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Shirah Cashriel

The UN: A Comedy of Tragedies

The United Nations was created in 1945 after World War II, purportedly to prevent another conflict on that scale. Maybe once upon a time, the UN was an upright, decent organization that actually did stuff. I don’t know, I haven’t been around that long. But today, this organization, in the words of the comedian Dylan Moran, is “just farts clothed in substance”.

This is an organization that this past April elected Iran to the Commission on the Status of Women. Iran.  On the UNCSW. Iran. This is a theocratic country that blames earthquakes on its non-burka-clad women and where misogyny is legislated. Girls who are raped are publicly hanged for their alleged crimes of looseness and promiscuity, because, hell, she was asking for it. The point is that the UN has deemed this bastion of equality to be qualified to make all sorts of decisions about how to improve the status of women to real people as opposed to just half men-children. Because I’m sure the parents of Leila Fathi, an eleven year old Iranian girl who was gang raped and murdered, felt like it was truly an empowerment of their daughter’s memory  when they forked money over to her killers.

The Human Rights Council has called emergency meeting after emergency meeting about the situation in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, pointing fingers at Israel while ignoring the role of Hamas. Within the past week, ISIS has buried 500 Yazidi men, women, and children alive. The Syrians have starved nearly 150,000 Palestinians to death over a short period of time. The UNHRC has called many emergency meetings to consult about how to end this as well.  Just kidding, there are no Jews involved here, so they don’t care. It’s akin to expecting fair and unbiased reporting on Al Jazeera. But that’s another story for another day.

The UNHRC has shown time and time again that it only cares about human rights when it can also bash Israel. Case in point: Obama authorized “targeted airstrikes in Iraq”. They performed “knock on the roof” bombings, they sent leaflets, texted and called civilia…Oh, no. They just bombed. And the UNHRC has called nary an emergency meeting, and no one is charging Obama with war crimes or posting nasty pictures of him insatiably drinking the blood of Iraqi children.

The UN has named William Schabas to the new commission inquiry to Gaza. This man, who before being named, was looking to lead the manhunt against Bibi (not Assad or Mashal)  to be indicted by the International Crime Court, has stated that he would not be biased against Israel. He probably pinky-sweared while crossing his fingers behind his back. I mean, there is no way anybody in the UN actually believed what he said. If they did than they are just naïve idiots, because no one can have such hate for an entire country and keep that out of any decision involving said country. And if they knew he’s full of Some Hemorrhoids In There, then they purposefully named him commissioner in order to promote the aforementioned manhunt.

My favorite is the Relief and Works Agency. Who am I kidding, I don’t have any favorites. But UNWRA is a special kind of redundant. UNRWA began operations in 1950, as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948, or what is better known as “that time the UN gave the Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs two separate countries and the Arabs decided frick that, we want it all, and attacked Israel” (not official title). UNRWA was sent to the rescue of the resulting refugees. The wonderful thing about UNRWA is absolutely nothing. They are the only relief agency that has a specific demographic, and within that demographic the refugee status is passed on from generation to generation like a dominant gene (this is contrary to international law, which says refugee status dies with the refugee, his/her children don’t inherit the status).

Beyond that, there are five times more workers in UNRWA than in the globally responsible UNHRC, and the vast majority of them are Palestinians. The piece de resistance? Rockets were found being stored in UNRWA schools not once, but thrice, each time refusing to finger blame. In the US the third time’s a charm, but here in Israel we get ice cream. So, not only did they fail since they provided zero Israelis with ice cream, they also failed because shortly after these findings these rockets mysteriously disappeared. And somehow landed in a variety of Israeli open fields and possibly some homes (it’s really hard to tell which rocket came from which Hamas storage facility, I mean, UN school or UN hospital). UNRWA is still standing and the UNHRC is not investigating. Let me put on my shocked face. Maybe my tinfoil hat is on too tight, but it seems like UNRWA is made up of, if not actual Hamas members, then at the very least Hamas sympathizers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Of course as with any process, priorities must be made. But when the UN puts mass genocide and ethnic cleansing on the back burner, choosing instead to vilify a country that is actually doing its best to minimize “collateral damage” (a term I despise), and places countries on committees that have no business being there, it is clearly time to break the party up.  Hell, Schabas himself admitted to the double standard in the UN, effectively stating that countries like the good ol’ USofA and Russia can do as they please because they are widely powerful and have permanent veto on the UN Security Council.

A UN elected commissioner being open about its double standard should worry everyone. Because that means there are far more nefarious things happening below the surface.

About the Author
Former IDF Soldier