Why the U.N.'s Israel Obsession Should Worry Even People Who Don't Care about Israel

"...[C]omparing the legal language and general tone of U.N. resolutions dealing with Israel to the legal language and tone of resolutions dealing with the eight recent or ongoing situations of belligerent occupation that have involved substantial levels of settlement activity... the data reveal that even within resolutions, it uses a unique legal vocabulary for the Jewish state. The scale of the difference is quite striking...

Security Council resolutions refer to the disputed territories in the Israeli-Arab conflict as 'occupied' 31 times, but only a total of five times in reference to all seven other conflicts combined.

General Assembly resolutions employ the term 'grave' to describe Israel's actions 513 times, as opposed to 14 total for all the other conflicts, which involve the full gamut of human-rights abuses, including allegations of ethnic cleansing and torture...

[T]he U.N. has only used the legally loaded word 'settlements' to describe Israeli civilian communities (256 times by the GA and 17 by the Security Council). Neither body has ever used that word in relation to any other country with settlers in occupied territory...

But some may be inclined to shrug off the U.N.'s particular interest in Israel, on the theory that 'one has to start somewhere.' In this view, international law is deeply intertwined with politics (which is true), and the international legal system is weak and immature. Dealing with alleged Israeli wrongdoings is the first level in an eventual broader and more systematic approach. Another response is that if it is impossible to censure serious wrongdoers - say, Turkey and Morocco, whose occupied territories are now mostly populated by settlers - something is better than nothing.

But the data - which covers the past 50 years - show this is not happening. If anything, causation seems to run the other way. Turtle Bay's focus on one country has apparently robbed it of the ability to address the world's many situations of occupation and settlements. This shows the double role of the scapegoat: It does not just get all the blame, but it also effectively absolves others. The U.N.'s blindness to settlements around the world is actually the flip side of its focus on Israel."