Recently, the United Nations Committee on Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) met in New York to consider what was for them an important issue: redeeming the tarnished honor of their organization from the “insults” of its critics.
The object of their concern was the World Union of Progressive Judaism, the Reform movement’s international arm. It has had observer NGO status at the world body since 1972.
It now stands liable to lose its U.N. status for “insulting” the world body.
This committee is comprised of such exemplary “democracies” as China, Cuba, Pakistan and Egypt, as well as other countries.
The current chair of the group is Sudan. Although its government is responsible for genocide in Darfur, Sudan still parades around international forums as if it were not a pariah regime.
What did the Reform movement do to put itself in such hot water?
At a recent meeting of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in Geneva, David Littman, a representative of Reform, attempted to read from the Hamas charter calling for Israel’s destruction.
The meeting was being used as a forum by countries hostile to Israel to indict it for “military incursions” whose purpose is to defend the Jewish state against Palestinian terrorists.
By reading the Hamas document, Littman hoped that the world might see what Israel was up against.
But instead of allowing this information to be heard, Littman was silenced. Littman replied that “something is rotten in the state of this council.”
Never have truer words been spoken. This incident and the attempted retribution summarizes the insanity that is the U.N.
Record of calumnies
The real insult is not Littman’s truth-telling but the record of calumnies heaped upon Israel at U.N. forums such as the Human Rights Council.
To this council, murder of Jewish civilians by terrorists whose goal is to eradicate a U.N.-member state is treated as inconsequential. Instead, it uses its resources to denounce Israel’s right of self-defense.
At the same time this was going on, the U.N. continues to fund an entire organization whose purpose is to perpetuate the Arab war against Israel: the United Nations Relief Works Agency or UNRWA.
The U.N. has two organizations, one that aids all refugees around the world, and a second devoted solely to the cause of those Palestinians who fled the state of Israel during its War of Independence, as a result of the Arab war launched to eradicate the state at birth. But rather than seeking to help resettle the refugees, UNRWA is an impediment to any hope for peace.
A recent report issued by the Herzliya-based Global Research in International Affairs details how UNRWA’s scandalous policies include doing everything to prevent resettlement out of the “refugee camps.”
UNRWA’s schools are places where anti-American and anti-Semitic indoctrination is business as usual and virtual recruiting offices for terror groups. Its facilities are virtual military bases for those groups.
It is outrageous that all this goes on not only under the authority of the U.N., but at the expense of U.S. taxpayers who fund much of the U.N.’s activities.
It is the U.N. as a whole and UNRWA in particular that is the insult to the honor of the organization.
Reform can only begin with UNRWA’s dissolution. That should be at the top of Washington’s Middle East priority list.
But pending that outcome, we will have to content ourselves with saluting Littman for speaking the truth. His “insult” may earn this group a U.N. reprimand but, if so, it is one that should be worn as a badge of honor.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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