Who does Annan think he is kidding? He is, after all, the leader of a world body that has made a habit for decades of being anti-Semitic. This is the same organization that for 15 years propagated the anti-Semitic maxim that Zionism is racism. It is the same organization whose refugee relief body, UNRWA, has exerted every possible effort to prevent the re-settlement of Arab refugees from the war against Israel’s independence and the Six Day War. Whereas every other refugee issue in the world has been solved within a matter of a few years, UNRWA still maintains hundreds of thousands of refugees almost six decades after the war their own nations launched against the Jewish State.
UNRWA has developed whole new curricula for Arab schools where new generations of children are indoctrinated in hatred of Israel, being taught that their poverty is solely the fault of Israel. The organization turns a blind eye to – when it is not blatantly complicit in – terrorist attacks against Israel.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which has already existed for more than 25 years, actively assisted in the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli soldiers from the Israeli side of the border in October 2000.
The United Nations as a whole sponsored the infamous September 2001 Durban Conference on Racism and Xenophobia, which very quickly turned into a stage for every anti-Semite in the world to launch invective against the State of Israel while other instances of institutionalized racism around the world were completely ignored.
Every year the United Nations General Assembly passes dozens of resolutions against Israel for every conceivable reason, while not a single resolution is passed against any other state for similar reasons.
Israel is the only country not included in its own regional grouping of states, from which groupings the composition of the Security Council and other UN organs is selected.
Even one of Kofi Annan’s predecessors as Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim, was a Holocaust denier in his previous experience.
Having the United Nations hold a conference on anti-Semitism without the very same organization being shown as a prime purveyor of such hate is tantamount to having Libya serve as the chair of the United Nations Conference on Human Rights. Oh, wait, the UN managed to pull that one off too! Libya – the country that refuses to allow Jews to take part in the world chess championships that are being held in that country.
Whole books have been written describing anti-Semitism at the UN. In the 8 years that Kofi Annan has served as Secretary General, he has done nothing to reverse this trend, and has presided over a dramatic worsening of the situation. Rather than serving as an organization to improve relations between humanity in different countries or as a vehicle for greater understanding between different ways of life, the United Nations does the exact opposite. As an organization, the UN is the home of institutionalized racism on a grand scale – the world’s largest theater for anti-Semitism. This week’s conference, and Kofi Annan’s speech with it, are a band-aid, meant to cover up the mortal wound caused by the hatred displayed by UN member states toward Israel and the Jews.
Rather than holding such conferences and making speeches that mean absolutely nothing to absolutely anyone with half a brain, the UN and its Secretary General should be acting to end anti-Semitism throughout the world – beginning in its own halls of glory.
Copyright 2004. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
