UN At 'DEFCON 3' Over Israel

The UN Goes DEFCON 3 on Israel

Clifford D. May

Global bureaucrats are less angry with Putin, Xi and Khamenei.

The so-called UN Human Rights Council is doing the same. Its so-called Commission of Inquiry is going on offense against the Middle East’s only surviving and thriving Jewish community. Indeed, the COI is funded—Americans contributing the lion’s share—for the express purpose of demonizing and delegitimizing Israel in perpetuity.

On Thursday, the COI released its second report—one was not enough!—assigning culpability for last year’s 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood faction that holds power in Gaza, and is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and other nations.v,

The report urges UN members to prosecute Israeli officials for alleged violations of “international humanitarian law.” What does the report say about Hamas and the more than 4,000 rockets it fired at Israelis, its routine use of Palestinian civilians as “human shields” and the support it receives from Tehran? Not a word. “Hamas,” “rockets” and “terrorism” are not mentioned.

Israelis are protesting the report as they have protested such slanders in the past, and will in the future. They’re also reminding anyone who will listen—not a large cohort—that one of the COI’s prominent members, Miloon Kothari, has questioned why Israel is “even a member of the United Nations.”

Needless to say, Kothari has not suggested canceling the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, or the Islamic Republic of Iran—just the world’s only Jewish-majority nation, the one country in the Middle East where ethnic and religious minorities—more than one if five Israelis is Arab, Muslim, Christian or Druze—vote in elections, and enjoy such rights as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of worship.

Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, a concession that could have led to the rise of a Palestinian state in that territory and the West Bank. The experiment failed when Hamas, following a bloody civil war with Fatah, its rival, came to power two years later and began staging terrorist attacks against Israelis.

Also in 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. He’s remained in that position since, never again daring to face the Palestinian electorate. In theory, he governs the West Bank. In practice, he’s more like the mayor of Ramallah.

Over recent months, he’s been either unable or unwilling to exercise control over the northern West Bank. Such cities as Jenin and Nablus are increasingly dominated by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (a proxy of Tehran) and groups with ties to Islamic State.

Hamas also competes for power, as do radical factions of Fatah, of which Abbas is ostensibly leader.

There’s a Jenin Brigade and a new Nablus-based group, called the Lions’ Den, that my FDD colleague, Joe Truzman, has been reporting on. Members of both are believed to be young and eager to slit Jewish throats.

Starting in March, these groups have been organizing sporadic but lethal terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beersheva and other Israeli cities.

In response, the Israel Defense Forces have been entering West Bank towns, attempting to break the terrorist cells, arresting members, sometimes getting into shootouts with them. These are limited operations, but the possibility of a large-scale operation, something akin to the 2002 “Operation Defensive Shield,” has become a possibility.

If so, expect Kothari and his colleagues to blame Israelis. Why aren’t such globalist bureaucrats pursuing a diplomatic solution to Israel’s conflict with Hamas? Perhaps because they’ve read the Hamas Charter, which declares in Article 13:

“There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.”

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