Let’s say goodbye to a UN that hates the free world

If the UN is to be believed, there are three Middle Eastern entities that deserve our condemnation and retribution. One is the Syrian regime, which stands accused of using chemical weapons against dissidents. The other is Islamic State, a genocidal jihadist army that decapitates Christians, sexually enslaves women and children and tortures dissidents to death. The third is Israel, a pluralistic democracy that celebrates equality, liberty, free trade and free speech.

With friends like the UN, the free world doesn’t need enemies.

Last year, the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council adopted 18 resolutions against Israel. The final judgment of 2016 was the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2334, which declares that Israel has no right to land its people have inhabited since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Britain and France voted for the resolution while the US chose not to exercise its veto power.

According to Palestinian Media Watch, Fatah (the leading faction of the Palestinian Authority) thanked the UN with a violent image depicting a Palestinian flag fashioned as a weapon stabbing the Jewish settlements. Blood pooled on the earth beneath. Rather than take Fatah’s apparent threat as a sign that the resolution might facilitate mass murder, the UN is standing firm.

The threat to Israel is serious and without the buffering of settlement areas, the state is more vulnerable to attack from jihadists.

The UN should know the history. After Israel withdrew from Gaza and four West Bank settlements in 2005, Islamist terrorist group Hamas established itself as Gaza’s governing force. The notion that Fatah is the moderate reformist alternative to Hamas is appealing, but its response to the UN resolution has distinctly jihadist overtones.

Commentators have defended Resolution 2334 as beneficial to the future of the two-state solution. When pressed, it is common the hear the term “international consensus”. It is misleading. The international consensus, in this case, are the parties to the resolution. However, the citizens of those member states do not necessarily support it. The Republican-dominated US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to condemn the Security Council for censuring Israel over settlements. Importantly, the US resolution includes the call for the outgoing Obama administration to veto any future resolutions concerning the matter. However, fears persist that UN members are determined to pass new resolutions against Israel before president-elect Donald Trump takes office.

A central concern is that rules on the implementation of Resolution 2334 will be established at a Middle East conference in Paris on January 15. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants world leaders to respect bilateralism in negotiating a two-state solution, but Islamist and socialist leaders are keen to impose a supranational ruling.

The majority of member states that passed Resolution 2334 against Israeli settlements are Islamic or socialist in nature. Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, was judged by a panel of theocrats, autocrats and socialists. Of the five permanent Security Council members with the power of veto, three are Western: France, Britain and the US. It is predictable that France would defend the interests of Islamists in line with the socialist EU bloc, but Britain’s Tory PM Theresa May also backed the resolution. May is long-time ally of Israel, but believes the settlements impede a viable two-state solution. She might be encouraged to consider the role of Hamas and Fatah in preventing the two-state solution and the popular Palestinian desire for one state under Islamic rule.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop stated if Australia were a Security Council member, we would have opposed the resolution. Israel needs more than words. It needs action. Australia should withdraw funding to protest the UN’s pact with militantly anti-Semitic leaders in Palestine. We should oppose apartheid against Jews, including economic apartheid in the form of boycotts, divestment and sanctions campaigns, by preparing a broader and mutually beneficial bilateral trade deal with Israel. And the Australian government should withdraw foreign aid funding from states, regimes and supranational groups that act against Western interests.

The resolution is not only against Israel. It is against universalism, a core UN principle in theory. A common alternative to universalism is double standards, which divide populations and produce mass resentment. In the West, double standards are codified in discrimination law. At the UN, they are used to justify repeated denunciations of Western democracies by the world’s worst abusers of human rights. The UN resolution against Israel is a case in point. If Israel is forced to surrender settlements to the Palestinians, surely China, which voted in favour of the resolution, should relinquish Tibet. The Security Council should pass resolutions against Islamic regimes whose actions genuinely constitute a “flagrant violation of international law”. It could begin by imposing sanctions on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the UN should be subject to the law of universality. It should be held accountable for violations of international law, including the violation of national security.

In late 2015, UN envoy Robert Serry noted a significant impediment to ending settlements in the West Bank. While he supported a freeze on settlement activity, Serry observed that about 500,000 Israelis live in them, raising the question of how the land could be transferred to PA control. In 2005, about 9000 Israelis evacuated Gaza. If made enforceable, Resolution 2334 would require the eviction of up to 800,000 Israelis. The UN has not elaborated on the fate of 500,000 Jews if evicted from their homes en masse. This story sounds all too familiar.

Thank God for Israel. If it weren’t for the Jews, the UN would have to battle despots, communists and Islamists. Instead, it observes a minute of silence for the murderous Fidel Castro. It rails against fascism while excusing the most murderous totalitarians of the past century: communists and Islamists. It channels free-world citizens’ money into corrupt regimes, despotic states and jihadist armies whose common resolve is to destroy liberty.

The Security Council resolution on Israel is the latest case of UN aggression against the free world. It’s time to say goodbye.