In Need of Therapy
The United Nations is obsessed with Israel. So obsessed that, if it were a person, it would need therapy. If it were a sports organization like FIFA (the soccer world’s governing body prosecuted for corruption last year), its representatives would be fired and thrown in jail.
The UN’s 47-member Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has condemned Israel more times than all other nations in the world combined. Last year alone it adopted six nonbinding resolutions against Israel, while passing none against China, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or ISIS. In fact, each session includes a mandated discussion of Israel’s human rights violations. It has no such mandated discussion about any other country in the world.
The Commission on the Status of Women condemns Israel as the world’s worst violator of the rights of women, even though the freest Muslim women in the Middle East are Israeli Muslims. The UN condemned Israel 104 to 4 as the only country that violates health rights, even though it is the only nation that treats injured terrorists alongside their victims. And it cites Israel as one of the worst abusers of child rights in the world, alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) and Boko Haram.
The UNHRC confirmed Canadian academic Michael Lynk as “Special Rapporteur” on human rights in the Palestinian territories. Lynk has a long record of bias against Israel and will only examine alleged Israeli violations without also looking at those of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Fatah. He served on the board of an Arab lobbying group that promotes Israel Apartheid Week and gave a keynote speech on Arab resistance. Yet the UN calls him “impartial and objective.”
Psychology Today calls obsession “an iron mask that permits us to gaze in only one direction at one thing.” That describes the UN. While ISIS kidnaps and beheads innocent people, many of whom are Christians, and North Korea and Iran threaten the world with nuclear destruction, the UN spends its time trying to find fault with Israel.
In August 2013, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admitted the UN is obsessed when he addressed students in the Rishon LeZion College of Management’s Model UN program at UN offices in Jerusalem. “Unfortunately,” he said, “because of the [Arab-Israeli] conflict, Israel has been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias—sometimes even discrimination.” He said Israel should be treated like the UN’s other 192 members.
So what should the UN do to heal itself? Some psychologists use the following steps to help overcome obsession:
- Get back on track. It needs to understand that it’s off track in blaming Israel for everything and acknowledge the fact that Israel cannot possibly be wrong all the time.
- Stop. The next time an Israel-related confrontation arises, it should stop itself from saying, “The conflict is all Israel’s fault; all the other countries are victims of Zionism.”
- Keep moving. Psychologists advise taking a bathroom break or a walk to ward off returning to the obsession. So when a country with a terrible human-rights record submits a resolution against Israel, perhaps the UN should take a break and (here’s a novel idea) examine that country’s human-rights violations instead.
- Get angry. New research claims anger can sometimes help. Perhaps UN leaders should get angry at the lies and slander targeting only Israel and shout them down.
- Identify the distortions. Use facts.
- Apply some humor. This tool may help the rest of us as well, as we confront the fact that the UN will never do anything to change.
The 50 worst violators of the human rights of Christians through severe persecution are all UN members except for the Palestinian Territories, which ranks 24th on the list. And 35 are Muslim-majority nations. Israel is not on the list.
Perhaps the UN should concentrate on these nations and leave the Jewish state alone.
