​Last week, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP)—one of the main pro-Palestinian propaganda bodies housed within the U.N. system—hosted an event (virtually, of course) on the “threat” of “annexation” by the new Israeli government of the Jordan Valley and settlement blocs as part of the United States administration’s peace plan. This meeting was unintentionally revealing in that it showed that the issue is not really annexation at all.
 
The panel for this event was composed of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Hanan Ashrawi, former Israeli MK Yossi Beilin and president of the Arab American Institute James Zogby.
 
Beilin, a former justice minister and deputy foreign minister, is a veteran of the peace camp in Israel and is widely known as one of the architects of the Oslo process. Beilin is a Zionist who ardently opposes annexation. For him, it as a threat to the survival long-term of a state that is both Jewish and democratic. His fellow co-panelists also oppose annexation, but not for the same reasons. Zogby even criticized annexation critics in the U.S. for often couching it in terms of Israel’s security. Beilin, in seeking a way to prevent annexation (which could in theory come as early as July 1st), sought to put forward a deal to resume negotiations without preconditions or unilateral steps in exchange for shelving annexation.
 
Ashrawi predictably responded that the “last thing we need” is more negotiations; what is needed is “accountability” (i.e. processes like the proceedings at the International Criminal Court [ICC] to harass Israeli military and political leaders and citizens with lawfare) and sanctions. Zogby concurred, adding that Israel is like a “spoiled child” because the U.S. and the Europeans do not sufficiently punish Israel for every (and any) policy disagreement.
 
Why would Ashrawi be so adamantly against Beilin’s proposal? If annexation is the primary overriding concern of the moment (and it clearly appears to be so for Beilin, whether one agrees with his positions or not), why not grasp at an alternative plan to delay? Perhaps because Beilin is a self-described “retired” politician and the left in Israel is not currently a political force that has majority support to govern. Removing the considerations of practicality, though, Ashrawi, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority have no interest in negotiations without pre-conditions and with a halt to unilateral actions.
 
Unilateral actions are the basis of the Palestinian “foreign policy” of the last decade. It’s how they got to the ICC in the first place. As in many matters relating to Israel at the U.N., there is a great deal of hypocrisy regarding unilateral actions. The very possibility of an Israeli decision to apply sovereignty in some areas as part of the U.S. administration’s peace plan (so, not actually a unilateral action) is raising hackles at the U.N. But the Palestinian attempts to make an end-run around negotiations by asking for recognition of a non-existent state (very much so a unilateral action) raised little concern about the serious harm to peace prospects. CEIRPP, in fact, is a cheerleader for Palestinian unilateral actions. The European states who are now apoplectic over the idea of Israeli sovereignty over settlements blocs that will likely never be part of a Palestinian state were not similarly as dismayed by the Palestinian attempt to gain U.N. non-member state status. To the contrary, 12 EU member states voted in favor of that recognition (only the Czech Republic voted against). That U.N. status allowed the Palestinians an entryway to the ICC.
 
Further, the idea of attacking Israelis with either economic warfare or legal warfare is not tied to annexation. The Palestinians and their co-conspirators have been pushing this exact agenda for years—decades, really—regardless of Israeli policy or Israeli government. If the Israeli government took a decision not to apply sovereignty over settlements that will in all likelihood remain under Israeli rule even if there were a final peace agreement with the Palestinians tomorrow, would those individuals and countries at the U.N. that are targeting Israel with BDS or lawfare reverse course, or even pause the barrage? Unlikely.
 
Yossi Beilin may not have been setting out to do so, but he ended up revealing the true situation Israel faces in regards to dealing with the Palestinians and the U.N. Whether one agrees with the Israeli government’s plan (whatever that will end up being), the Palestinians are continuing to prove that they are not currently a true partner for peace, and the U.N. will continue to enable their worst ideas.

​The world is learning, in a truly frightening fashion, just why the World Health Organization (WHO) is so vital to the health of humanity. The WHO is the United Nations agency that works on many critical health issues, but the most important at the moment, of course, is its response to epidemics and pandemics, such as the coronavirus that the world is currently experiencing. Through expertise in combating infectious disease, the WHO can help to prevent or at least try to mitigate the spread of these illnesses. It is in some ways the U.N. as it should be—countries pooling resources and working together to address global emergencies.
 
But, there is a danger that the WHO could fall into the same trap that has plagued much of the U.N. system: politicization. It has flirted with doing so before, and—thankfully—pulled back, but we now can see clearly why that was flirting with disaster.
 
After UNESCO illegitimately recognized the Palestinian delegation as a “member state” in 2011, there was some noise about continuing to push this internationalization strategy and looking for similar recognition at other U.N. agencies, of which WHO is one. However, many countries did not take sufficiently into account (or did not care) what this status at UNESCO actually meant. The United States was forced by law to swiftly de-fund UNESCO for bestowing member state status upon a country that does not exist.
 
This de-funding was no small matter. The U.S. paid in about a quarter of UNESCO’s budget, leaving a huge hole. Once the Palestinians became members, they set on a path of politicizing the work of UNESCO through passing ludicrous resolutions—thanks to the automatic majority that the Palestinians enjoy—that sought to claim the Kotel as a Muslim site, or accused Jews of planting “fake Jewish graves” in a cemetery.  These resolutions left the organization’s reputation in tatters, and it has still yet to recover. The U.S. and Israel have left completely, and the best the organization can seem to do is not pass any additional outrageous resolutions on the Middle East…for now.
 
If there was a silver lining in the tragedy of what has become of UNESCO, it is that the threat posed by the Palestinian internationalization agenda was exposed. Many countries did not want to see what happened to UNESCO repeated at other, more critical, agencies. The Americans and others put pressure on the Palestinians not to continue down this path. The results of this are mixed—the WHO and other agencies have so far been mostly spared, but the Palestinians decided instead to pursue member state status at the U.N. itself. In 2012, the General Assembly granted them “observer state” status, which allowed them to accede to international conventions, including the Rome Statute. We are in the midst of seeing the consequences of that vote now at the International Criminal Court.
 
Though the membership issue has not come up at the WHO, there are still politicization issues at play, not necessarily as much within the bureaucracy of the WHO itself, but in the World Health Assembly (WHA), which is the decision making body of the WHO. Since the WHA is made up of member states’ representatives, there is always the possibility for trouble, as often happens at the U.N. And we have seen this at the WHA, where Israel has been singled out yearly for an absurd stand-alone resolution. The next session of the WHA is set for the end of May, and there is no news yet on whether this will be held then or, as so much else in the U.N. system currently, postponed to an undetermined date.
 
Now is not the time for politics. It is a time for unity in fighting this deadly disease. That is the only thing that the WHO should be concerned about at this moment. But this moment shall pass and humanity will beat back this virus, in no small part thanks to the efforts of the WHO. What needs to be remembered once that happens (and that day cannot come soon enough) is the basic need that all of humanity has to have a WHO that is devoid of politics: a health bureaucracy that has a strong reputation and does not take absurd political positions forced upon it by some member states.

​Nearly four years ago, at around the time that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or as it more commonly known, “the Iran deal”) was reached, I wrote a post for this blog on the “snapback sanctions” part of the deal. The biting U.N. Security Council sanctions—which had brought Iran to the table in the first place—were supposed to be snapped back into place if Iran was not living up to the deal. The snapback sanctions were meant to mollify critics and skeptics who questioned the wisdom of so quickly reversing sanctions on a country that had been found to be cheating on numerous commitments.
 
My original post went into the cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles that would be necessary before the sanctions could be reinstated. This is the key paragraph:
 
“Aside from unnecessary bureaucracy, the more serious problem is that the language in the nuclear deal and in the subsequent U.N. Security Council resolution state that it must be a ‘significant’ compliance issue. This is vague—what exactly constitutes ‘significant non-compliance?’ The fear is that the tendency of the world powers will be to minimize or ignore non-compliance issues as not ‘significant’ enough to rise to the level that would require ‘snapback’ sanctions. Why? Because once the U.N. sanctions are re-introduced, the U.N. Security Council resolution ‘noted’ Iran’s stated position that Iran would stop living up to its commitments in the nuclear deal in full. Essentially, the Security Council resolution allowed the ‘snapback’ sanctions to be held hostage by the deal. “
 
Much has happened in the meantime. The U.S., led by a new administration, pulled out of the JCPOA and re-imposed U.S. sanctions (which are extremely tough, but not as far-reaching as Security Council sanctions could be) and added new sanctions as well. The Europeans have been trying to get around the U.S. sanctions by creating a loophole for companies to do business with Iran. Iran, feeling the bite of the U.S. sanctions on its weak economy, has been trying to extort the Europeans—who are desperate to save the JCPOA—into giving it more money through nuclear blackmail. Iran has already exceeded the limit of enriched uranium allowed under the deal and is increasing the percentage of enrichment on its stockpile of uranium, two steps on the road towards building nuclear weapons. Iran has also been trying to wreak havoc in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, threatening the oil supply from some of the world’s most productive oil fields.
 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bombshell news conference displaying evidence seized by the Mossad in a daring raid on the Iranian regime’s clandestine atomic archive in Tehran, which showed that Iran had deceived the international community by not declaring the true extent of their advanced nuclear weapons program, was greeted with a shrug by the international community. We were told that everyone knew that Iran had a nuclear program, that this was the point of the JCPOA—to stop it. But Iran’s declarations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were to be the baseline of the deal. If the international community is so willing to accept a lie as the baseline to the deal, what else will Iran be allowed to get away with?
 
Following the press conference, Netanyahu presented at the U.N. General Assembly evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear warehouse in Tehran. As this, too, was undeclared to the IAEA, it would also be a breach of the deal, and a grave one at that. The international community initially shrugged this off as well. However, months later, the IAEA inspected the warehouse and reportedly found radioactive traces. If the reports are true, this is yet another undeclared violation, to go along with the declared violations that Iran has now begun to openly tout.
 
In the face of Iran’s breaches of the JCPOA, the countries party to the deal (minus the U.S., of course) met to discuss the violations. The verdict? Iranian non-compliance was not “significant” enough to warrant even starting the bureaucratic complaint process.
 
The fears that many Iran deal skeptics had regarding the JCPOA—that the deal itself would end up becoming more precious than the goal of a de-nuclearized Iran—are sadly being borne out by the behavior of the countries party to the deal. What does Iran have to do before the international community will decide that a “significant” breach of its nuclear commitments has been made?

​The dynamics at the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) slowly started changing in a slightly more positive direction at the recently concluded session. It should be clarified at the beginning of this post, though, that the changes are relatively minor in the broad scheme of things, and—at most—merely the beginning of a wholly necessary (and long-overdue) process to transform the council from an anti-Israel forum to a body seriously concerned about universal human rights.
 
The shift in the council is due in part to more countries that are friendly to Israel joining the UNHRC as members in recent years, including Australia, Togo, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Australia, it should be pointed out, was the only country to courageously vote against all the anti-Israel resolutions in this session, as they have since they joined the council. The United Kingdom has been threatening for the past few sessions to vote against resolutions falling under Agenda Item 7—the agenda item that singles out Israel for criticism at each council session while all other countries are examined under a different agenda item. This session, the U.K. went through with its threat, followed by another EU member state: Denmark. Denmark’s decision was a bit of a surprise, as the Scandinavian country is not normally seen to be in the staunchly pro-Israel camp within the EU.
 
The U.K. and Denmark did not vote against a resolution on “ensuring accountability,” only abstaining from the vote when the Palestinians, perhaps sensing that the tide was starting to turn on this particular resolution, moved the resolution to a different agenda item.  This resolution endorsed the report of the council’s biased “Commission of Inquiry” into the rioting along the Gaza border last year. The conclusions in the report largely ignored Hamas instrumentalizing the “protests” as a cover for attacks against Israel, despite the fact that Hamas openly bragged that this was exactly what they were doing. The commission also deposited with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) a secret dossier with a list of Israelis that the commission believes could be threatened with prosecution by the International Criminal Court (which also is looking into the justified Israeli response to the violent riots). The resolution passed, but only with 23 votes in favor, meaning that more countries either voted against, abstained or did not vote than voted in favor.
 
Spain’s vote in favor of this resolution was especially outrageous. It was the only European country to do so. Even Iceland, which I would normally not include in a list of close friends of Israel, criticized the resolution and abstained. On the other hand, Brazil is to be commended for changing its voting pattern under the new administration and voting against both this shameful resolution and an absurd resolution on the Golan Heights.
 
The voting on the “ensuring accountability” resolution shows the limits of the change at the council, however. The U.K. and Denmark only promised to vote against Item 7 resolutions, and when it was moved to a different item, they abstained (despite the fact that other EU states did vote against it).
 
Item 7 is perhaps the most glaring example of bigotry in the entire U.N. system, but it is not the only issue. The resolutions, with their instructions to OHCHR to operate against Israel, are a major problem, and merely shifting resolutions to another agenda item means that the UNHRC is still continuing its anti-Israel modus operandi, just under a different guise. If the council were to eliminate Item 7 (which, in and of itself, might be a very difficult task), but keep the overall action the same, the result will not be a greatly improved UNHRC.
 
Similarly, there were complaints at the council that the number of anti-Israel resolutions was too high and that they need to be streamlined. The excessive number of resolutions and reports on Israel is another glaring deficiency at the council, but simply wrapping all of them into one or two resolutions is not a meaningful change. It’s just a cosmetic change to make it appear that the council is functioning better, when in fact the anti-Semitism at the heart of the matter has not actually changed.