Wilful Blindness (and other failures) at the UN

UNHCR (Bucharest). All photos by author.

In the days following Rawan Osman’s impassioned speech at the United Nation’s Human Right Council meeting, when she stated vehemently that “Israel is not the problem” then singled out one tyrannical Middle Ease regime after another for their human rights abuses, I was eager to see if Osman’s words, or those uttered by survivors of the massacres across southern Israel, also at the UN Human Rights Council, had moved the needle – or hearts of any country reps. Alas, sadly it had not. The ongoing demonization of Israel that unfolded over the following days, reflected to an almost comical degree, just how entrenched the anti-Israel bias has become, as if the Lebanese-Syrian activist had not spoken at all.

I sifted through a handful of UN meeting recordings, hoping to find an outlier. But in one instance after another, from the Human Rights Council General Meeting, a plethora of reports on the status of Human Rights Defenders, a Briefing on the Middle East, the Convention on Torture (which covers Hostage-Taking) and a Commemoration of International Women’s Day, the anti-Israel choir preached as one.

Even as 59 hostages continue to be held captive in Hamas tunnels after 500 days, Special Rapporteur and Ireland native Mary Lawlor, who helmed the meeting on human rights defenders, noted that she is “extremely concerned for the fate of Palestinian Human Rights Defenders in Gaza who have been through so much and are now facing a criminal blockade..” to which I would have asked: Do you know who is actually brutalizing your so-called human rights defenders? Hamas. If your ‘defenders’ uphold principles of international law for all, why are they not helping to return the hostages so that their people can return to a semblance of normal life?

Before Katharina Rose spoke up, I hadn’t heard of her nor the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI). After she launched a tirade about her slain ‘colleague’ Rafaat Salha followed by the oft-repeated falsehood – “grave concerns of ethnic cleansing…” – I googled Salha and GANHRI. (Which, of course, made me think of UNWRA workers who turned out to be Hamas operatives.) Lo and behold, the GANHRI Chairperson is the Chair of the Qatari NHRC so all eyes are on… Israel. Shortly after Rose’s twisted shpiel ended, Ola W.A. Adawi, of the “Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights” spoke up, echoing the same propaganda. She probably didn’t notice the kernel of truth in her words: “In Palestine, particularly in Gaza, nowhere is truly safe…”

But it was really Mary Lawlor’s final comments that captured the greatest absurdity and hypocrisy of her grossly biased ‘reporting’. In a voice that could best be described as fawning, Lawlor asked the “nice young woman” from Russia to “tell the family of (Ukrainian journalist) Victoria Roshchyna what happened to her fate and her whereabouts and please give them back her body. They need to be able to grieve with the body.” Which is when I gasped. Because, damn it, did Lawlor not imagine that the families of hostages in Gaza deserved to know the whereabouts of their loved ones? Do they not deserve to get their sons back, alive or dead? Why couldn’t she extend the same respect and closure to Israel as she so dramatically advocated for Roshchyna by calling out the “State of Palestine”?

The briefing on the Middle East was just as predictable, with Russia, Pakistan, China, South Korea, Denmark, the UK, Turkey and Syria – yes, Syria – slamming Israel for “aggression against several military and civilian facilities” and “Israel’s expansionist and destabilizing acts.” And yet, not one country rep singled out the “Syrian Arab Republic” for the horrific genocide against the Christian and Alawite minorities that has been unleashed this very week, the explicit torture and executions unmissable on social media, and with the expectation that more minorities will be targeted under the al-Jolani regime. Maybe no one dared because the Syrian country rep smiled so pleasantly, spoke so politely and decked himself out in a classy suit. But monsters come in all shapes, sizes and suits.

The UN House. Bucharest.

Despite all signs pointing to the contrary, I still held out hope that the Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment might remind the crowd that a severe and protracted hostage crisis was ongoing in Gaza. Alas, the UN failed on this score as well.  After reading out a list of hostage situations in China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, the UAE and Venezuela, Alice Edwards made just a passing and token reference to the Israeli hostages before ‘what-abouting’ the Palestinians. On and on she went, expressing her unwavering intention to investigate accusations of torture of Palestinians ‘detainees’ in Israeli prisons and the ‘devastating’ problems. How is it that this Special Rapporteur neglected to emphasize that today, as she speaks, more than 50 hostages are still being tortured deep in Gaza after more than 500 days? That the ‘State of Palestine’ must release all of them immediately?

I have a question about the ‘State of Palestine.” Who do these country reps of the ‘State of Palestine’ actually represent? If they are ambassadors, are they then considered the ‘diplomatic corps’ of… Hamas? If so, why does the UN grant representatives of a recognized terrorist organization any legitimacy at all? Break it down and the absurdity makes my head spin.

Let’s also be clear: There is no State of Palestine. I know this because my own mother was born in Palestine, under the British Mandate, which ended in 1948 with the founding of the State of Israel. So why does the UN recognize a non-state entity which has adopted the name of a non-existent state or country?

Clearly, the wilful blindness is wildly rampant among UN’s member states. The UN has transformed from a once-moral and respected institution into a shadow of its former self; a hypocritical farce of inhuman proportions, stitched into the gold-lined pockets of tyrants. So much so that (did you notice?) the “Important Message” that is displayed at the start of every UN video recording is first presented always in Arabic. The obsequious rot runs a deep river throughout the UN.

The fundamental principles and inalienable rights on which the United Nations was founded, in the wake of the Holocaust and WWII, have been expropriated and diluted to such an extent that terms such as ‘human rights’ have been virtually shorn of meaning. If it took the devastation of a world war to impel countries to establish an organization in the service of all, which has for all intents and purposes, lost its way, then perhaps it is time for a collective re-set to be engineered by those who strive to abide by bona fide humanitarian norms and aspirations, as imperfect as they – and the countries that implement them – may be.