In September 2002, the American Jewish Committee issued a comprehensive report on the actions of the 56th, the most recent full session of the General Assembly. Entitled One Sided: The Continuing Campaign Against Israel in the United Nations, it can be downloaded by visiting http://www.ajc.prg/up/load/OneSided.PDF. The report documents the imaginative ways the UN finds to bash Israel, no matter what the ostensible topic. The General Assembly, including its sub-committees on disarmament, nuclear free zones, refugees, security in the Mediterranean, etc. has proposed resolution after resolution criticizing Israel. From November 21 until December 21, 2001, just to take one month, dozens of resolutions were passed with a roll call, "demanding" Israeli withdrawals from East Jerusalem, the Golan, "Arab lands," calling for Israeli reparations and reassimilation of "refugees," and demanding permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people over their "natural resources." During the 56th session, 300 resolutions were adopted concerning Israel, the vast majority without bothering with a vote. Of some 70 roll calls on contested matters, 27 -- nearly 40% -- pertained to Israel.

In the foreword to the report, the editor, Jason Isaacson, states: "In the 56th Session, which began in September 2001, as in sessions past, no other country was subjected to the relentless, indeed obsessive, attention that was focused on Israel in the General Assembly and other UN bodies. No other country, including Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Russia/Chechnya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- where over 15,000 people were killed last year -- was the subject of an even remotely similar number of critical resolutions, agenda items, committees of the Secretariat, and intolerant remarks. The tone, virulence, and intolerance of General Assembly resolutions on Israel and the Arab-Israel conflict undermine the UN's credibility and distracts the world body's attention from humanitarian causes."

Distracted is too gentle a term. The UN deliberately turns its back on most cases of aggression and humanitarian crises. The last time the United Nations successfully opposed aggression was during the Korean War, which was officially under UN auspices, although in fact it was an American-British-Canadian-Australian undertaking, with the Americans, as usual, doing the lion's share. Since the early 1970s, when full volume was turned up on the "Palestine Problem," the UN has exhibited failure after failure.

Consider, for example, the inability or unwillingness of the U.N. to do anything when, in slow motion, between 1975 and 1980, the Khmer Rouge murdered more than a million Cambodians. Not a word from the UN, not a resolution, not a soldier committed to prevent that genocide.

The second great test of the last 30 years, the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda, where nearly 600,000 people were killed, found the UN equally "distracted." Kofi Annan, whose role as Secretary General made him the man most responsible to do something and who, as a black man, should have had especial concern for halting the slaughter, sounded no alarms, and nothing was done until very late in the murderous game.

The third great challenge was the ethnically based large-scale murders committed by both sides in the Balkans. Again it was ignored until the U.S., with token NATO support, sent in forces and the UN now has observers in the region.

Finally, there was the Gulf War of 1991. Although billed as a UN undertaking, it was essentially an American and British operation with the fig leaf of a handful of other, largely noncombatant, troops. Without the furious prodding of the American government, the United Nations would have done nothing to end Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. It would like nothing better than to be left in peace so as to ignore Iraq's violations of UN resolutions now.

Looking at some of the key UN personnel over the years, we find additional reasons for the anti-American spite and anti-Israel rhetoric, coinciding with solicitude and sympathy for the most egregious Arab regimes.

Former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim turned out to be a Nazi war criminal, who took part in, and was decorated for, his part in the infamous "Kozara Campaign" in which tens of thousands of civilians in Yugoslavia were murdered by the Germans. In 1944, he served as intelligence officer in a unit found guilty of war crimes.

Then there is Mary Robinson, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose commission, as already noted, found suicide bombing (if Israel was the target) compatible with human rights. Robinson was the driving force behind the Orwellian "World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" and presided in Durban over what writer Michael Rubin calls "an intellectual pogrom against Jews and Israel." Robinson's main worry is not Muslim terrorism but "Islamophobia," a sin denounced at Durban, and used to silence any intelligent discussion of the political ideology of Islam.

While Robinson has never evinced the slightest interest in terrorist murders of Jews, Rubin notes that Robinson also initiated the drive for the UN to investigate the so-called Israeli massacre in Jenin (now known as

Outpost               - 6 -               November 2002