The UN: What it is, what it Isn’t, what it’s for

October 24th, 1945: the United Nations comes into existence. It does so not as the dramatic inauguration of a novel concept, but to replace its entirely useless precursor, The League of Nations, because that organization failed in its purpose —  to unite the world against a potential second world war — in record time and spectacular fashion. 

The UN’s objectives, as outlined by its charter, include things like ‘maintaining international peace and security’ and ‘the protection of human rights, delivery of humanitarian aid, and upholding international law’. But as we have seen time and time again, each of these categories is malleable, far from equally distributed, and often political. One example: since the candidates for the Security Council are proposed by regional blocs, the Arab League is mostly included, but Israel, a member of the UN since 1949, has never been. And the UN, or what Charles de Gaulle (in classic French manner) called it, le machin, would never dream of letting it get elected, either.

Kurt Waldheim, Cholera in Haiti, Oil for Food 

Kurt Waldheim, a literal Nazi, was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981. Waldheim started out as a member of the Sturmabteilung and ended up as Oberleutnant in the Wehrmacht (yikes!). As it later turned out, the United Nations War Crimes Commission concluded after WWII that Waldheim was implicated in Nazi mass murder, but figured he would make a fine Secretary-General, anyway. Despite also being President of Austria from 1986 to 1992 (again, yikes), Waldheim was ultimately deemed persona non grata by the United States and nearly every other nation outside the Arab world. And that, imagine, wasn’t even the biggest scandal in the history of the United Nations. 

In 2010, UN aid workers were found to be the source of a cholera outbreak that killed over 10,000 Haitians and sickened hundreds of thousands. Solving the problem in the most elegant way possible, the UN claimed diplomatic immunity and refused to provide compensation. Six years later, then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon did say he was sorry and promised $400 million in aid to the victims. As of 2020, about 5 percent of that amount has been given to Haiti.

All this not to mention Rwanda, the disastrous ‘Oil for Food’ program in Iraq, or the UN peacekeepers raping the women and girls they were charged with protecting in the Congo (or the allegations of similar occurrences in Cambodia, Bosnia, or Haiti). According to the UN’s own study, ‘in 6 out of 12 country studies, […] the arrival of peacekeeping troops has been associated with a rapid rise in child prostitution.’

Other dramatic failures of the UN are portrayed as mere disagreements, as in the case of the war in Syria, or the unchecked actions of Turkey against a number of countries or groups of people. The lackluster and ineffectual show-struggle against nukes in Iran is another example.  

Israel in the World, the Jewish State at the UN

Recently back in the news for all the wrong reasons, Resolution 181, much like the UN, pretends to be things it simply isn’t. And, like the UN, it does so successfully enough that Western leaders, like the president of France, are duped by it. 

Remember Emanuel Macron’s recent warning to Israel, reminding Netanyahu he ‘must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN,’ perhaps implying that it could be undone in just such a manner? What Macron seems to either forget or not know is that Resolution 181 failed, like so many UN resolutions do: it passed, yes, but the day after there was a war, and Israel was established on the back of its unforeseeable but resounding success in that war. So no, Israel was not ‘created by the UN’. Those borders set out by the UN in 1947 might be a cause célèbre among Palestinians and their supporters today —  they are what Palestinians claim to want to go back to — but let us not forget that these borders were set out in a resolution (accepted by Israel), and they went to war over them, anyway.

Israel’s history of acting on its feelings of justice rather than calculations of benefit is long and worthy of pride. It stood against the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, one of three impartial nations, along with India and Namibia, to do so. Israel’s stance was especially notable given the geopolitical context and its ordinarily close alignment with the United States (the major force in the NATO campaign), leading the US to admonish Israel. 

But Israel has also offered help to Turkey multiple times, most recently during the earthquake in 2023, deploying the second largest humanitarian aid delegation to the country in an operation named Olive Branches. Hundreds of medical workers and 150 tons of humanitarian aid were sent to Turkey. Israel offered to help Iran, despite the lack of diplomatic relations, after the 2017 earthquake. Iran refused. Israel offered aid to Lebanon after the explosion at the port. Lebanon refused. 

Operation Good Neighbor was a clandestine humanitarian relief program providing aid to Syrian civilians affected by the war, in which Israeli hospitals treated thousands of Syrian civilians smuggled into the country by the IDF. Israel even set up secret medical facilities on the Syrian side of the border to treat those who couldn’t make the journey over. Operation Doctor’s Appointment was a program allowing sick Syrian children to cross into Israel for treatment and then return home, so as not to be separated from their families.

Despite all of this, the Wikipedia page for resolutions of the UN concerning Israel goes on virtually forever, while the same page for Iran, say, is a rather quick scroll. Since 2006, the United Nations has passed 297 resolutions condemning Israel out of a total of 761, which accounts for almost 40% of all condemnatory resolutions.

No condemnatory resolution has ever been issued against China, for contrast. Do the Tibetan people not desire national liberation? Don’t they, too, have a right of self-determination, like the Palestinians? One might ponder the difference between these two groups, and their treatment by, and at, the United Nations.

Speaking of which: there are two refugee agencies at the United Nations. UNRWA is the one for Palestine, and UNHCR the one for the millions of others everywhere else in the world. UNHCR limits refugee status to those people forced to flee their homes and land; by contrast, UNRWA grants refugee status to descendants of the original refugees, indefinitely. This is why entire towns in Gaza are still referred to as ‘refugee camps’ although they are a far cry from the tent cities the term conjures in people’s minds.  

Naked Lunch 

Many people think of the United Nations as a powerful regulator of relations between countries. Things like the Human Rights Council seem like a big deal. Well, they aren’t; just look at any list of its members. In 2023, Iran was chosen to chair the Human Rights Council’s Social Forum. In 2024, the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women appointed Saudi Arabia to chair its next session. It’s all baloney. 

But, knowing all of this, can the UN still be a net positive? Arguably, yes. Not because it is a body dedicated to ‘maintaining international peace’ or whatever, but because it has a cafeteria; in a metaphorical, and also sort-of-literal sense. This cafeteria means that delegates can meet other delegates they wouldn’t (or couldn’t) ordinarily meet, and discuss things with them which they could not discuss otherwise — things one cannot telegraph, cannot communicate through elusive ‘backchannels’. The UN is a forum for sworn enemies to meet and talk. 

Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN. Via Shutterstock

Sure, we may not need that grandiose assembly hall, could do without the bloviating speeches and theater (just from the last session, recall the President of Haiti drinking water from the pitcher, the Pakistani PM reciting a maudlin poem, or the room emptying in protest as Bibi approaches the podium with his boards). All of these things feel something like when Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to not accept his Academy Award for The Godfather — performative and self-important. And the speeches tend to be less interesting than watching paint dry on a wall. But it is what happens outside of that hall — at the afterparty, if you will — that is essential and irreplaceable. 

Remember the fist bump between Kamala Harris and Lindsey Graham that went around the world? It shocked people. It made them angry. Words like ‘traitor’ were bandied about. But really, this meeting-one-another, this civility, is a benefit of such forums rather than a weakness. Shutter the UN and you don’t have a cafeteria for the bullies to have to sit with the nerds and talk it out. So yes, despite everything, there is a purpose to the UN, just not what it says on the door. And yes, Israel needs to be there. Even if the UN has one vote per country and the Islamic world is a majority of that, or perhaps because of it; because of Jewish states, there is but one.