Canada should not allow Israel’s defiance of the UN to go unchallenged

Sadly, the UN hasn’t fully succeeded. Still, given the difficulty of the task, it’s amazing that it’s made a difference at all. Or, in words attributed to Winston Churchill: “The UN was not designed to take us to heaven, but to prevent us from going to hell.”

By that lower yardstick, it deserves a solid B-plus.

So it’s disheartening that the world community, notably the West (including Canada), is doing so little to safeguard the UN in the face of Israel’s open hostility and scorn for the international body.

The most recent examples of Israel’s antagonism toward the UN are its repeated attacks this month on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, injuring five peacekeepers. Rather than promising to stop the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded UNIFIL leave the Lebanon border where it has had a UN mandate to keep the peace for almost five decades, but where its presence now hinders Israel’s invasion plans.

This flagrant disregard for international law and its institutions has been met with criticism from the West (including Canada) but no penalties, sanctions or boycotts that could apply international pressure on Israel.

In an unprecedented move earlier this month, the Netanyahu government blocked UN Secretary General António Guterres from entering Israel. This prompted a protest signed by 104 nations — including France, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland — but not Canada.

And last May, when the UN General Assembly voted to back a Palestinian bid for UN membership, Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan angrily denounced the vote and fed pages of the UN charter into a mini-shredder. He later called for the UN headquarters to be “wiped off the face of the earth.”

Israel has long been hostile toward United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the UN’s aid agency for Palestinian refugees. It has accused UNRWA of harbouring militants from Hamas, which invaded Israel last year, killing 1,200 and kidnapping 250. UNRWA fired nine employees for possible involvement in the Hamas attack, on the basis of Israeli evidence.

In response to the Hamas attack, Israel has bombed and starved Palestinians, killing more than 40,000 in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It has also destroyed UNRWA schools and aid centres, causing the death of almost 230 UNRWA workers — by far the most UN personnel killed in a single conflict since the UN’s creation, said Guterres.

The Israeli Parliament has also given preliminary approval to a bill banning UNRWA from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which Guterres said would be a “catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”

Israel’s open contempt for the UN and its agencies has the effect of undermining the international body’s authority. By accepting Israel’s defiance of the UN, Western nations (led by the United States, but including Canada) are failing to uphold vital principles of international law and the very notion that it applies to all nations.

Canada was among the founding members of the UN in 1945 and for decades played an active role in UN peacekeeping missions.

Washington’s endless supply of weapons has emboldened Netanyahu, leaving the rest of the international community, including Canada, as the only hope for applying sufficient pressure to restrain his government.

As Yael Berda, an Israeli professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, recently tweeted to the world: “Please do everything you can to stop this. We Israelis [who] oppose Netanyahu’s regime cannot stop this from within. There is no formal opposition. Help.”

This article was originally published by the Toronto Star.