Nikki Haley, the U.S.’s UN Ambassador to the UN, announced yesterday that the U.S. is withdrawing its membership from the UN Human Rights Council. She called it “an organization that is not worthy of its name.” But like her boss, U.S. President Donald Trump, she was light on reasons other than her constant criticism of the UN regarding its perceived ill treatment of Israel. That’s really the reason. If it wasn’t for that, I doubt Trump would do it. Once again, Trump is wrong. He was wrong about moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and he’s wrong about this. Like any organization, the UN Human Right Council can surely be improved. But it’s not good for the U.S., as the past beacon of human rights in the world, to pull out of this council. Not only that, in Trump’s effort to defend Israel, he is only stirring up more anti-Semitism in the world.
Haley also declared, “But today we need to be honest. The Human Rights Council is a poor defender of human rights.” Who needs to be honest? That guy you work for!
Guess why she did it yesterday, Tuesday. On Monday, the day before, the UN Human Rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein denounced the Trump administration for its immigration policy of separating emigrating families at the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s not just al-Hussein who is disgusted with this policy; a majority of Americans are too. Moreover, Trump himself is no saint when it comes to advocating for human rights.
Since last year, Haley has been complaining that the 47-nation member UN Human Rights Council has been biased against Israel. I disagree. The UN hasn’t been tough enough on Israel, and I’m no anti-Semitic. Far from it. I have a Jewish daughter-in-law and Jewish grand-daughter. I spend my life studying Jewish people and the Bible they gave the world, which is life itself.
I’ve been a keen observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for over 35 years. I wrote a book about it. To do so, I did research by reading about 125 books on this subject.
Israel is a member of the UN. When Israel became a nation again, in 1947, it desperately wanted to be accepted as a member into the new UN. Leading nations like the U.S. accepted the just argument that, to solve “the Jewish Problem,” Jews needed their own homeland, and there was no better place for it than the Jews’ ancestral land. However, in doing so, these nations agreed that the human rights of the indigenous Arab peoples, who soon started calling themselves Palestinians, needed to be respected.
That is where Ambassador Haley, the Trump administration, and Trump’s political base of Christian Zionists go astray. They demand human rights for Israeli Jews at the expense, actually the denial, of Palestinians. Just as Jews were entitled to their own land and state, so were Palestinians. How long has it been since Israel got their land and state, and Palestinians are still wanting? SEVENTY YEARS last May 15th!
Actually, I think Israel should have been kicked out of the UN a long time ago! You read that right! The UN has been soft on Israel. In both the 1947-49 War of Independence and the Six-Day War of 1967, Jews took land where Palestinians had previously lived, some of them for centuries. And seventy years later, Israel has only given back the tiny Gaza Strip that was of no use to Israel whatsoever.
Article 2 of the UN Charter says there can be no title to land by conquest. Thus, it requires that any land taken from one nation by another nation during war must afterwards be returned. Israeli Jews took all kinds of land, including the West Bank from Palestinians, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. In a peace agreement with Egypt, Israel gave back to Egypt its Sinai Peninsula. But Israel still has not given back the Golan Heights to Syria nor the West Bank to Palestinians. Therefore, I think that because Israel has continued to violate this important article in the UN Charter, Israel should have been dis-membered a long time ago from the UN because of this. If this threat would have been carried out, as it should have, Israel might have peace treaties with these peoples today.
No, the UN has been too soft on Israel. So has the U.S., which has always had the most clout in the UN. For several decades, the U.S. has given $3 billion per year to Israel. How much has it given to Palestinians? Just about zilch! The U.S. should have a long time ago required that Israel stop building illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank or the U.S. would threaten to end its $3 billion per year in foreign aid to Israel.
The Trump administration and Christians Zionists are deceived about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the latter think they are following the Bible in granting carte blanche support of Israel. WRONG! GOD IS NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS even though Jews, as a group, are his chosen people. God is for Palestinians just as much as he is for Jews. For people to operate otherwise is to invite more anti-Semitism.
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