Dear family and friends, The choice of topic for my weekly article is usually the event of the prior week that succeeded in annoying me most. For that very reason, my articles almost always focus on the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of the institution charged with the responsibility of making our world a better and safer place in which to live. I am, of course, referring to the United Nations. The United Nations should serve as a moral beacon for the nations of the world. Universal human rights should guide its decisions and actions. The UN should be creating the infrastructures to encourage regional cooperation. The UN should be encouraging the pooling of resources to improve living standards. The UN should be encouraging the more affluent nations of the world to engage in multi-national research to find cures for Ebola and AIDS. The UN should be providing assistance to the victims of natural disasters. The UN should be protecting the environment. But, sadly, there’s very little if any of that. The UN continues to fail us. If the average life expectancy in Japan is 84.6, why is it only 47.5 in Sierra Leone? Why are so many people suffering from malnutrition? Why are people in the 21st century drinking polluted water when there are so many water purification technologies available? Why are areas that were once fertile, now barren? Why can’t the UN raise the funds necessary to combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa? And that’s not all. State sponsored terror continues to flourish. Despite binding UN Security Council resolutions, member nations provide financial and other material assistance to terror groups. They provide safe havens for leaders of terror organizations. And they do so without fear of retribution. The Arab world is in complete disarray. The barbaric Islamic State controls large areas that were once parts of Syria and Iraq. Ancient Christian and Yazidi communities in the Middle East are being decimated. Nearly 200,000 Syrians have been killed in the carnage. Three million Syrians have fled their homes seeking refuge in neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 6.5 million civilians have been displaced within Syria. The proportions of this humanitarian disaster are best understood when one considers that Syria’s total population is only a shade north of 22 million. Close to one-third of Syria’s population has been displaced! So what exactly is the UN doing to alleviate all the disarray and disaster we face? The answer to this question was provided in a link published by UN Watch entitled the “The Top Ten Worst UN Decisions of 2014”. Let’s run through some of them. In 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted a total of 20 resolutions condemning Israel. Only four of its resolutions related to the rest of the world combined - one each on Syria, North Korea, Ukraine and Iran. There were no General Assembly resolutions condemning the gross and systematic abuses committed by China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkey, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, nor on many other major perpetrators of grave violations of human rights. The General Assembly is so obsessed with delegitimizing and demonizing Israel, they can’t found the time to discuss and formulate a plan to combat or limit the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. This epidemic has already claimed almost 8,000 lives. An additional 12,000 people have been diagnosed as carriers of the Ebola virus. Isn’t this is a humanitarian disaster of alarming proportions? But perhaps this disaster carries less prestige because of its prevalence in West Africa, well below the international radar screens. Notwithstanding the barrage of anti-Israel UN General Assembly resolutions, Israel is the world’s highest per capita contributor to the UN Ebola Response Trust fund. Israel has already sent fully equipped emergency medical clinics to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and has deployed public health and infectious diseases experts to Cameroon and the Ivory Coast to train local health professionals to better treat the virus. Israel is also amongst the few nations who provided aid to the victims of the recent typhoon in the Philippines and the terrible earthquake in Haiti a few years ago. Despite the fact that Israel has no diplomatic ties with Syria, Israeli clinics have provided medical care to more than 1,400 Syrians injured in the Syrian Civil War. The Israeli taxpayer, not the UN, is paying for this. But the UN General Assembly remains silent in acknowledging these displays of humanitarian aid and what we call Tikkun Olam – making the world a better place for those who dwell therein. So how exactly did the UN General Assembly entertain itself while Israel was providing humanitarian aid in so many forgotten corners in the world and doing more than its share to further the positive aims of the UN? Well, they did some really creative and “out of the box” things. They elected China, Russia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia - all serial violators of fundamental human rights - to serve on the 47-nation United Nations Human Rights Committee. And if that’s not enough, the UN Economic and Social Council in New York elected Iran to serve a four-year term on its 45-nation Commission on the Status of Women, the premier world body dedicated to protecting the rights of women. And if that still not enough, the UN also saw fit to elect Sudan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Turkey, and Venezuela to the powerful 19-nation UN Committee on NGOs, a coveted position that enables governments to silence criticism by acting as the gatekeeper and overseer of all human rights groups seeking to work inside the UN. And to crown it all, the UN Special Committee on Decolonization, charged with upholding fundamental human rights and opposing the subjugation of peoples, voted by acclamation to award Syria representation on this committee. I won’t bore you with the rest except to say the UN’s other decisions were no less cynical and “off the wall” than those mentioned above. How can anybody be expected to respect the United Nations and its agencies? How long will this corruption and abuse of power continue? Where’s the international media? Where’s the energy of the innocent required to rid the world of such blatant hypocrisy? Unless the United States kicks enough ass to cause a complete turn-around in international thinking, I fear the more rational and privileged countries will soon turn their backs on the growing number of humanitarian disasters that plague our world. The rich will certainly get richer but the poor will also get poorer. Please accept my best wishes for a happy Festive season. I wish you all Shabbat Shalom. Thanks for your responses and for your Facebook likes and shares. Harris Zvi
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 11:36:44 +0000