[(Continued from p.6)]
"the massacre that never happened"). Far from being worried about Arab terror, Robinson has been instrumental in financing it. She was resident of Ireland for seven years (and in 1996 of the European Union), a period in which the European Union poured money into the Palestinian Authority, much of it siphoned off to those organizing anti-Israel terror attacks. The documents proving this were found by Israel in its raid on Arafat's Ramallah headquarters. Needless to say, Robinson has never called for an investigation of this misuse of EU aid, or of Arafat's habit of siphoning off millions of dollars from that aid into his personal slush fund. Rubin notes that Robinson "has done more than any other international official to demonstrate that international courts, commissions and agencies are more about politics than ethics, human rights or morality, and therefore should never have the legitimacy of U.S .endorsement."Consider also the UN Secretary-General himself, Kofi Annan. Reputedly he is not a bad man. But rushing from capital to capital, from conference to conference, from dinner party to dinner party, there is little time for him to reflect, to read, to study. Words are written for him, and those words help to shape his thought.
His chief speechwriter and "senior adviser" is Edward Mortimer. To Americans, this name means little. But more than twenty years ago, Mortimer was in Teheran reporting on the Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension to power and this is how he described it: "This is quite the most glorious moment in the history of the world." Given Mortimer's enthusiasm for the Ayatollah, it is not surprising that he even went on record in defense of the infamous "fatwa" Khomeini issued calling for the murder of writer Salman Rushdie.
Mortimer clearly hates Israel, for only someone with a burning animus (and one suspects, more than a little problem with Jews in general), could have written the gushing review (available on Mortimer's own web site) of Lenny Brenner's vicious book, which purveys the calumny that the Zionists in effect were in cahoots with the Nazis and did nothing to oppose them.
As speechwriter for Annan, Mortimer was presumably responsible for his saying that Israel's occupation of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza was "illegal." This was so embarrassingly untrue (Israel occupied the so-called "West Bank" in a defensive war against Jordanian attack) that Annan's office had to withdraw the statement in a letter to the New York Times, saying he meant to refer "only to breaches of its obligations as an occupying power."
On October 21, 2002, Mortimer, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, billing himself as "Director of Communications in the Office of the Secretary General," takes editor-in-chief Robert Bartley to task for asserting "a moral exemplar the United Nations most certainly is not." Mortimer responds that "the issue that is being discussed is not one of morality. It is one of international legality." This brings to mind the famous definition of international law by Abba Eban, whose finest hour was as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations: "International law is unnecessary for civilized nations and ignored by uncivilized nations."
Far from serving as a moral authority, as columnist Mark Steyn points out, "The UN represents a dilution of moral authority, in which the voices of the 84 free nations of the world are merged with the remaining 107." It is symptomatic of its moral corruption that Syria was elevated to its current seat on the Security Council by a vote in the General Assembly of 160 votes out of 178 nations voting. Its seat gives it access to all Council deliberations including a new British-led committee to enforce counterterrorism measures. Syria, of course, is a leading supporter of terrorism, serving as headquarters of no less than four major terror organizations, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The UN is not only corrupt but also corrupting.
That the UN is not only corrupt but also corrupting is sadly evidenced by the number of times that the U.S., Israel's only true friend in the international community, has either abstained or voted for resolutions critical of Israel, joining such bastions of human rights as Angola, Algeria, Cuba, and the Republic of Congo.
The most famous example is the vote cast condemning Israel for its surgical strike against Iraq's nuclear reactor in Osirak twenty years ago when Jeanne Kirkpatrick, despite her deserved reputation as a stalwart friend of Israel, voted for the resolution which condemned Israel in the harshest terms. In December of 2001, the United States, to its shame, abstained on a resolution that declared Israel's claim to undivided Jerusalem as its capital was " illegal and null and void." The sole "nay" was voiced by Israel's ambassador. More recently, when Israel did not remove its army from Jenin with the speed demanded by Secretary of State Colin Powell, the United States abstained from several vitriolic and one-sided resolutions denouncing Israel's defensive tactics.
The United Nations, founded to prevent and negotiate crises, has become as ineffectual and useless as its predecessor. Morally it has become far worse. The League of Nations knew what was the right thing to do but failed to do it. The UN has lost its way: nothing shows this better than its relentless pursuit of the tiny beleaguered democracy of Israel, with all its faults a beacon of light in the mire surrounding it. The words of the prophet Isaiah carved on the wall of the UN's East River edifice belie the reality within. The UN has become an organization that represents injustice and pursues evil.
Ruth King is a member of Outpost's editorial board.
November 2002 - 7 - Outpost