The failure of the United Nations to uphold Israel’s 1949 recognition of self-determination and protect the principle of sovereign equality necessitates radical reform or a new legal-political framework.
Photos by Karel van Essen
(April 20, 2025 / By: Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)
“Political language … is designed to make, lies sound truthful, and murder respectable,” wrote George Orwell, one of Britain’s most illustrious writers and social and political observers. This prescient observation sums up well the United Nations’ response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 atrocity against Israel.
The United Nations, established in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust to respond to and prevent crimes against humanity, has undermined its founding charter by rationalizing aggression by Iranian minions such as Hamas while failing to uphold Israel’s right to self-defense as a member of the U.N. and even equating the Jewish and her democratic state with the terror groups seeking to destroy her.
The morally malformed responses of UN bodies on Oct. 7 reflect a decades-long trajectory of corruption in démonization, délegitimization and double standards, with regard to Israel, as former Deputy Prime Minister of Israel Natan Sharansky has argued.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 “Al Aqsa Flood” marks a new front in political hybrid warfare, merging ideological jihad with Soviet disinformation. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, trained by the KGB in Moscow, and the Iranian regime-trained Hamas leadership have mobilized a dual message – peace for the West, war for the Arab and Muslim world – that mirrors the Cold War-era Soviet disinformation campaign against the United States. The United Nations has reinforced the Palestinian “Al-Aqsa Flood” campaign, making it an eighth legal-political front in the multiple war, of Israel against Iran’s proxies.
The current war of disinformation against Israel has its origins in the 2001 U.N.-sanctioned Durban World Conference Against Racism, which has since fueled a political crusade against Israel. The summary statement of the Durban NGO Forum restated U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 1975, “Zionism is racism.” Comparing Israel, to the apartheid phenomenon created in South Africa, the Durban statement accused Israel as a “genocidal war criminal,” which spawned the global BDS movement. Since 2015, the 140 resolutions of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), against Israel, dwarf resolutions against all other countries combined, a stark double standard in other words.
UN Security Council’s refusal to condemn Oct. 7 unconditionally
The UN Security Council’s refusal to unequivocally condemn the Oct. 7 Hamas attack epitomizes the hypocrisy of the United Nations. Resolution 2712, adopted Nov. 15, 2023, called for humanitarian pauses but made no mention of the attack, causing the U.S. and UK to abstain. This continued paralysis underscores the UN Security Council’s refusal to support Israel’s right to defend itself, and follows a historical pattern of protecting non-state actors such as Hamas while Israel is targeted.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres led the moral failing of the United Nations on Oct. 7. He declared on Oct. 24, 2023, “I unequivocally condemned the horrific and unprecedented acts of terror committed by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7,” but then expressed reservations, adding, “It is important to also recognize that the attacks by Hamas did not take place in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to a suffocating occupation for 56 years.”
UN response is not new
The United Nations’ post-October 7 stance reinforces a legacy of bias, erasing and deleting Israel, dating back to the 1970s. Yasser Arafat’s speech at the U.N. in 1974, probably drafted by Moscow, described Zionism as an imperialist colonialist implant, resulting in UNGA Resolution 3379 (1975), which equated Zionism with racism, officially justifying Stalinist anti-Zionist positions, a spiral of “nazification,” colonialism and genocide accusations against Israel, a narrative that echoed at South Africa’s Durban in 2001.
Attempts to delegitimize Jewish sovereignty predate 1948, when Iraq’s Fadel Jamali compared Zionism to Nazism in a 1947 UN commission. This pattern, fueled by Soviet-style hybrid warfare – terror, propaganda and “dirty tricks” – now sees Hamas and the P.A. as ready-made collaborators in a Russian-Chinese-Iranian axis.
UNRWA complicity in Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7 and beyond
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is an example of UN complicity. UNRWA workers participated in the killings and kidnappings of Oct. 7. UNRWA complexes held hostages, served as arms depots and as hubs for indoctrination, denying their refugee relief mandate. After Oct. 7, UNRWA leadership criticized Israel, not Hamas, reinforcing a politicized narrative.
OCHA parrots Hamas casualty figures
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) uncritically repeated the casualty figures of the Hamas-led Gaza Ministry of Health, skewing conflict portraits and without questioning Hamas’ hoarding of funds. The failure to coordinate aid and the inability to counter Hamas’ grip on humanitarian aid exacerbated the suffering of the Arab population living in Gaza. Yet UN Special Rapporteur Balakrishnan Rajagopal claimed that Israel is causing a famine, reinforcing this distortion and ignoring Israel’s strict adherence to international law.
UNHRC hypocrisy
The U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has issued more than 90 resolutions against Israel since 2006, as many as against North Korea or Iran, while ignoring Hamas’ crimes. A March 2025 report accused Israel of genocide and fabricated claims of sexual violence, lacking evidence and ignoring Hamas’ proven and documented atrocities.
The UNHRC’s double standards are deep-rooted. In 2021, the UNHRC’s Independent Commission of Inquiry, led by Navi Pillay, lobbied to “sanction apartheid Israel” – members such as Miloon Kothari denounced “the Jewish lobby.” This activist tendency, including academics advising anti-Israel causes, completely erodes U.N. neutrality. After the Oct. 7 massacre, U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese compared Israel to the Nazi regime and accused it of genocide. This closed circuit generating “evidence” for ICJ cases such as South Africa’s genocide indictment reveals systematic bias and corruption.
International courts and law violations
International courts have prosecuted political “lawfare” campaigns to erase Israel by accusing it of war crimes and genocide. The UN General Assembly requested an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Israeli occupation, leading to a July 2024 ruling declaring the settlements illegal and demanding reparations. In December 2023, South Africa, supported by the Iranian regime and Russia and joined by 14 countries, baselessly accused Israel of genocide at the ICJ, an accusation undermined by UN experts such as Alice Nderitu and Judge Julia Sebutinde, who faced repercussions for their dissenting opinion. The politicization of the courts ignored factual evidence and reinforced narratives of Israeli action.
ICC’s kangaroo court
The International Criminal Court (ICC), which has no jurisdiction over Israel – which is not a party to the Rome Statute – issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Nov. 21, 2024, on charges of war crimes such as starvation and attacks on civilians in Gaza after Oct. 7. The United States condemned the ICC ruling as unfounded. Hungary rejected an ICC demand to extradite Netanyahu during its April 2025 visit to Hungary.
Remedies
Doing something about the corrupt U.N.-led international system requires U.S. pressure. There are signs of progress: the Trump administration imposed sanctions against Fatou Bensouda, the ICC prosecutor, in 2020, and the second Trump administration reimposed sanctions in February 2025. In addition, Hungary withdrew from the ICC, while Nicaragua withdrew its support for South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
The United States also has other instruments at its disposal:
– Cut its share of 25% of the total UN budget.
– Promoting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism and its Israeli examples.
– Designate Hamas, Iran and other Iranian proxies as terror organizations.
– The convening of the Community of Democracies (CoD), first initiated in 2000 by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (later directed by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2002) and Polish Foreign Minister Bronisław Geremek to unite democracies by defending sovereign rights and fighting disinformation, one of the current focuses, as a Caucus group within the United Nations, and a more active organization.
The failure of the United Nations to uphold the 1949 recognition of Israel’s self-determination and protect the principle of sovereign equality necessitates radical reform or an entirely new legal-political framework.
Originally published by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
The opinions and facts in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners take any responsibility for them.
https://www.jns.org/why-the-un-and-international-institutions-must-now-be-placed-on-trial/
