Posted on 12/03/2004 2:49:09 PM PST by kattracks
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - The United States, which funds nearly a quarter of the United Nations' annual budget, should rethink its relations with the world body, much of which stands opposed to President Bush's view on the global war against terrorism, an expert said here this week.
For many years, Israel has downplayed the importance of U.N. resolutions, which are usually against it, but neither Israel nor the U.S. can afford to take that stand any longer, said Professor Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute.
"An American taxpayer who foots 22 percent of the regular budget of the United Nations, which has an annual budget of approximately $1.5 billion, has to begin asking some very difficult questions," Bayefsky told CNSNews.com.
"The United Nations still does not have a definition of terrorism, essentially because the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) ... dominates much of what goes on in the General Assembly," Bayefsky said.
"Even in the context of the Security Council, [the OIC] prevents the passage of various positive resolutions, which might make a difference," she said.
The OIC, most of whose 56 members are also part of the 115-member Non-Aligned Movement, constitute an automatic majority in the U.N., which has 191 member states.
Last week, the U.N.'s third committee refused to adopt any resolution condemning human rights violations in the Sudan.
According to a report issued on Thursday by the human rights monitoring group Amnesty International, "More than a million people have been displaced in Darfur [Sudan]; they have been attacked, women raped, people abducted, their relatives killed, villages burnt and looted...
"The security forces detain and torture with impunity and are protected by the law. ... The Sudanese government, instead of admitting that it has violated human rights by supporting the nomad militias responsible for much of the devastation of Darfur and instead of listening to the plight of its citizens, continues to oppress the victims of gross human rights abuses," the report said.
At the same time that the General Assembly defeated the resolution on Sudan, it adopted nine resolutions condemning Israel, Bayefsky said.
"Whose interest is it benefiting when it can't condemn human rights violations around the globe while demonizing literally the democratic beachhead in the Middle East?" she asked.
Israel demonized
Speaking in Jerusalem this week at the second annual Jerusalem Summit -- a gathering of conservative thinkers and diplomats from around the world -- Bayefsky said that right or wrong, the influence the U.N. has in shaping public opinion around the world must be taken seriously.
"However unjustifiable, many believe that the United Nations is the moral conscience of the majority of nations in the inhabitants of the global village, and according to the U.N., Israel is the archetypical violator in the world today," Bayefsky said. "The combination is literally lethal."
Israel is demonized in a number of U.N. organs, committees and conferences, all of which produce volumes of documents, reports and resolutions, Bayefsky said.
Thirty percent of the resolutions passed by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights condemning human rights violations have criticized Israel, while not a single resolution condemning human rights violations has ever been passed against 75 percent of U.N. members, including states like Syria, Saudi Arabia, China and Zimbabwe, she said.
Each Nov. 29, the U.N. marks the day that it partitioned British Mandatory Palestine into two areas -- a Jewish state and an Arab state -- as an international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Israel accepted that resolution, while the Arab states rejected it. When the British left the area six months later, Israel declared its statehood, and the armies of the surrounding Arab nations launched a full-scale war against the fledgling state to destroy it.
Standing with the representatives of more than 100 member states marking the day last year, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it "a day of mourning and a day of grief," Bayefsky said.
At the front of the room hung U.N. and Palestinian flags, with a map pre-dating the state of Israel in between, she said.
"Every one of those U.N. officials and government representatives rose in the opening ceremony for a moment of silence 'for all those who had given their lives for the Palestinian people,' which would of course include the suicide bombers," she said.
"In other words, the demonization of Israel through the human rights medium has real consequences. What begins as U.N. talk ends up as U.N.-driven support for boycotts and, in its worst, the legitimate struggle by all available means against Israeli occupation," she added.
According to Bayefsky, across the spectrum of U.N. bodies, there is an interconnected campaign to deny Israel the right to self-defense by condemning every action it takes to combat terrorism, from targeted killings to building a security fence; refusing to condemn terrorism against Israelis; refusing to identify the perpetrators of terror attacks against Israeli victims; and actually promoting terrorism against Israelis by adopting a resolution in the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the past three years that "affirms the legitimacy of the struggle against foreign occupation and for self-determination by all available means."
Opposite worldviews
Politically, this translates into a situation where the U.N. and the European Union stand opposite the U.S. in its war against terrorism.
Israel is one of very few nations that have backed Bush's war against terrorism without reservation.
The U.N. and the European Union maintain that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the greatest challenge to international order and not Iran or North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons, nor violent Islamic fundamentalism, Bayefsky said.
According to their worldview, "Israeli occupation is the root cause of Arab and militant Islamic terrorism everywhere," she said, and the way to solve that is by pressuring Israel into negotiations with the Palestinians and making concessions in the name of confidence-building measures before there is any end to terrorism.
On the other hand, President Bush sees "terrorists and their sponsors seeking the destruction of the state of Israel" as the "root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict," she said. "Progress requires fighting back, prevailing against the terrorists and isolating their state sponsors."
Bush believes Israeli-Palestinian peace can only be achieved by negotiations between the two parties, when a Palestinian peace partner emerges, and not as a result of international pressures, she said.
Recently, following the death of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, the international community has looked toward the resumption of an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue with a soon-to-be-elected new Palestinian leadership.
Some European nations called for a return to the road map peace process by skipping the first phase -- an end to Palestinian terrorism and the dismantling of its infrastructure -- and jumping on to create a Palestinian state.
Backed by Washington, Israel has made it clear that there can be no return to the diplomatic process without an end to terrorism and incitement first.
"Such a worldview should suggest to President Bush and his new secretary of state that it is time to rethink American relations with the U.N. and to demand an in-depth accounting of the 22 percent of the $1.5 billion annual budget that comes from Americans' blood, sweat and tears," she said.
"Winning the war against terrorism has multiple fronts, and midtown Manhattan [where the U.N. headquarters is located] is one of them," she added.
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We're seriously idiots if we stay in the UN. seriously
The author is right in one way, though. We need to see the UN as a serious threat to world peace and act accordingly.
Anybody really knowledgeable with Six Sigma or other Quality Control rubrics? We could have one terrific time viewing an UN-productivity analysis....
I only wish the UN really WAS just a large waste of time and money. But instead it is destructive and evil.
I think it should be the other way around.
Seem's like given them far more credibility than they deserve.
When we tell the UN we are GONE and they have a month to get the hell out of the USA then I will know there might just be hope on the international scene
"However unjustifiable, many believe that the United Nations is the moral conscience of the majority of nations in the inhabitants of the global village, and according to the U.N., Israel is the archetypical violator in the world today," Bayefsky said. "The combination is literally lethal."
whatta joke.
how can a corrupt and evil org be the "moral conscience of the majority of nations"?
Sign in front of the UN: UNIMPORTANT!
HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!
Hellloo!?
I think the UN HQ should be moved to a remote area of Africa.
Pardon the simplistic logic of a fellow member of the Neocon cabal:
We're footing 22% of the bill for the UN. This seems a bit odd, because we certainly don't receive any of its services, unless you cinsider being mocked, blocked, and impugned by a bunch of unelected third-worlders to be a service.
What is the annual budget of the UN? I'll bet it's massive. Don't you think that we as Americans could do better by investing that money ourselves? Perhaps that money could be diverted into improving our energy infrastructure, or reducing taxes further, or perhaps paying down the National debt. If none of that gets you moving, we could at least quit financing our enemies through the corrupt bodies in that institution.
By the way, does that funding amount somehow account for the massive losses we in the United States sustain annually by giving that choice land in Manhattan to the UN without any rent? My bet is that if that building had "Trump" on the side of it, it would be raking in quite a lot of cash.
Even with these two assertions, I still haven't touched on the damage caused by careless diplomats and their families that is quietly paid by the Department of State, the massive security expenses that we no doubt foot the bill for, and God only knows what else.
What a disgusting display of hypocrisy. The UN has to gall to condemn Israel and show solidarity with cold blooded murderous scum. It just gets worse all the time--UN get OUT OF MY COUNTRY!
After looking at the record of the U.N. and who the nations are who make up the majority and what those nations stand for I hardly think we can take the U.N. seriously as a body of nations focused on the promotion of world peace. The only serious consideration we should contemplate regarding the U.N. is when we should ask them to move and when we should simply stop paying our dues.
"many believe that the United Nations is the moral conscience of the majority of nations in the inhabitants of the global village"
BFD.
Many believe, most believe, some believe, all believe doesn't make any of them right nor does it prove that the conscience of the majority always refers to good.
Love it; let's go with this and see how many we can come up with
America, Israel Should Seriously Take UN Out To The Dumpster
We're footing 22% of the bill for the UN. This seems a bit odd, because we certainly don't receive any of its services, unless you cinsider being mocked, blocked, and impugned by a bunch of unelected third-worlders to be a service."
Isnt that nuts????
If we pay 22% we should wield most of the power in that body and not have an equal vote with important countries like Chad and Sri Lanka.
It's absurd... and to top it off China, run by a corrupt cabal, gets a veto over the combined actions of democratic nations. Of course it was even worse when USSR could veto us.
only an anti-American traitor like Alger Hiss could think up something this bad for our national sovereignty.
We'll make you a deal, Mr. "Expert": We'll take the UN seriously just as soon as the UN takes America and Israel seriously. Currently we're just the UN's scapegoat and punching bags.
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