Vladimir Putin is slaughtering Ukrainian men, women, and children. Xi Jinping's is committing genocide against the Muslims of East Turkistan. Ali Khamenei is murdering Iranian girls for wearing their hijabs in what he considers a provocative manner. What is the U.N. doing in response to these crises? It's going "def con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE."
That quote, of course, is from a recent tweet by Kanye West. "DEFCON," an acronym for "defense readiness condition," is how the U.S. military indicates states of alert, ranging from 1 (the highest) to 5. Apparently, however, the performance artist who now calls himself "Ye" intended to convey that he was going on offense against Jews.
The so-called U.N. Human Rights Council is doing the same. Its so-called Commission of Inquiry is going on offense against the Middle East's only surviving and thriving Jewish community. Indeed, the COI is funded – Americans contributing the lion's share – for the express purpose of demonizing and delegitimizing Israel in perpetuity.
On Thursday, the COI released its second report – one was not enough! – assigning culpability for last year's 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood faction that holds power in Gaza, and is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., the E.U., the U.K, Canada, and other nations.
The report urges U.N. members to prosecute Israeli officials for alleged violations of "international humanitarian law." What does the report say about Hamas and the more than 4,000 rockets it fired at Israelis, its routine use of Palestinian civilians as "human shields," and the support it receives from Tehran? Not a word. "Hamas," "rockets," and "terrorism" are not mentioned.
Israelis are protesting the report as they have protested such slanders in the past and will in the future. They're also reminding anyone who will listen – not a large cohort – that one of the COI's prominent members, Miloon Kothari, has questioned why Israel is "even a member of the United Nations."
Needless to say, Mr. Kothari has not suggested canceling the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China, or the Islamic Republic of Iran – just the world's only Jewish-majority nation, the one country in the Middle East where ethnic and religious minorities – more than one of five Israelis is Arab, Muslim, Christian, or Druze – vote in elections, and enjoy such rights as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of worship.
Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, a concession that could have led to the rise of a Palestinian state in that territory and the West Bank. The experiment failed when Hamas, following a bloody civil war with Fatah, its rival, came to power two years later and began staging terrorist attacks against Israelis.
Also in 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. He's remained in that position since, never again daring to face the Palestinian electorate. In theory, he governs the West Bank. In practice, he's more like the mayor of Ramallah.
Over recent months, he's been either unable or unwilling to exercise control over the northern West Bank. Such cities as Jenin and Nablus are increasingly dominated by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (a proxy of Tehran), and groups with ties to the Islamic State.
Hamas also competes for power, as do radical factions of Fatah, of which Mr. Abbas is ostensibly leader.
There's a Jenin Brigade and a new Nablus-based group called The Lion's Den, that my FDD colleague, Joe Truzman, has been reporting on. Members of both are believed to be young and eager to slit Jewish throats.
Starting in March, these groups have been organizing sporadic but lethal terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beersheba, and other Israeli cities.
In response, the Israel Defense Forces have been entering West Bank towns, attempting to break the terrorist cells, arresting members, sometimes getting into shootouts with them. These are limited operations but the possibility of a large-scale operation, something akin to the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, has become a possibility.
If so, expect Mr. Kothari and his colleagues to blame Israelis. Why aren't such globalist bureaucrats pursuing a diplomatic solution to Israel's conflict with Hamas? Perhaps because they've read the Hamas Charter which declares in Article 13. "There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility."
Or perhaps they think Israelis can be pressured into granting citizenship to members of The Lion's Den and others openly committed to killing and/or expelling Jews – as Jews in earlier years were killed or expelled from Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and other countries in the region, as well as from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem after it was invaded by Jordanian forces during Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
The U.N.'s self-proclaimed "central mission" is to prevent conflict, help parties in conflict make peace, and create "the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish." Regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the COI and the UNHRC instead send the message that Palestinians should not seek ways to peacefully coexist with their Jewish cousins.
To them, clearly, Jewish lives don't matter. But they regard Palestinian lives as cheap, too. What other conclusion can we draw when they incessantly incentivize Palestinians to kill and be killed?
On Tuesday, Adidas ended its "corporate fashion partnership" with Ye. For now, American taxpayers still lavishly fund the UN. But a bill before Congress, the COI Elimination Act, would at least cut off dollars to one of its Jew-hating entities. Its passage would represent a small step toward decency.