Groundhog Day at the United Nations

The United Nations has failed to follow in the age-old tradition of making New Year’s Day resolutions to reevaluate and reconsider one’s actions and mistakes. For the anti-Israel mob, it is never New Year’s, it’s Groundhog Day. The UN’s biased and destructive obsession with Israel is an endless loop, impervious to history, oblivious to facts on the ground.

The current UN General Assembly session recently approved yet another investigation of human rights abuses allegedly committed by Israel. This latest exercise takes the form of an open-ended “commission of inquiry” and was originally launched by a vote of 24 to 9 with 14 abstentions (including France) at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The proximate pretext for this most recent hyper-biased focus on Israel was the flare-up of violence in Gaza this past May. To recall – this was a defensive action taken by Israel in response to a massive barrage of rocket fire by Hamas against Israeli civilian targets. Hamas, a terrorist organization openly devoted to the destruction of the state of Israel and that does not even recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, never lacks for excuses to commit murderous attacks on Israelis.

Clearly, any other sovereign country would respond strongly to violent attacks on its civilian population. Yet only Israel is subjected to over-the-top criticism and an international “commission of inquiry.”

It has been pointed out repeatedly, but tellingly, that at many historical junctures, the Palestinians had golden opportunities to establish a sovereign state and peace with Israel under generous terms. Each time, the answer was a resounding “no.”

The question that begs to be answered is what exactly do the Palestinians want? If it was sovereignty and peace, they could have had that long ago.

What is it that the Palestinians, or at least their leaders, are really after? It’s become clear that they are not after an agreement resulting in a Palestinian state. They could have had that long ago.

What they really want is captured by their slogan, “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.” That means, of course, the elimination of the Jewish state.

Obviously, neither the current Israeli government nor any conceivable Israeli government would ever agree to its own destruction. But the mad dream of

Hamas, Hezbollah and even of the PLOled Palestinian Authority is that Israel will eventually be forced to oblige by massive international pressure.

The creation of the “commission of inquiry” and all UN bodies targeting Israel (specifically, the Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the Division of Palestinian Rights and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories) are an important part of this effort.

This endless loop of defamation and delegitimization of Israel begs the question: What does it achieve?

It will not deter Israel from protecting its citizens and it does absolutely nothing at all to help the Palestinians. If goal is really to assist the Palestinian cause, it is a failed enterprise and it needs to stop. The “commission of inquiry” is yet another effort that is misguided at best, ill-intentioned and doomed to failure. It will not deter Israel from its legitimate duty to protect its citizens and it will achieve nothing at all for the Palestinians.