FINAL WAR BEGINNING: The UN is Coming…Again

In what appears to be a major move by the UN, the international organization sent 150 Israelis companies a warning letter that they risked losing international business due to their dealings with companies that worked out of Judea and Samaria. UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein personally sent the letters two weeks ago and has already received two responses that affirmed their break in doing business with companies from Israel’s Biblical Heartland.

The Arab countries and their supporters have had a solid hold on the UN  Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for some time, but the move by the organization is literally unprecedented and seemingly part of a wider diplomatic war against Israel .  With UNESCO already erasing the Jewish connection to its holiest sites and cities, the UNHRC move seems natural.

All of this appears to be crossing into dangerous ground as the UN is laying a deeper trap for the Jewish State.  Ultimately, by disregarding the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel as well as a firm campaign backing the BDS movement, the UN seeks to ultimately weaken Israel as its enemies gather against it.

An unnamed western diplomat told Haaretz that more than half of the companies that received the warning letter were Israeli, about 30 were from the US and the remainder from countries including Germany, Norway and South Korea. The diplomat added that Hussein also sent copies of the letter to foreign ministries of several countries who are home to companies which may be added to the blacklist.

According to the report Israeli companies on the list include pharmaceutical giant Teva, the national phone company Bezeq, bus company Egged, the national water company Mekorot and the country’s two largest banks, Hapoalim and Leumi.

The US has threatened to withdraw from the council if the entire list is published.

Before one assumes the worst, Israel was in far worse shape at the time of the Six Days War and we all know how that ended.  With that in mind, reality is how one perceives it.  The UNHRC has very little teeth, yet its bite still has power.  At the end of the day, Israel’s market is small and businesses can make the calculus that it is far better to stay away from the political intrigue than pull in some extra money from Israel.

Once again the aim here is to weaken and divide the State of Israel as it contends to deal with a plethora of unprecedented security challenges. The focus for Israelis should not be to despair, but rather know that with deep faith and a yearning to survive they will make it past this as well.

As Rebbe Nachman says: “There is no despair at all.”

After all, if we’ve made it this far then the rest should be within our grasp as well.  No outside force can move the will of the Creator.

The World’s Largest Anti-Israel Organization

Have you ever wondered why the United Nations is so anti-Israel? Did you know the UN Human Rights Council has passed more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined?

Take a look at the rest of the world. The Syrian civil war has been raging since 2011 with close to 500,000 deaths by various estimates. Hezbollah has built up an arsenal of approximately 150,000 rockets in Southern Lebanon. This is a flagrant violation of UN resolution 1701, to which the UN has turned a blind eye. ISIS is terrorizing and murdering people in the Middle East and is responsible for numerous attacks in Europe and elsewhere. North Korea continues its rogue behavior, with provocative missile launches. Iran is a threat to the entire Middle East, especially Israel. It launches missiles with “Israel must be wiped out” painted on them. It’s also the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. Again the UN is silent.

In perspective these are but a few of the highly significant issues plaguing much of the world. Yet the UN seems to have a permanent case of tunnel vision when it comes to Israel.

Keep in mind Israel is a mere 8,000 square miles in size, or roughly the size of New Jersey. Its total population, including more than 1 million Arabs is just over 8,000,000. The Jewish population of Israel is approximately 6.5 million. Contrast that against the world population of 7.5 billion, Jewish Israel represents less than one tenth of one percent of the entire world.

So why is a tiny country like Israel and its ongoing conflict with the Arab Muslim ‘Palestinians’ standing head and shoulders above much more important issues as far as the UN is concerned? This question may have people scratching their heads trying to come up with an answer. Yet a closer look inside the make-up of the UN provides the answer.

Obsessed with Resolutions

For example let’s examine the most anti-Israel body within the organization- the UN Human Rights Council. Since 2006 when the United Nations Commission on Human Rights changed its name to the United Nations Human Rights Council, it has passed no less than 60 resolutions against Israel. That’s a sustained average of almost one every other month during the past 10 years. In 2016 alone there were no less than 20. Incredibly 10 were passed on a single day! A total of 4 were passed against the rest of the world in 2016. This seems almost absurd, until you break down the UNHRC.

There are 47 member nations that comprise the UNHRC. Keep in mind the focus of it is “human rights.” Yet look at some of its members- China, Cuba, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Qatar, Burundi, Bangladesh, UAE, etc. Shouldn’t members be beacons of protecting human rights? Yet these countries are some of its worst offenders.

Unfair Playing Field

Now let’s look at the actual structure of the UNHRC which is quite telling. They divide the nations of the world into five regions:

  1. Africa (including Middle East)
  2. Asia
  3. Latin America/Caribbean
  4. Western Europe
  5. Eastern Europe

In case you are wondering the US is part of the Western Europe region.
The African and Asian regions each have 13 members. Latin America/Caribbean has 8 members, Western Europe 7 and Eastern Europe 6. Now here’s where the rubber meets the road…. Every nation where Muslims make up 50% or more of the general population is in one of two regions- the African or Asian region. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize when those two regions vote as a block, their 26 votes comprise an automatic majority of the UNHRC’s 47 members.

Another noteworthy  point is how the US is positioned. Keep in mind it’s the home of the United Nations, and puts up roughly 22% of the overall UN budget. Yet on the UNHRC the US doesn’t even have its own region. It’s buried as a member of the Western Europe region which has a mere 7 member nations. It can be easily outvoted by the Muslim dominated African and Asian regions.

Back to the question of why the UNHRC has been so ardently anti-Israel for many years; once you understand how the UNHRC is structured with the Muslim nations in control, it becomes clear why they ignore many other obvious problematic areas, and devote so much attention to Israel. It sits smack dab in the heart of the Middle East, and has been a thorn in the side of the Arab Muslim world since the moment it was reborn in 1948.  The existence of a sovereign Jewish state on land which most of the Muslim world considers holy, especially Jerusalem, represents a huge obstacle to their goal of ‘liberating’ all of Israel in favor of “Palestine.”

Multiple Fronts of World’s Largest Anti-Israel Organization

The UN Department of Political Affairs has an entire division devoted to Palestinian affairs. No other people or nation enjoy such a distinction. Plus, there are other anti-Israel UN agencies.  UNESCO for example is in the business of revising history by passing resolutions reclassifying obvious Jewish holy sites such as the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Temple Mount as Muslims holy sites. This is in outright contradiction to documented historical fact.

There’s also UNRWA, which is the only UN refugee agency created exclusively for a single group of people- the Arab Palestinians. It runs schools in the Gaza Strip and in Judea/Samaria. This virulently anti-Israel agency openly teaches students jihad against Israel and the Jews.

Then there’s the UN Security Council which recently passed a resolution naming Israeli “settlements” as the main obstacle to peace. The resolution completely ignored Arab Palestinian terrorism.

It’s not as if the UN Security Council hasn’t made other efforts to pass anti-Israel resolutions. It has. However, unlike the UNHRC where the US influence is minimal, it’s one of 5 permanent members of the Security Council, and as such has veto power. Since 1970 the US has used its veto power on 39 occasions to thwart anti-Israel resolutions.

The United Nations as an organization is charged with upholding dignity and security for all the nations of the world big and small. Yet, is it acting with equal vigilance enforcing these noble principles when it comes to Israel? The answer is a resounding no! One could make a strong case that the UN has a separate anti-Israel agenda from its overall calling, effectively making it the largest anti-Israel organization in the world…. unofficially of course.

However, now that Donald Trump has replaced Barack Obama as President and Nikki Haley is the US Ambassador who sits on the Security Council, we are about to see Israel getting the support it rightfully deserves. Moreover, Trump has indicated the US may consider taking punitive action against the UN and some of its internal agencies, in the form of reducing or eliminating financial support.

We are in the early stages of a long overdue new era. It’s about time someone is ‘Trumpeting’ support for Israel.