United Nations should be put on trial - opinion

The United Nations and its institutions have a credibility they do not deserve, and have become a threat to freedom and democracy in the world.

Israel’s case before the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) should be used to expose this fact and begin the process of placing clear boundaries on the UN.

The UN is imbued with credibility and respect that it often does not deserve – and with the Israel case a prime example, its institutions have increasingly been hijacked by undemocratic societies to advance objectives that threaten freedom, peace, and prosperity in the world.

Taking a closer look at the UN

Consider that of the 193 members of the UN General Assembly only 84 are ranked as “free” societies by Freedom House, a think tank in the US. Or that of the 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council, whose very reason for existence is to protect and uphold human rights, only 13 can be defined as fully economically and politically free, according to the Social Research Foundation Global Freedom Scores.

How is it possible that the UN’s top human rights body is dominated by countries that don’t respect human rights? Many UN decisions are passed by simple majorities. What does it say about the quality and integrity of those decisions if these majority voting blocs are to a large extent made up of autocratic regimes. What does it say about the UN as a protector of human rights and international justice if the majority of its members have no regard for the values or democracy or freedom, or indeed human rights?

What are free societies doing ceding their national security and strategic interests to the judgment of their repressive, authoritarian enemies? It’s a glaring question and few democratic governments have a good answer – which is something the current ICJ case can hopefully help to change.

The question is especially vexing considering that for a majority of UN General Assembly members the values and freedoms of democratic societies are seen as a threat. Yet this majority, together with the UN Security Council, gets to appoint the judges that sit on the ICJ, the body that is adjudicating the case against Israel.

In my Phd thesis on human rights and constitutional law, I explored how the appointment of judges is at the heart of justice. The Book of Exodus describes how Moses established the world’s first multi-tiered, society-wide judiciary more than 3300 years ago. Together with the Talmud, it details the painstaking process through which judges are appointed and the lofty qualities and unimpeachable integrity those judges are required to possess.

The famous Biblical verse, “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” refers, says the Talmud, to the moral duty to submit your case only before a worthy and upstanding bench of judges.

JUSTICE IS only as good as the judges who dispense it. Therefore, who appoints the judges is absolutely critical. And the UN, dominated by dictatorships, riddled with antisemitism, appoints ICJ judges, who therefore, by definition, lack the moral authority to stand in judgment over any democracy, especially Israel.

The UN’s anti-Israel bias and obsession with the world’s only Jewish state and the only free democracy in the Middle East makes this point clear. Consider that at the General Assembly, each year there are more condemnations of Israel than the rest of the world combined. In 2022, for example, 15 resolutions passed against Israel, and not a single resolution passed on the human rights situations in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Turkey, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Qatar, Vietnam, and Algeria.

Iran, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar each received a grand total of one.

Consider that at the UN Human Rights Council, Israel is the only country with a standing agenda item at the UNHRC – and that in 17 years, the HRC has adopted 103 resolutions condemning Israel, compared to zero for countries guilty of real human rights violations such as China, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

Finally, consider that among the ICJ judges hearing this case one is from serial human rights abuser, China, and another is from Lebanon, where Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy and combatant in the current war on Israel, is a key member of the government.

This is a theater of the absurd – where a democracy such as Israel can be brought before the ICJ to face charges related to its national security imperative to fight off Jihadist terror – terror that is financed and supported by countries such as Iran with the declared intent of waging war against the West and destroying the values upon which free democracies are built.

For constitutional democracies to submit themselves to the judgment of UN institutions is ludicrous. Israel stands no chance of a fair trial and should take no part in the UN’s ICJ charade other than to cite some of the above statistics to make the argument that the ICJ has no moral jurisdiction over it and then withdraw from the ICJ process.

When in 1948, prime minister David Ben-Gurion agreed for Israel to join the Geneva conventions, it was not on the understanding that the UN would become a cesspit of antisemitism that would twist the genocide clause to put Israel’s right to self-defense on trial in the midst of a multi-front war for survival.

The UN’s gross bias against Israel places it in breach of the agreements signed at the establishment of the Jewish state to accept the authority of the ICJ to adjudicate its actions. Now, I believe, is the time to walk away from this dangerous farce.

DOING SO would make a clear statement that no UN body can exercise authority over Israel or any free society’s sovereignty and certainly not over national security decisions such as how to conduct an existential war of self-defense. And media and opinion formers in the free world should become very much more circumspect in the credibility they grant UN institutions. The time has come to build a new global alliance comprising free societies with shared values and a sincere commitment to human rights.

The words of Israel’s then-Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog, later Israel’s president, come to mind. In 1975, he addressed the UN General Assembly on the eve of another one of its many fits of blatant antisemitism, when it was about to pass its infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. He ended his speech with these words: “I stand here not as a supplicant. For the issue is not Israel or Zionism. The issue is the continued existence of the [UN] Organization which has been dragged to its lowest point of discredit by a coalition of despotisms and racists.

“This resolution, based on hatred, falsehood, and arrogance is devoid of any moral or legal value. For us, the Jewish people, this is no more than a piece of paper, and we shall treat it as such.” And then tore up the resolution at the rostrum of the UN. Israel should give the ICJ summons the same treatment.

The stakes could not be higher. The fate of the entire world is at stake, as the great ethical work of the Talmud, Pirkei Avot states: “the world stands on three things – justice, truth and peace.” God has created the world such that without these pillars human civilization crumbles. But note their order. First justice and truth – and then peace.

Around 1800 years ago, in the ancient and eternal capital of the Jewish people, the great sages of the Jerusalem Talmud, explained that without justice and truth there can be no peace.

And so, Israel must stand firm against the intimidation of the UN and its so-called International Court of Justice. Israel must stand firm in the name of justice and truth, for as the prophet Isaiah said, “Zion will be redeemed through justice.” The route to redemption – and the path to peace – begins with justice: true justice.

The writer is chief rabbi of South Africa and has a PhD in human rights and constitutional law. Visit his YouTube channel for more on this and other issues related to Israel’s war on terror and global antisemitism.