, the true perpetrators of the current Israel-Hamas war by infiltrating the Jewish state from the south Oct. 7 and killing some 1,400 civilians.

What’s more, Iran, which funds Hamas and is the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terrorism, was appointed earlier this year to chair the annual Social Forum of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Is it any wonder that then-President Donald Trump withdrew America’s participation in the U.N Human Rights Council—a move met with apoplectic rage by the media and liberal elite?

Despite the United Nations being the recipient of praise and adulation from throngs of unsuspecting individuals worldwide, it is time to come to terms with the global organization’s true face.

The fact is, as constituted, the U.N. does the bidding of an unaccountable, worldwide, liberal elite who seek to undermine the sovereignty of nations that don’t bow to their rules.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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