The United Nations “Tower of Babble”

June 1, 2009

Host of Durban II

Now it is 2009, and Durban II gathered in an attempt to confirm the findings of 2001. Durban II chose to meet in the same week Israel observed Holocaust Memorial Day (April 21). Some might see that to be timely programming. Others would have reason to consider the timing to be insensitive and obscene.

Durban II, launched by the UN in August 2008, established a committee to process a two-year plan, which culminated in the Durban Review Conference held in Geneva. Leading the conference prep committee were Libya as chair, Cuba as rapporteur (reporter), and Iran as vice-chair. This chosen terror trio would signal warning to anyone with a normal IQ. When leaders from terror states are elevated to executive status in a project commissioned to establish democratic standards and individual rights, one can merely ponder the viability, common-sense, or value of the umbrella organization which hosts them.

Greg Rickmann, the first US special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism from 2006 to 2009, commented, “In encouraging this conference to reconvene and worse, leaving it in the hands of the likes of Iran, Libya, and other terrorist states, the United Nations again dishonors itself by allowing these tyrants a platform to impose their racial and religious bigotry on the world.”

Ann Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and editor of www.EYEontheUN.org, has written on Durban II in many articles. In this quote from The Jerusalem Post, she said, “Unfortunately, this is not the theater of the absurd. It is the screenplay of a global institution that spends the money of democracies on measures to defeat democracy, used the language of human rights to promote anti-Semitism, and turns victims of terror into the enemies of peace and security.”

Global Purveyor of Anti-Semitism

What Bayefsky said is simple but profound. An organization (the UN) established to provide a democratic voice to the nations has now been commandeered to restrict democratic rights, to accuse the champions of freedom, and defend dictators and terrorists. “The United Nations has become the leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism—intolerance and inequality against the Jewish people and its state,” Bayefsky told participants at the first UN conference on anti-Semitism held in New York in June 2004. She also stated: “The Nuremberg Tribunal taught us that crimes are not committed by abstract entities. The perpetrators of anti-Semitism are no more abstract today than the Nazis of yesterday.”

There is a concerted effort by the non-aligned network that brings considerable muscle to UN activities. The spokespeople from the democratic countries seem to be like deer in the headlights when firm response is needed.

In 2004, American journalist Jonathan Ruach wrote about a survey, which showed 60% of Americans rate the UN as doing a “poor job in trying to solve the problems it has had to face.” He said, “The United Nations is built on an obsolete premise: that countries governed by their people and countries governed by thugs, thieves, or tyrants should meet on equal terms, one vote each.” Such a meeting is doomed to be dominated by the thugs, and the world is suffering from that fact in numerous locations. Ruach said the two factions were like a mongoose and a cobra. I tremble to think of what hateful, racist slander has been peddled to the world on a UN letterhead.

Betrayer of Peace

Bestselling Israeli author Dore Gold was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1997 to 1999. One of his most successful books, Tower of Babble, considered the changing face of the UN. The title may point to the incessant chatter by UN delegates or refer to the variety of languages attempting to communicate with understanding in such a complex setting.

According to a UN publication, the UN started October 24, 1945, “when the U.N. charter had been ratified by a majority of the original 51 members states. The day is now celebrated each year around the world as United Nations Day.” The UN emblem shows the world held in “the olive branches of peace.” Its purpose “is to bring all nations of the world together to work for peace and development, based on the principles of justice, human dignity and the well-being of all people.” Lofty goals indeed! Today, 191 countries meet in the General Assembly held in New York City. The UN global activities are processed through 30 committee groups set apart to handle areas of special interest.

Four years ago, in Tower of Babble, Gold was very specific about the problems he perceived from the inside. He charged that the UN ignored mass murder, emboldened terrorism, propped up dictators, and, in these and other ways, betrayed its mission. He wrote that his book explains “why America can—and indeed must—go outside the UN to address the most serious threats to national security. How the UN jeopardizes the success of the war on terror—and how terror groups have actually penetrated UN organizations.”

Gold expressed concern about the falling standards for membership in the UN. “There may have been preconditions to join the UN in 1945, but no preconditions were set years later. In 1974, Yasser Arafat (founder and leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization—currently the Fatah group led by Mahmoud Abbas or Abu Mazen) was invited to address the UN General Assembly, without having to renounce terrorism; in a 1970 interview aired on CNN, he voiced his opinion that airplane hijackings could be justified by UN resolutions condoning resistance to alien domination ‘by all available means’ and then added ‘including armed struggle’—to this day this has served as the key phraseology for legitimizing terrorism.”

Biased against Israel

But even more profound has been the inability of the UN to mouth the word “anti-Semitism.” Throughout its history, the UN has taken every opportunity to denounce every form of racism but anti-Semitism. On November 24, 1998, more than 50 years after the UN was commissioned to proclaim and protect world peace, anti-Semitism finally entered their vocabulary near the end of GA Res. A/53/623, on “Elimination of Racism and Racial Discrimination.”

They could hardly claim innocence of the topic. Dr. Mitchell Bard, in his Myths and Facts best-seller, includes this quote spoken by a UN delegate as one of the myths he exposes: “‘The Talmud [rabbinic commentary] says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity’—Saudi Arabian delegate Marouf Al-Dawalibri before the 1984 UN Human Rights Commission conference on religious tolerance.” Bard went on to say, “A similar remark was made by the Syrian Ambassador at a 1991 meeting, who insisted Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzos.”

On December 11, 2008, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) protested what they called “bias toward Israel” by the UN General Assembly (GA) President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. In a letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, ADL National Chair Glen Lewy and ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman referred to “slanderous remarks” by Brockmann, who described Israel as “an apartheid state” and accused Israel of “crucifying” the Palestinians. They also said he failed to repudiate the anti-Semitic speech delivered before the GA by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “President d’Escoto Brockmann’s actions directly contradict the spirit and letter of the UN charter requirement of equal treatment for member-states.”

In March, Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, wrote an article entitled “The Folly of ‘Investigating Gaza.’” He wrote about a UN investigation, which bypassed Hamas but focused on Israel. The explanation was that Hamas as a terrorist organization could not be expected to operate in a humane way. Hamas freely declares their objective is to kill as many Israelis as possible. That is their charter. “The only real target of this investigation is Israel, which, according to British military expert Rickard Kemp, ‘had very little choice other than to carry on with its military operations until it reaches the conclusion it needs, which is stop Hamas firing rockets at its people, in its territory,’” wrote Dershowitz. Kemp added:

I would say from my knowledge of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and from the extent to which I have been following the current operation, I don’t think there had ever been a time in the history of warfare when an army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF…Only a group skewed against Israel as this one is would regard the United Nations as capable of conducting an “independent and impartial investigation” of anything involving Israel. Such an investigation would not “help build a better peace.” To the contrary, it would encourage Hamas and other terrorist groups to persist in their tactic of targeting civilians from behind human shields.

He called for the United Nations to open investigations into Russia, China, Zimbabwe, Iran, and other nations rather than isolate Israel as their target.

Nations Bypassing the UN

Gold has pointed out how leaders have opted to bypass the UN to protect their vital interests. President Kennedy relied on the Organization of American States in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. He did not seek UN authorization to apply a naval quarantine on Fidel Castro. President Clinton chose to deal with Kosovo through NATO. President George W. Bush assembled the Coalition of the Willing for the 2003 Iraqi War. Gold wrote:

Coalitions of the Willing will become the likely vehicle in the future for urgent military interventions…It might be useful to form a permanent coalition of democratic countries. Some democracies, like France and Belgium, might be unlikely, at this point, to join. But besides European States—like Britain, Italy, and the new democracies of Eastern Europe—the US could go outside of Europe to Turkey, Israel, India, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia. Should this bloc become substantial, it would be worthwhile to force through the UN General Assembly news resolutions that served our collective interests and break the hold of the Non-Aligned Movement.

It is known that during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, there were meetings of what was called “The Community of Democracies.” In March 2004, Ruach made a bold statement: “Predictions are risky, but where you see an acorn, it is not crazy to foresee an oak. With a little light and water, the democracy caucus will inevitably grow. In time—you heard it first here—it may overshadow the U.N.”

Source: By Ron Ross, Host, BFP Israel Mosaic Radio