For two weeks we've heard and seen all sorts of fatuous bullshit emanating from the United Nations Building in New York, yet if the bullshit itself wasn't enough to turn your stomach -- much of it emanating from dictators and thugs for whom enslaving their own people is the normal order of their day -- overnight we've seen why the whole United Nations project is a threat to peace and a threat to the whole western world: because the United Nations talks peace but rewards violence, just as any body replete with the world’s biggest thugs would have to do.
It talks peace but rewards violence -- and as any parent can tell you, it doesn't matter what you say to a bully, what matters is what you do. Bullies don’t care about fine words, what they understand is fighting back.
So what happened overnight? I'll answer that in a moment, but first let's go back a couple of days - and I do that because the story I’m going to help recount shows the whole failure of the UN in microcosm.
A couple of days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stared the gathered UN delegates in the face, and asked them a challenging question: "Have you no shame? Have you no decency?" (I posted a link to that speech, a great speech, in my Monday morning ramble. And I’ll post it here again just because it’s so damn good.)
"Have you no shame? Have you no decency?" He asked that question, he had to ask that question, because at that same podium just the day before the UN played host to a dictator who’d just stolen an election and killed his own people who protested at the theft, a man who used the lion’s share of his own time at the podium to deny the murder of six million human beings at the hands of the Nazis -- and with a few noble exceptions who walked out (which I’m happy to say included NZ’s delegation), the delegates sat there in that hall and lapped up all the hatred.
The man was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and he’s now working on a nuclear programme.
A nuclear programme Mahmoud himself has indicated could be used to wipe out many of the surviving descendants of those the Nazis murdered – to wipe them off the map.
A nuclear programme initiated by a regime that that jails bloggers for "insulting" the regime and leaves them to die in prison; stones homosexuals to death; that supports, trains and supplies terrorist organisations in Lebanon and Iraq and beyond.
A nuclear programme that the west has treated with denial (what nuclear programme?)and hand-wringing (something should be done! but peacefully!) and now, according to the latest reports, with “sanctions” -- which Team Obama says will dissuade Tehran from getting a nuke, an announcement that follows hard on the heels of announcing his nuclear-free fantasy world.
Sanctions, you say! Because “sanctions” worked so well to bring down Castro. And Saddam. And to stop North Korea’s nuclear programme. Thugs and dictators who the UN didn’t just do nothing to disarm, but instead gave them a podium from which to preach and resolutions with which to protect them.
"Have you no shame? Have you no decency?"
Netanyahu challenged the delegates to see the Iranian leadership for what it is. He challenged them too over Gaza.
For years, Arab and Middle-Eastern countries have berated Israel for its treatment of Palestinians, but refused entry for Palestinian refugees to their own countries. They prefer to hate Israel rather than help their neighbours – hatred which the UN has supported. And for years, the United Nations has stood by in silence while aggressor after aggressor has attacked Israel, and stood up in condemnation only when Israel has fought back to defend its very life.
The United Nations stood by with its eyes closed while Iran armed Hezbollah guerrillas with rockets, which they poured into Israel from the North over the heads of mute UN observers.
It stood in silence for years as Palestinians smuggled Iranian-supplied rockets into Gaza, and said nothing as Palestinian guerrillas (backed by their government) fired the rockets into Israel from bases located in schools, in hospitals, in mosques, and from the middle of densely packed housing.
And what happened overnight?
Here’s what happened. The United Nations issued a report declaring that in defending itself against these cowardly attacks from Gaza, Israel "committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity."
"Have they no shame? Have they no decency?" Have they learned nothing?
The United Nations talks peace but it rewards violence; it talks peace, but plays host to murderous thugs; it talks peace but it rewards aggressors, and condemns those who act in self-defence.
No wonder the world is drowning in a sea of blood. Moral equivalence, the ethic on which the UN is based, rewards force used in aggression and condemns force used in self-defence.
Moral equivalence is immoral disarmament.
No wonder the aggressors are smiling.