The UN and UNESCO: it's time to stop the genocide

Here’s an essay by essayist John Hinderaker. It’s called, “Time to put the United Nations out of business” (powerline, October 14, 2016). I’ve edited the essay to fit my format. Take a look.

“What, exactly, is the U.N. good for? Hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered in Syria. But no one looks to the U.N. for a solution just as no one expects the U.N. to do anything about ISIS or al Qaeda.

Wars have raged in Congo and across much of Africa. But the U.N. has done little but embroil itself in an unending series of sexual exploitation scandals.

The Middle East has been in turmoil for years, from Libya to Afghanistan. What constructive actions has the UN taken? None.

Perhaps the UN’s grandiose claims to be a force for world peace are hollow. Perhaps the UN is no good.

If the U.N. is useless with regard to actual international crises, what does it do? No doubt there are U.N. agencies here and there that do some good. But the damage done by the larger organization is far greater than the good performed by its minor units. More often than not, the U.N. seems to side with evil, not good--as the current UNESCO controversy illustrates.

Instead of ‘doing good’, many member nations of the U.N. engage in a long-term project to delegitimize Israel. Their goal is to turn Israel over to the surrounding Arabs and, presumably, to allow those Arabs to drive out or kill the Jews who now live there. The latest phase of this effort is a proposed UNESCO resolution that attacks Israel by denying the connection between Jews and the Temple Mount.

ynetnews explains:

‘The United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed a draft resolution on Thursday that failed to acknowledge the Jewish people’s ties to the Temple Mount, raising ire in Israel.

The proposal strongly condemns Israel’s supposedly escalating aggressions (sic) and illegal measures against the Waqf Department and its personnel, and against the freedom of worship and Muslims’ access to their Holy Site Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif, and requests Israel, the Occupying Power, to respect the historic Status Quo and to immediately stop these measures.

It omits the Jewish name for the holy site—the Temple Mount—and instead refers to it only by its Muslim name—Al-Haram Al Sharif’.

First of all, Israel is not an ‘occupying power’ in Jerusalem within the meaning of the Geneva Conventions. This ‘occupying power’ claim is the usual nonsense perpetrated by international leftists. It gets attention. But it’s false.

Beyond that, UNESCO’s attempt to deny that the Temple Mount has any historical connection to the Jewish people is absurd. Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaction was correct: Have they not read the Bible?

David conquered the Jebusites and captured Jerusalem 3,000 years ago. Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish life and worship ever since. Herod the Great rebuilt the Second Temple. The Romans destroyed that Temple in 70 CE following a Jewish rebellion. Jews have lived in Jerusalem, and sought to return there from around the world, for millennia.

Muslims were late-comers to Jerusalem. They arrived in the area roughly 1,600 years after the Jews (using the most charitable pro-Muslim interpretation of history).

The Temple Mount is exactly that-–the site of the Jewish Holy Temple. It may well have been the location of Solomon’s First Temple and, long before that, the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. To suggest that this Temple Mount has no historical connection to the Jewish people, and the modern state of Israel, is ridiculous–-precisely the sort of absurdism that international leftists, and especially Arabs, engage in. It would be like claiming that Washington, D.C. has no connection to the American people.

The Israeli government has issued a publication detailing the millennia-long relationship between the Jewish people and the Promised Land. I admire the Israelis’ patience. But in their shoes, I think I would tell the lunatics–the UNESCO resolution was sponsored by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, and supported by any number of Europeans–to get stuffed.

The evil done by the United Nations is palpable. The good it does is obscure and mostly presumed. Is there a compelling reason why hard-pressed American taxpayers should continue to support this organization? Is there a good reason why the U.N. should continue to exist? These are serious questions that should be debated.

Unless someone has a good argument to the contrary, I incline to the view that the UN should go out of business.”

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My comment:

This (albeit preliminary) UNESCO Resolution to deny all Jewish connection to the Temple Mount flies in the face of history, archaeology, and religion (both Judaism and Christianity). It’s so factually false, it should never have seen the light of day.

This vote, even though not the final UNESCO Resolution, is a true outrage. The accusation that Israel has been “escalating aggressions and illegal measures against the Waqf Department and its personnel, and against the freedom of worship” (sic) for Muslims on the Mount denies the truth of the Temple Mount. The truth is the exact opposite of this Arab-scripted nonsense: Muslims on the Mount continuously attack Jews there. Muslims at the Mount demand that the freedom of worship be denied to Jews. Finally, it is Muslims who have been engaging in escalating illegal measures at the Mount, not Jews.

Furthermore, this UNESCO outrage is just the tip of an anti-Israel effort at the UN that can best be described as ‘Nazi-like’. It’s Nazi-like because, like the Nazis of the 1930s-1940s, the UN demonizes and delegitimizes the Jewish nation in much the same way Nazis delegitimized and demonized the Jews of Germany, using misrepresentations, distortions and outright lies to justify its genocidal designs.

It is genocide we’re talking about here. As Hinderaker correctly asserts, the UN aims to hand Israel’s Jews over to Arabs who marinate in the world’s most murderous anti-Jew incitement. The UN ignores that incitement--which is, by the way, clearly defined as genocide by the UN’s own Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Articles 2 and 3).

When it comes to Israel, the UN refuses to live by its own definitions. The UN’s anti-Israel drive is not to do good in the pursuit of peace. It is to ethnically cleanse Jews in the pursuit of genocide.

Hinderaker is correct. The UN is not a ‘house of good’. What good it does do is outweighed by the genocidal evil it promotes. Its constant drum-beat of anti-Israel votes and condemnations lead one to a singular conclusion: the UN should be put out of business.

What do you think?