UNfriend: The Case for Israel Pulling out of the United Nations

Buildings belonging to the United Nations in Gaza continue to be used to store and launch missiles, hide terrorists, and are the starting point of many attempted terrorists attacks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly in New York last week took place in the Western world’s epicenter for the promotion, codification and implementation of institutional anti-Semitism.

After all, it is no coincidence that behind every conflict Israel has ever fought, there has been a failed United Nations resolution.

Simply scrape the gloss off the noble sentiments expressed in the Charter of the United Nations and you will discover that the world body’s Near East policy has from its inception fanned the flames of Arab nationalism, perpetuating regional conflicts that have effectively preserved a status quo sympathetic to authoritarian Arab regimes, at the expense of Israeli security and sovereignty.

The die was cast by Great Britain, which had occupied modern-day Israel from the end of the First World War until the 1947 UN partition. The European-based realpolitik that catered to Arab nationalism and authoritarian rule came at the expense of historical Jewish claims and contemporary Jewish interests.

A decade later, following the 1956 Sinai War, the United Nations forced an Israeli withdrawal from the Peninsula by establishing an international peace keeping force to demilitarize the area. This state of affairs held sway until 1967, when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded and received a UN withdrawal of said international peacekeeping force.

This unexplained retreat by the United Nations facilitated a massive Egyptian military buildup in the Sinai, and an eventual Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, an act of war that sparked the Six Day War.

Fast forward to the 1970s and you will find that since the UN was first charged with preserving peace in Lebanon, the country has degenerated from being the ‘Paris of the Middle East’ to a terrorist caliphate. Simply swap out ‘PLO’ for ‘Hezbollah’ and a disturbing historical trend emerges.

The UN peacekeeping force’s raison d’etre in Lebanon was to preserve ‘stability’ by facilitating a withdrawal of Israeli forces. With international peacekeepers filling the void created by the IDF’s exit, southern Lebanon would thus be demilitarized.

In fact, the United Nations’ foray into Lebanon has allowed Hezbollah to flourish, stationing tens of thousands of soldiers and fielding over 100,000 rockets (including 5,000 long-range rockets) in civilian centers throughout the area.

Moreover, during the most recent Arab-Israeli war in Gaza, the United Nations did not even attempt to feign neutrality.

For almost a decade Hamas spent billions of dollars developing an armed terrorist infrastructure purposely embedded in the civilian populace of Gaza, including numerous UN facilities such as schools.

Buildings belonging to the United Nations in Gaza continue to be used to store and launch missiles, hide terrorists, and are the starting point of many attempted terrorists attacks.

Beyond stoking the fires of violent divisiveness in the region and repeatedly abrogating its own peacekeeping mandates, the United Nations has also failed to administer to the needs of millions of Arabs living in squalor throughout Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

The ‘UN Effect’ in the region is clear and the supranational entity’s documented animosity against Israel is reason enough for the only democracy in the Middle East to stop legitimizing the UN’s policies and actions by remaining a member of the organization.

After all, is Israeli sovereignty inalienable or is it subject to a UN approval?

Authors: Harry and Gidon Ben-Zvi