Edan Alexander: UN Fails Even as Trump Succeeds

As the horror in Gaza continues, human rights advocates ask again and again how this could happen. The United Nations, its Human Rights Council, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) were all established after World War Two to make sure that war’s wide-scale suffering would not be repeated. This is the moment of crisis which all those decades of painstaking international deliberation were for.

UN Secretary General António Guterres has called for the unconditional release of the hostages. For example, on April 7^th he posted on X, “Today I met again with relatives of Israeli hostages and listened to their searing stories of pain and grief. I condemned Hamas for their brutal kidnapping and horrible treatment. I expressed my condolences to the families of those killed and reiterated my call for all hostages to be released immediately and unconditionally.”

Perhaps not as frequently or as forcefully as they should have, but other UN officials have said the same. Yet their words have done nothing.

United Nations criticism of Israel has been strident and constant. Demands that Israel allow in more humanitarian aid and condemnation of IDF tactics have come from the Human Rights Council, its sub-committees and Special Rapporteurs, and also the Secretary General himself. The ICJ has heard an extraordinary three cases about Israel just since this war began.

But all this UN attention has done nothing. Israel has made plain that it regards the UN and its affiliates as hopelessly biased against it and their criticism therefore illegitimate. It refuses to even participate in advisory proceedings against it at the ICJ, scorning ICJ decisions in advance.

Human Rights advocates howl with indignation, accusing Israel (and sometimes Hamas) not only of committing human rights violations, but of then compounding sin upon sin by arrogantly flaunting the decrees of the United Nations and international courts.

Then along comes Donald Trump. He demands Hamas release US citizen Edan Alexander, and right away it happens. Statements from Guterres and other prestigious UN officials did nothing- then the US President pounds his fist and everything changes. And when Trump talks, Israel’s government at least listens.

What does this show? Of course, the US has some military and economic leverage that the UN lacks. But it must still lead to intense soul-searching from the United Nations. How can an organization charged with the all-important purpose of preserving world peace and security have become so impotent? Why is the UN Secretary General, who is supposed to be vested with enormous clout, political legitimacy, and moral authority, blithely ignored?

Why are the demands of the leader of the United States, obviously an influential and powerful country but still just one among many, taken so much more seriously than demands made by the representative of all countries combined?

The problem is not that the United Nations, its leaders, or its organs don’t have the military or economic leverage the United States does. As the voice of the world, UN leaders could potentially have even more compelling moral and political clout. The problem is that the UN has taken its moral legitimacy and thrown it in the trash.

There isn’t room here to list every example of UN hypocrisy, double standards, and corruption. But suffice to say that when Israel sees that the Human Rights Council condemns it more often than all other countries in the world combined, Israel understands that it faces insurmountable bias. When Israel sees that the Human Rights Council has a permanent agenda item to condemn Israel at every meeting, something not done for any other country, Israel draws the obvious conclusion that rather than even handedly pursue human rights the Human Rights Council is simply out to get it. And there goes the Council’s moral authority. When the UN turns itself into just another forum for political attacks, horse trading, and influence peddling, why should its rulings have moral weight?

Of course, it’s difficult to wade into wars and conflicts to demand respect for human rights. Getting world leaders to behave may sometimes feel like trying to get a room full of little children to share toys, not hit, use indoor voices and play nice.

But if a teacher throws up their arms and says, “It’s not my fault the kids are always running around wild in my class, I told them to behave but they won’t listen,” the inevitable result will be to fire that teacher. Keeping control of an elementary school class is a hard job, but that’s what teachers have to be able to do.

So too the United Nations. No one said it would be easy working for human rights. But if the United Nations has failed to such an extent that its findings, recommendations, and the demands of its leaders are ignored, it needs to take responsibility for figuring out where it has gone wrong. Just like a school can’t change the students but instead must hire a different teacher, the UN can’t change countries or their leaders but instead must change itself.