Time to Undo the UN?

It’s happened again.

For the second time since moving the Philippines, I feel ashamed of this country I’ve come to love. The first disappointment occurred when the government deported former president Rodrigo Duterte to the Netherlands for trial on alleged crimes against humanity before the bogus International Criminal Court. That, instead of showing the strength, integrity, and moral fortitude to judge him at home.

Then, more recently, I learned that the Philippine delegation to the United Nations had joined a walkout boycotting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the General Assembly in New York. “We firmly believe,” DFA Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro explained, “that the two-state solution remains the only viable path to lasting and durable peace…”

To which I can only say, if that’s what motivated her delegation’s insolent action, it’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a very long time. Because anyone who knows anything about the Middle East understands that the only side consistently opposing the so-called “two-state solution” is the Palestinians; a reality they have demonstrated time-and-again both in word and in deed.

1937, 1947, 1967, 1978, 1993, 2000, 2008, 2013, and 2020. Those are years Palestinian leaders were offered genuine opportunities to launch their independence. All got rejected. In 2005, Israel even unilaterally withdrew its settlers and permanent military presence from Gaza, hoping to foster peace. Instead, Hamas—Gaza’s elected leadership—spent hundreds of millions of dollars, some diverted from international humanitarian aid, to build a vast network of underground tunnels from which to attack Israel. The result was Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the latest war.

Bottom line: anyone still banking on a “two-state solution” is hopelessly naïve, misguided, or ill-informed.

Those who aren’t, of course, find the Palestinian intransigence unsurprising, given its leadership’s oft-stated commitment to a solution involving only one state, namely their own. Here’s part of the preamble to The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas’ 1988 charter: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

Is it just me, or does that sound suspiciously like an ideology of genocide? And yet the so-called “Free Palestine” proponents—with whom the Philippine delegation has now cast its lot—have conveniently redefined “genocide” to suit their own agenda: namely, blaming Israel for the sin of defending its very existence.

One Wall Street Journal columnist recently attributed that insanity to something he calls Israel Derangement Syndrome or IDS. “When the subject turns to the Jewish state,” Kyle Smith writes, “formerly robust minds are turning to spoiled mayonnaise. Frontal auto lobotomies are eagerly being carried out…IDS is a drug that gets you high on self-righteousness while disabling your cognitive faculties.”

The kindest thing I can say about those Filipino delegates is that they have obviously concocted a severe case.

Which is deeply disturbing, given their country’s long and close relationship to the Jewish state in question. Visiting Israel last year with a delegation of Philippine-based journalists, I stood at the famous “Open Doors” monument honoring the Philippines for helping Jews escape the Holocaust. I also interviewed scores of Filipino students and OFWs who heaped praise on their new country of residence. January will see the first nonstop flights between Manila and Tel Aviv. And Israel’s embassy here has, to name just a few projects, supported a women’s health center in Pasig; created elementary school libraries in Cavite and Quezon City; outfitted another elementary school digital learning center in Manila; donated relief packets to typhoon victims in Bicol; provided 16,000 antigen test kits during Covid; and financed a solar power plant in Quezon.

As I’ve said before, the UN long ago became too politicized to provide much help in achieving peace in the Middle East or anywhere else. What’s new is that its contagious IDS infection is quickly spreading, most recently to representatives of an otherwise sensible country I usually adore.

That’s an abominable shame. And it should finally be undone, as, perhaps, should the ailing spreader UN.

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An earlier version of this column appeared in The Manila Times.