I don't intend this to be a long diary, in part because it's not a particularly long (or new) story: once again, the United Nations has proven itself to be completely unfit to act as a remotely neutral arbitrator of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The latest evidence: the profoundly anti-Israel actions by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10th.
At this point, it's hardly surprising that the United Nations spends an inordinate amount of time criticizing Israel, a troubled but democratic nation which is fully engaged with the rest of the world, even while it all but ignores horrific human rights abuses almost everywhere else. Last Friday's set of 28 resolutions by the General Assembly illustrates this point quite handily.
Consider the U.N.'s own description of its acts:
Acting on the recommendation of its Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization), the General Assembly this morning adopted 27 resolutions and 1 decision, nine among them concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict, by which it deemed "extremely detrimental" Israeli settlement policies and activities on efforts to resume and advance the peace process and on its credibility.
As in past years, those updated, but traditional, resolutions forwarded to the world body by the Fourth Committee required recorded votes. Other texts covered decolonization, outer space, atomic radiation, information and public outreach, and peacekeeping. Recorded votes were required for more than half.
That count of 9 doesn't include the additional "anticolonialism" resolutions, which I strongly suspect were linked to the criticism of Israel in the mind of many delegates.
No other country was singled out for even slight rebuke on Friday. Hamas (with its abysmal human rights record against its own people) and Syria (which has been on the U.S. government's list of "state sponsors of terrorism" since 1979) are in the General Assembly seen only as victims of Israeli aggression. Of China, of Iran, of North Korea, of the other despotic repressive nations without vote or free press, not a mention.
Why would Israel's government, and its people, ever trust the United Nations to keep peace, fairly investigate, or otherwise serve as a "neutral" party in peace discussions, when the organization is so clearly and undeniably set in its anti-Israel ways?
Perhaps the next time Israel rejects the U.N.'s "help," or calls its investigations "flawed," the DKos community may remember December 10th, 2010, and understand a bit more why it does so.