"Where does it come from? That’s the question many people are asking about the shocking refusal on the part of so many academics, artists and other members of the chattering classes to unreservedly condemn the Hamas terrorist organization and the horrifying crimes that it committed on Oct. 7. The willingness of so many to speak as if the actions of the perpetrators were in some way understandable doesn’t make sense. The appalling actions suffered by Israelis—1,400 men, women and children murdered, thousands wounded and more than 200 dragged into captivity in the Gaza Strip, along with the horrific acts of rape, torture and the mutilation of corpses—boggles the mind. Who anywhere deserves this? How can anyone ask for this?...
At the root of the problem is an institution that most people in Israel and the United States tend to ignore: the United Nations.
The world body may be a talking shop that is detached from the realities of the Middle East as well as virtually every other problem facing the planet. However, its leaders and constituent agencies play an outsize role in establishing norms when it comes to international affairs. And if you want to know why progressive thought—as expressed not just in academic settings or in the speeches of members of the left-wing congressional 'Squad,' but on the pages of mainstream publications like The New York Times or on broadcast outlets like MSNBC—generally assumes the validity of a narrative that views Israel as an oppressor state and the Palestinians as their hapless victims, then the hatred that is routinely spewed out at the United Nations helps explain why this distressing trend has become so widespread.
Guterres spews lies
The most recent example of this came this week when UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres sought to rationalize the Hamas atrocities as the result of the alleged mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs. He said: 'It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.' Guterres had told the U.N. Security Council this on Tuesday, claiming that 'the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced; and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing,' he added.
He tried to walk this back by tweeting that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the horrific attacks by Hamas. Those horrendous attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” So even when subsequently condemning the Hamas massacres, he compounded the problem by doubling down on the assumption of a moral equivalence between the complaints of the Palestinians and the acts of sheer barbarism committed by Hamas, which, by the way, was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States on Oct. 8, 1997...
But as much as Gutteres deserves to be blasted for this, his comments are just the tip of the U.N. iceberg when it comes to discrimination against the Jewish state, and the way it validates the vile notion that what happened on Oct. 7 was the natural consequence of Israeli misdeeds...
The vast majority of Americans who reject these lies must demand that Congress defund the United Nations and its agencies, which have provided the foundation not just for antisemitism but support for the mass slaughter of Jews in 2023."