Defund, dismantle, and do over the UN

UNITED NATIONS Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at a news conference at UN headquarters in New York City.

Last week, we saw clear evidence that employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a UN agency for Palestinian refugees actively participated in the October 7 massacre. Intelligence links 12 employees directly to sites of murders, to a kidnapping, and to weapons distribution.

Further intelligence indicates that 10% of UNRWA staff and a shocking 23% of male employees are affiliated with the terrorist organizations Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). There is copious evidence that their offices were used to conceal and hold weapons and tunnel entrances; that UNRWA staff stole trucks, fuel, and other supplies provided by the international community as humanitarian aid and relief for Palestinian civilians in Gaza; and that the UNRWA schools in Gaza taught children to pursue violence and the annihilation of Israel.

Seventy-five percent of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza are teachers. On their Telegram group chat, these educators were celebrating the October 7 massacre in real time, encouraging the murder of hostages, and cheering the killers and rapists as heroes.

While these revelations are shocking, they are also not at all surprising, given what the parent organization, the United Nations has morphed into over the last 50 years.

The UN was founded to maintain international peace and security and promote social progress, better living standards, and human rights. The same organization that adopted a resolution to establish an independent Jewish state in 1947 has become an agency devoted to the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, the promotion of antisemitism, and a voice for the forces against the free world.

Israeli soldiers operate next to the UNRWA headquarters, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, February 8, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/DYLAN MARTINEZ)

Israeli soldiers operate next to the UNRWA headquarters, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, February 8, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/DYLAN MARTINEZ)

In partnering with totalitarian leaders, promoters of terror and repression, and authoritarian silencers of dissidents, the horrific acts of the UNRWA are not an aberration but a clear indicator of a much deeper dysfunction at the UN as a whole.

The UN routinely applies double standards to Israel

At the General Assembly each year, there are more condemnations against Israel than there are against the rest of the world combined.

In 2023 alone, a year in which Israel, a democratic country, experienced the deadliest attack since its founding, the UN passed 14 resolutions singling out Israel as compared with seven resolutions on the rest of the world combined.

Of those seven other resolutions, there was a mere one apiece for the notoriously evil regimes of North Korea (which has locked away 100,000 people in gulags), Iran (long considered the worst offender in the world when it comes to human rights and the leading state sponsor of terrorism), Syria (where more than 600,000 citizens have been killed, some by the use of chemical weapons), and Myanmar (whose security forces have carried out mass killings and rapes). There were two resolutions criticizing Russia, which brazenly invaded Ukraine without provocation.

Does that seem in any way proportional?

While Israel is often criticized by the UN for relatively minor offenses, it ignores far more serious human rights violations by China (whose government has detained 1 million Muslims and subjected them to human rights abuses) or Venezuela (whose human rights violations are so crushing that 7 million people fled the country).

Many of the countries that repress women, punish homosexuality, and disappear critics on a regular basis are not deemed worthy of criticism by the UN.

UN WOMEN (the UN entity charged with working for gender equality and the empowerment of women) waited nearly two months to announce an investigation into “gender-based atrocities” despite ample evidence of rapes and systematic sexual violence committed against Israeli civilians during the October 7 massacre. Finally, they condemned the attack, but only due to massive pressure.

From day one, the entire world saw a woman with blood-stained sweatpants being yanked by her hair onto a Hamas truck, but by the time UN Women publicly acknowledged the raping of Israeli women and girls, they had repeatedly advocated only on behalf of Palestinian women in Gaza.

It seems there is no Israeli action too small for the UN to censure, and no atrocity against Israelis brutal enough for them to acknowledge and investigate.

This extreme anti-Israel bias and willful inaction against true agents of terror didn’t start on October 7. The UN has been enabling Israeli hate and failing to condemn atrocities against Israel for decades. At best, the UN was negligent and enabled its resources to be used by Hamas, and at worst, it empowered – or even partnered with – a terrorist organization.

UNRWA has received $344 million in US funding, representing half of its total budget. Since Israel shared intelligence tying staffers to the October 7 attack, the US and over a dozen other countries have suspended funding to the UNRWA, but this is not enough.

The US contributes billions to the UN and is its largest donor in the world, responsible for about 20% of the UN’s budget. Yet rather than promoting peace, we now know the UN has knowingly – and US taxpayers have unknowingly – funded terrorism and promoted the perpetuation of hatred and hostility against Israel, the US, and the free world.

The UN’s striking departure from its mission is not just an Israel issue. Anyone who believes in basic human rights and the need for peace should be appalled. For decades, the UN has refused to sanction bad actors. And neither the complete dysfunction at the UN nor the fissures of hatred within the organization will end with a handful of UNRWA terminations.

To be clear: The idea of the UN remains relevant and incredibly important. There is a tremendous global need for an organization devoted to world peace, protecting human rights, and delivering humanitarian aid where needed. However, the UN as it exists today is not that.

There is zero reason for us to continue to trust the UN to do a job it hasn’t been doing for years. It is time to defund, dismantle, and do it over with the hope of restoring its original purpose.

The free world should not partake in, let alone fund, the UN as it exists today.

The writer is founder and CEO of Capitolis, a financial technology company with offices in New York, London, and Tel Aviv.