The Nobility of the United Nations

The United Nations represents the world. And the world comes together at the United Nations. The UN boasts a wide membership; no fewer than 192 member-states. And like all organizations, even one like the United Nations whose formation was stirred by noble aspirations to strive to accomplish world peace, and to intervene when human rights are threatened anywhere in the world, the idea of an oversight organization to make the prospect of a better world a reality, made for an opportunity to hive off various elements of United Nations concerns into various bodies.

Nations would be elected or appointed to various of those bodies to review the activities of other nations, to bring to their attention shortcomings requiring attention, and to encourage those nations to strive for improved outcomes for their populations. The plight of women, for example, in many countries of the world is nothing short of malevolently disastrous. Where women in those countries, some of them backwardly tribal, some in the throes of religious-inspired domination, others whose cultural attitudes demean women and seek to control them, have few rights and protections.

In those countries girls and women are raped and trafficked  to sex markets, enslaved and persecuted. In other countries, including those which inflict rape and human trafficking is common, women and girl are the victims of routine and debilitating circumcision, and girls as young as twelve are 'married' off to men much older than they are, and often it is concubinage that they are slated for, or becoming a sex-cipher in multiple-wife cultures where polygamy is legal and practised.

Women's right of inheritance is inferior to that of men in these countries, there are fewer legal, educational and employment rights, or none at all. Yet nothing seems to disentitle these human-rights-abusing countries from elevation as representatives to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. When the most recent annual meeting concluded at the United Nations in New York, one country out of the 192 represented at the UN was condemned. That single country was Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

In Israel women have equal rights under the law. The prevailing culture itself is one that adheres to and values equal status for both genders ... and extends that equal status to the gay community. Israel stood accused by the Commission on the Status of Women of violating the rights of Palestinian women. Despite that they, like all others in the state have full citizenship rights that come complete with legal equality rights. In Israel it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender. The only state in the Middle East where this is the reality.

"On the ground, Palestinian women are murdered and subjugated for the sake of male honour. Saudi women cannot drive. Iranian women are stoned to death for 'adultery'. Egyptian women have their genitals mutilated. Sudanese women give birth in prison with their legs shacked if they are Christian."
Anne Bayefsky, journalist

A panel on Zionism that was initially removed by UN officials from an exhibit on Israel prepared by the Israeli Mission to the UN and StandWithUs set to be displayed April 4, 2016. (Israeli Mission to the UN)

That very same day, at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, five resolutions were passed in condemnation of Israel. Syria, North Korea and Iran merited one resolution each. Neither Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan or China, all of which are well known to commit human rights abuses, were the target of any resolution.  

At the New York UN headquarters, Israel's permanent mission to the United Nations was ordered to remove three panels from an exhibition on Zionism. They were deemed "inappropriate". Of course, this is a venue where Zionism was once condemned as racist, a disgracefully slanderous charge that was levelled and led by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The offending panels described Israel as being "the centre and focus of Jewish life and religion for more than three millennia". On the panels Israeli Arabs were identified as the largest minority group in the country. And Zionism was described as the "liberation movement of the Jewish people". Clearly, and without equivocation a red flag of impudent entitlement. Not a prideful declaration of Israel's purpose, but a prod of defiance by a nation targeted for censure, evermore.

After the UN banned a display about Zionism from an Israeli exhibition at its headquarters, another display protesting the decision was set up in New York, April 4, 2016. (Courtesy of StandWithUs)