By Michael Taube, EPOCH TIMES 11 February 2024
An Israeli soldier runs down a crater-like hole giving way to a tunnel entrance, leading to where the military discovered tunnels underneath the main headquarters of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, in Gaza on Feb. 8, 2024. /AP Photo/Ariel Schalit
Commentary
The United Nations, like its predecessor, the League of Nations, was once regarded as a noble institution. A place where different countries could discuss and debate everything from political disputes to wars and military skirmishes. While there would obviously be points of agreement and disagreement, the main goal was to find a path to peace, security, and a safer world for all of us to live in.
That was then, and this is now.
Today’s U.N. resembles a political cesspool controlled by totalitarian states and rogue nations who reject democracy, liberty, and freedom. Here are several examples illustrating its stunning decline and fall: Iran and Iraq were scheduled to co-chair a 2003 U.N. nuclear disarmament conference before Saddam Hussein was toppled from power; North Korea, a major nuclear threat, chaired the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in 2011; Libya chaired the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2003, and was a U.N. Security Council member; Syria chaired the U.N. Security Council in June 2002 and August 2003, and sat on the U.N. Human Rights Council.
It’s only getting worse with time. The most recent example involves the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA.
Various democratic countries, including Canada, recently suspended funding to UNRWA after reports came out in late January that 12 of its employees had taken part in Hamas’s attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee recently voted 30-19 in support of moving forward New Jersey Republican House Representative Chris Smith’s bill to permanently cut American aid to UNRWA.
UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini acknowledged that Israel had provided them with information to this effect. “Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable,” he said in a Feb. 8 statement, “including through criminal prosecution.” Ten of the 12 employees were fired, while the other two were reportedly dead.
This disgusting revelation only turned out to be the tip of the iceberg.
The Israel Defence Forces just uncovered what the Times of Israel described as a “subterranean data center — complete with an electrical room, industrial battery power banks and living quarters for Hamas terrorists operating the computer servers.” Where was this discovered? Underneath UNRWA’s headquarters in the Gaza Strip’s “upscale Rimal neighborhood,” of all places.
Lazzarini posted on X on Feb. 10 that UNRWA “did not know what is under its headquarters in Gaza.” To which the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories immediately responded, “Oh, you knew. … You chose to ignore the facts so you can later try and deny them.”
Moreover, in a Feb. 10 interview with Fox News Digital, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant suggested his country has knowledge of “dozens” of UNRWA employees being involved with the Hamas-led attack. “UNRWA is a group of terrorists who receive salaries from many countries,” Gallant said, and “these countries gave money to people who raped, murdered and took people into captivity.”
Is it any wonder that a growing number of world leaders have lost faith in the U.N.? It’s not only a shell of its former self, but it’s reached a point where it can’t be salvaged.
That’s why I and others have been occasionally calling on western nations to leave the U.N. and start a League of Democracies.
The original concept can be found in a May 22, 2004, Washington Post op-ed written by Ivo Daalder (currently president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs) and James Lindsay (currently senior vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations). They proposed an Alliance of Democratic States, which would “unite nations with entrenched democratic traditions … where democracy is so rooted that reversion to autocratic rule is unthinkable.” The alliance’s purpose “would be to strengthen international cooperation to combat terrorism, curtail weapons proliferation, cure infectious diseases and curb global warming.” It would also “work vigorously to advance the values that its members see as fundamental to their security and well-being — democratic government, respect for human rights, a market-based economy.”
Daalder and Lindsay’s important idea has been studied and expanded over the years. Similar concepts like Federation of Democracies and Concert of Democracies have been proposed, too.
My preference has always been for a League of Democracies.
It would harken back to the time when the League of Nations was formed on Jan. 10, 1920, at the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. This fledgling organization stood for concepts like global peace, collective security, rule of law and economic stabilization. It helped shape the fabric of our modern world.
The old League of Nations’ legacy could therefore serve as inspiration for freedom-loving countries to abandon the disgraced United Nations and build a new League of Democracies to defend our policies, ideas, and values. It’s time to do it.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
To the best of my knowledge, countries chosen to head UN commissions and the like are chosen based on geographic member votes, which is why Israel never heads any such. The open question is then, how do countries like N. Korea get chosen?
Based on this, we can assume that a UN acknowledged Palestine would immediately head just about every newly selected commission.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-787084?fbclid=IwAR2d3wLTMfnaYfQRoG2ld2G_ITWcps96vnJGypJTyFDdRZDOAjazmQ3IQjM#787084
The moderate, non-Marxist German-Jewish socialist Gustav Landauer, when he learned of Woodrow Wilson’s proposal for a League of Nations, wrote to him supporting the idea in principle, but added that it was important that only democracies be admitted to the League. In addition, definite criteria and for determining whether a state was democratic should be adopted before a state was admitted to the League. He predicted that a League dominated by dictatorships would be an utter disaster. His proposals for a League of Democracies was relavant in 1918 and remains relavant today.
https://twitter.com/MRobertsQLD/status/1165537042891194368?lang=en
The author has landed from Cinderella the naive planet . And which country would at least stop funding this UN swamp of bigots-judeophobe-swindlers ? USA – Argentina thanks to Milei , and Samoa , Palau . Marshall Island.. Not a large west …
Any form of order with procedures is preferable to the free for all of no formal links an procedures however misused. It is the difference between playing as boys on wasteland or the street compared to playing on a purposed marked pitch. Remember that even if the West seceded to a different League of Democracies there would be quibbles about who qualified as in the EU probems with Hungary, Brexit and very nearly Poland and a LePen France. Besides Mr Trump’s attitude to all beyond the US coast is not a good omen for such an orgnisation..
Next walking out of the UN as distinct from creating a parallel organisation such as BRICS, NATO and EU or ASEAN would leave a communications gap with Brics and the over a hundred ex-colonial “tiddlers.” Quite a few of them vote with the West in the UN anyway so do not discard them.
Best to stay in the UN and to organise within it: a funding assessment based on annual World Bank/ IMF figures for members’ GDP. Make an effort to make Western blocs work well: EU, NATO ASEAN etc. then operate together as best possible within the UN.
Definitely time to defund the UN. It should be closed down and thrown into the dusbin of history. It is highly debatable whether any group of nations would be more friendly towards Israel, as, for example, the EU is extremely antisemitic as are most Western democracies today. If the UN were any use at all it would be removing all the antisemitic textbooks from Muslim schools and insistingthat the Koran’s passages on killing Jews and Christians be removed from their curricula. But that will not happen.
This author has apparently just arrived on earth from Alpha Centauri. Yes, The UN is corrupt and thoroughly antisemitic, but western “domocracies” are just as corrupt and antisemitic. Why would anyone want to create a parallel organization to the UN, or to the EU for that matter? Just get back into your ship and return to outer space…please.
P.S. What might be a better idea for those democracies that still have a conscience is to quit funding and supporting the U.N. In short, close it down.
In real life, the law is what we say it is, not what you might think!