The long U.N. war against Israel

OPINION:

As a foreign correspondent roving around Africa years ago, I often met United Nations personnel. Most were pleasant dinner companions.

What they were achieving was usually a mystery.

To understand what I mean, check out the website of the United Nations Development Programme. Look at the sections marked “Our Impact” and “Results.” Let me know if you find any useful missions accomplished.

I came to regard the United Nations as ineffectual but harmless, with one notable exception: It has long been hostile toward the nation-state that became its 59th member in 1949.

As far back as 1975, the U.N. General Assembly, steered by the Soviet Union, adopted a resolution calling Zionism “a form of racism.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, knew that Zionism implies nothing more than supporting the right of Israel not to be annihilated and the right of Israelis not to be exterminated.

He denounced the U.N. General Assembly resolution as “a lie” and an expression of “antisemitism.” Some 16 years later, driven by the end of the Cold War, U.S. diplomatic pressure and the Madrid peace process, the General Assembly repealed it.

Fast-forward to 2001. Just three days before the jihadi terrorist attacks on America, the United Nations concluded an “anti-racism” conference in Durban, South Africa, where participants held up signs reading “Down with Nazi-Israeli apartheid!” and “Machine-guns based upon FAITH and ISLAM must be used.”

Four years later, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip — every village, synagogue and cemetery. Two years later, Hamas violently ejected Fatah, its rival, to become the seaside enclave’s unchallengeable ruler.

Thereafter, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency served as Hamas’ primary provider of social services. In Gaza schools, students were taught to hate Israelis and Jews. In Gaza hospitals, Hamas was permitted to establish command posts.

Only after Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023  — and the revelation that Hamas members employed by UNRWA participated in the subsequent pogrom and hostage-holding — did I appreciate the extent to which the United Nations and Hamas had become inextricably allied.

Earlier this month, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. “special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza,” remarked that “Hamas is a political force that won the 2005 elections.” She neglected to mention that Hamas has permitted no elections in the 20 years since then.

She added, “When you think of Hamas, you should not necessarily think of cutthroats, people armed to the teeth, or fighters. It’s not like that.”

At the same time, she accused Israelis of “apartheid” and “genocide.” Do I need to remind you that Arab citizens of Israel have more rights than Arab citizens of Arab countries, and that since 1948, Gaza’s population has increased tenfold?

Given this history, I thought the U.N. demonization of Israel had gone as far as it could go.

I was wrong.

Last week, the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification released a “report” declaring “with reasonable evidence” that famine now exists in parts of Gaza. It goes without saying — actually, it’s being incessantly repeated — that Israelis are to blame.

To make these claims, the IPC manipulated its methodology, adjusted its criteria and reinterpreted the legal definition of genocide using dubious data from the Gaza Health Ministry — i.e., Hamas — and discarding data provided by Israel.

What’s more, one of the authors of the report, Andrew Seal, had been accusing Israel of genocide since the second day of the October 2023 counterattacks against Hamas.

No one denies that, amid a war that has dragged on for almost two years, Gaza residents are suffering terrible hardships, including food insecurity and, in some cases, malnutrition.

However, the incontrovertible facts are these: Hamas started this war and refuses to end it; Hamas takes no responsibility for the people it has ruled and is determined to continue to rule; Hamas refuses to release hostages abducted from Israel and whom it is torturing, even though doing so would almost certainly lead to a ceasefire.

One more fact: Since May, more than 10,000 aid trucks have entered Gaza, with eight out of 10 bringing food. This has resulted in wider availability of essential foods at reduced prices in Gaza markets.

The United Nations is making distribution of this aid more difficult by demanding that UNRWA be in charge, despite UNRWA’s letting Hamas take a cut to feed its leaders in the tunnels and to resell for cash to pay its troops on the streets above.

The United Nations adamantly refuses to work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American/Israeli project delivering free food directly to Gaza residents, with Hamas excluded.

Much of the media have been helping weaponize public opinion against Israel. Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova revealed in The Free Press this month that even before the IPC designation, at least a dozen “viral images of starvation” published by The New York Times, NPR, CNN and other major news outlets were in fact photos of children with “significant health problems” such as cerebral palsy, not famine victims.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee observed on X: “Hostages ARE starving, Hamas is getting fat, & the UN declares famine while 92% of THEIR food is stolen to be sold by Hamas. Meanwhile UN food sits rotting in sun. The UN should declare itself corrupt & incompetent.”

That raises a question: Why are American taxpayers still spending roughly $13 billion annually on the most globalist of institutions, which for half a century has been waging a disinformation war — including bogus charges of racism, apartheid, genocide and intentional starvation — against the only democracy in the Middle East, which also is America’s most reliable ally in the world?

Memo to President Trump: Thank you for your attention to this matter!

• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Policy” podcast.