Much has been made of the fact that even some Arab countries joined in to sponsor the event. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, in New York for the ceremony, told Israel Radio this morning that, "It is too bad the UN wasn't around before World War Two." This nonsensical comment diluted any meaning the ceremony was supposed to have, because it showed how little the Israeli foreign minister understands the UN.
The UN's predecessor was the League of Nations, and it was around before World War Two. And just like the UN of today, it did exactly nothing to prevent the Holocaust from taking root in Europe in the 1930s or being carried out in the 1940s. World War Two, and the disaster that was the Holocaust, destroyed the League of Nations. They also gave birth to the United Nations. But the UN has, unfortunately, not learned a single lesson from its own history.
In the past 60 years, the UN has not succeeded in preventing a single war. The Killing Fields in Cambodia happened anyway. Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia happened anyway. The Rwandan Genocide, which saw 800,000 people killed inside of a month, happened anyway. Six Arab-Israeli wars and two Palestinian Intifadahs, as well as countless terrorist attacks against Israel and other targets around the world, have happened anyway.
And the United Nations has even been complicit, through omission and commission, in some of these outrages. UNIFIL troops looked on as Israeli soldiers were kidnapped along the Lebanese border in 2000. UNRWA officials perpetuate the problem of Palestinian refugees, often inflating the numbers of those refugees to justify their own existence. UNRWA schools are among the worst sources of anti-Israel incitement in the Arab world. And UNRWA vehicles and ambulances are used, at least occasionally, to transport bombs, weapons, and terrorists past Israeli checkpoints.
Today's event is meant to be apolitical, and this is commendable. But as one Holocaust survivor said following Silvan Shalom's comments on the radio, this commemoration is "too little too late". Why has it taken 60 years for the world's representatives to take notice of the fact that one out of every three Jews in the world was slaughtered during the Holocaust – that there is hardly a Jew alive today who did not lose a first- or second-degree relative in that inferno of hate and inhumanity. Why did this ceremony not take place on the 50th anniversary, or the 25th, or the 10th, or the first? Why does it not happen every year?
The primary purpose of remembering is to make the future better. Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. But at the same time, those who do remember history are enjoined to use it as a basis to improve the present and the future.
Yes, it is important that the world take notice of the Holocaust – what it was, and what it continues to be. It is very nice that some Arab states have joined in this effort. But it would be even nicer if those same world leaders took notice of what is happening today – of the evil that is terrorism, and that represents a potential second Holocaust. Yes, it is too bad that the UN did not exist before World War Two. But it is even more shameful that the UN as it was meant to be does not exist today. Only if the UN begins to really act to prevent such outrages as rampant terrorism and violent campaigns against civilians will today's commemoration have any real meaning.
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
