The New York Times may well have signaled the next corporate media outrage cycle with its recent article lamenting the supposedly disastrous consequences for “human rights” stemming from President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council earlier this year and slash funding for the U.N. overall. In fact, the story should be a source of encouragement to all lovers of freedom, as the U.N. has done precious little to stop blatant human rights abuses by authoritarian nations while targeting democratic countries for taking legitimate protective actions.
As the Times relays, “diplomats from around the world” who met at a posh Swiss resort earlier this year are now worried about the consequences “if the United Nations cut funding for human rights investigations” as a result of Trump’s “threat” to “slash American funding.” But what good have those investigations done for American taxpayers (or the rest of the world for that matter) in the first place?
Even though oppressive dictatorships like China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela have been found to be blatantly violating human rights, the fact is that the U.N. has no capacity to halt their abuses. The most it can do is utter ineffectual tut-tuts.
Meanwhile, however, the U.N.’s so-called Human Rights Council (HRC) has long functioned as an extremely partisan body. As just one example, a majority of its resolutions (99 and counting) since it was founded to replace the Commission on Human Rights in 2006 (following complaints about that body’s bias) have been directed against the Middle East’s only democracy, the state of Israel.
Just this month, the HRC’s “International Commission of Inquiry” on “occupied” Palestine, “including East Jerusalem,” issued a report accusing Israel of violating the international convention against “genocide” ever since the Hamas terror attack against Israelis (and others) on October 7, 2023. Without even mentioning that attack, the Commission proceeds to express its “serious concern that the specific intent to destroy the Palestinians as a whole has extended to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, that is, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem based on Israeli authorities’ and Israeli security forces’ actions therein, and to the period before 7 October 2023.”
Presumably, that “period before” goes all the way back to the nation’s establishment in 1948. In other words, the U.N. HRC is effectively accusing Israel of genocide beginning with its founding, echoing the cries of the most radical antisemitic fringe.
The Commission then proceeds to call for the prosecution of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with possibly other government officials, for inciting genocide against the Palestinians, in accordance with “provisional measures” issued by the U.N.’s International Court of Justice (a court whose jurisdiction has never been recognized by Israel or the U.S.).
Among other demands issued by the Council, Israel is commanded to end all military operations in the “occupied” Palestinian territory “that involve the commission of genocidal acts,” and end its “restriction of food aid” to Gazans through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Notably, that foundation was established by Israel to prevent most humanitarian aid from being stolen by Hamas for the purpose of reselling at a high profit – as was Hamas’s practice when such aid began arriving. The Council also directs all members of the U.N. to halt shipments of arms and fuel to the Israelis that might be used to continue their “genocidal” actions.
Readers of the Council’s report will readily note the absence of reference to Hamas’s October 7 attack, the largest and most horrific attack against Jews since the Holocaust. The attack included, as has been widely reported, barbaric acts like slicing off the heads of babies, mutilating and raping women, executing children in front of their parents, and vice versa.
No one should be surprised that Israel has responded to the attack with an all-out war to eliminate Hamas so as to prevent a recurrence of the event.
And yet, as retired U.S. Army Major John Spencer has observed, even while fighting against an enemy that hides its combatants in or under civilian facilities like schools and hospitals, Israel has set “a remarkable, historic new standard” for conducting urban warfare. (Spencer serves as chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and his 25-year military career included two tours of duty in the Iraq War.)
As Spencer also notes, Israel has taken unprecedented measures “to attend to the enemy’s civilian population,” even “while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings.” Spencer judges that “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
And yet, he observes, “the international community, and increasingly the United States, barely acknowledges these measures while repeatedly excoriating the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] for not doing enough to protect civilians—even as it confronts a ruthless terror organization holding its citizens hostage.”
Instead of such excoriation, Spencer concludes, “the U.S. and its allies should be studying how they can apply the IDF’s tactics for protecting civilians, despite the fact that these militaries would almost certainly be extremely reluctant to employ these techniques because of how it would disadvantage them in any fight with an urban terrorist army like Hamas.”
Spencer has also pointed out that while “the predominant Western theory of executing wars, called maneuver warfare, seeks to shatter an enemy morally and physically with surprising, overwhelming force and speed, striking at the political and military centers of gravity so that the enemy is destroyed or surrenders quickly,” Israel “has had to abandon this established playbook in order to prevent civilian harm,” instead “telegraph[ing] almost every move ahead of time so civilians can relocate, nearly always ceding the element of surprise.”
Meanwhile, “Hamas fighters, who unlike the IDF don’t wear uniforms, have also taken the opportunity to blend into civilian populations as they evacuate,” thereby increasing Palestinian suffering and generating “images of destruction to build international pressure on Israel to stop its operations, therefore ensuring Hamas’ survival.”
Of course, the facts adduced by Spencer will never be acknowledged by the HRC or any other body affiliated with the U.N.
The HRC is hardly the only U.N. body that fails at its stated mission, particularly when it comes to Israel. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was founded in 1949 supposedly to welcome Palestinian “refugees” from the Israeli War of Independence, but has continued to house Palestinians in “camps” long after most of the original refugees have either died from natural causes or moved elsewhere.
The real function of UNRWA has been to keep alive the Palestinian dream of reversing what is called the “Nakba” (catastrophe) of Israel’s 1948 establishment, in accordance with the slogan (espoused by the Democratic Socialists of America as well), “from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, Palestine will all be free” – that is, free of Jews. In pursuit of that dream, UNRWA supplies textbooks to Palestinian children indoctrinating them with hatred of both Jews and Israel.
While the HRC has no enforcement mechanism to “punish” nations for human rights abuses (real or imagined), its denunciations of Israel nonetheless have a deleterious effect on the Jewish State. Entirely false declarations of “genocide” are often attentively listened to by the leaders and populations of Western democracies, who have been misled by leftist and Islamist propaganda to think of Israel as an “oppressor” state.
We see this happening at present with the issuance by leading American allies like Britain, France, Canada, and Australia of calls for the recognition of a Palestinian “state” – without any preconditions such as guarantees for Israel’s security, or provision for the continued independence of over half a million Israeli Jews who live in what is called the “West Bank.” Those same democratic nations have simultaneously failed to acknowledge that the supposedly more “moderate” Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has never removed from its charter the call for the total destruction of the state of Israel.
The PLO, founded by terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, is now led by his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, who is holding office in the 20th year of the four-year term to which he was elected. This is the group that the U.N. expects us to believe is the real champion of democracy.
For these and other reasons, those who believe in liberty and justice should applaud the Trump administration for withdrawing from the Human Rights Council and calling out the failures of the entire U.N. Let’s hope that the substantial reduction in funding for the U.N. will indeed drive it out of its phony “human rights” business.
David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.
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