Israel vs… the U.N.?
Since its war on Gaza began, following the Hamas attacks on October 7th of last year, through its subsequent acceleration of its extermination campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, and into its expanded war into Lebanon, Israel has declared several organizations, peoples, and individuals as its enemy. There’s Hamas, of course, then Hezbollah, and the perennially mutually hated nemesis Iran. But Israel made a less expected enemy through the course of its military and political offenses this past year, the United Nations.
Israel’s prime minister and other government officials have accused members of the UN, and the organization as a whole, of antisemitism. It’s the same approach they use when any person or organization criticizes the actions of the Israeli government and/or military, thus weakening claims and distorting actual acts of antisemitism. Anyone who makes a seemingly obvious statement of reality, like that Israel is killing children, destroying infrastructure, targeting civilians, causing outbreaks or disease and famine, or, worst of all, use the textbook definition of genocide to describe what the state of Israel is and has been doing to the Palestinian people for decades, is attacked and discredited as an antisemite. It’s less usual, however, for Israel to be going after the UN, and quite unusual for them to ban the secretary general of the UN from entering their country. The rationale given in that case is that Guterres’ condemnation of Iran’s launching of missiles at Israel was not strong enough. The actual rational reason is that Guterres has been critical of Israel’s actions and calling for a ceasefire since last year.
More recently, since beginning their bombing campaign and ground invasion of Lebanon, UN peacekeepers have been targeted, injured, and sometimes killed by the Israeli military. Apart from this arguably being a war crime, it raises the question: is Israel at war with the UN?
The UN, despite its noble proclamations and purported goals of peaceful cooperation among the countries of the world, for most of its existence it’s served as a soft-power tool of control for the US and other powerful “western” states. It’s been a means for maintaining the global status quo and preserving “western” hegemonic dominance without the inconvenience of having to go to war over every issue. As the US’s favorite client state, Israel has historically benefitted from this, enjoying regular support and diplomatic cover from the US and other aligned states whenever it has run afoul of international law. There have always been member states of the UN that have opposed actions taken by Israel, or even its existence, but those parties were often in the minority and with at most marginal authority.
It’s not until very recently that more states have turned against Israel. Though it’s not entirely fair to say that making statements or voting in ways which intend to hold Israel, or any state, accountable for breaking international law and violating human rights conventions means that they’ve “turned against” it. It’s harder to argue that Israel hasn’t turned against the UN. When a state, one with a history of violating UN resolutions and laws, brands the organization’s current leader as persona non grata, casts aspersions on the group as a collective, destroys charitable organizations under the control of the UN, and attacks its peacekeepers and destroys their outposts, they’re not exactly abiding by the organization’s spirit of peaceful cooperation. Israel hasn’t given up its UN membership, of course, but it seems to have decided that it doesn’t have to abide by the rules and norms like other member states. Or rather, it can choose to ignore them whenever it wishes with the same audacity as the US, its bully protector, as if it has the same power.