Why the UN and International Institutions Must Now Be Placed on Trial

George Orwell, one of Britain’s most illustrious writers and social and political observers, wrote, “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable…” This prescient observation sums up the United Nations response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities against Israel.¹ The UN, established in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust to respond to and prevent crimes against humanity, has subverted its founding charter, rationalizing aggression by Iran-backed proxies like Hamas, while failing to uphold Israel’s right to self-defense as a UN member and even equating the Jewish and democratic state to the terror groups trying to destroy it.

The morally disfigured responses by UN bodies to October 7 reflect a decades-long trajectory of corruption in its demonization, delegitimization and double standards regarding Israel, as former Israel Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky has posited.

Hamas’s October 7 “Al Aqsa Flood” marks a new front in political hybrid warfare, merging ideological jihad with Soviet disinformation.² Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, trained in Moscow, and Iranian regime-trained Hamas leadership have mobilized dual messaging—peace to the West, war to the Arab and Muslim worlds—mirroring the Cold War era Soviet disinformation campaign against the United States.³ The UN has amplified the Palestinian “al-Aqsa Flood” campaign rendering it an eighth legal-political front in Israel’s multifront war against Iran’s proxies.

The current disinformation war against Israel is rooted in the 2001 UN-sanctioned Durban World Conference Against Racism, which has since fueled a political warfare crusade against Israel. Durban’s NGO Forum summary statement revived the UN General Assembly’s Resolution 3379 of 1975, “Zionism is racism.” With its Israel-South Africa-apartheid comparison, the Durban declaration charged Israel as a “genocidal war criminal,” which spawned the global BDS movement.⁴ Since 2015, the UNGA’s 140 resolutions against Israel dwarf those against all other nations combined, a stark double standard.⁵

UNSC’s Refusal to Condemn October 7 Unconditionally

The UN Security Council’s (UNSC) failure to unequivocally condemn Hamas’s October 7 attack epitomizes the UN’s hypocrisy.⁶ Resolution 2712, passed on November 15, 2023, called for humanitarian pauses but omitted mention of the attack, prompting U.S. and UK abstentions.⁷ This persisting paralysis underscores the UNSC’s refusal to support Israel’s right to defend itself, aligning with a historical pattern of shielding non-state actors like Hamas while targeting Israel.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres led the UN’s moral failures on October 7. He declared on October 24, 2023: “I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel,” but then equivocated, adding, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”⁸

UN Response is Not New

The UN’s post-October 7 posture intensifies a legacy of bias, erasure, and cancellation of Israel, dating to the 1970s. Yasser Arafat’s 1974 UN speech, likely drafted by Moscow, reframed Zionism as an imperialist colonialist implant, resulting in UNGA Resolution 3379 (1975), equating Zionism with racism, which officially vindicated Stalinist anti-Zionist tropes, a helix of “Nazification,” colonialism, and genocide accusations against Israel,⁹ a narrative echoed at Durban in 2001.¹⁰

Attempts to delegitimize Jewish sovereignty predate 1948, with Iraq’s Fadel Jamali likening Zionism to Nazism at a UN committee in 1947.¹¹ This pattern, fueled by Soviet-style hybrid warfare—terror, propaganda, and “dirty tricks”—now sees Hamas and the PA as ready collaborators in a Russian-Chinese-Iranian axis.

UNRWA’s Complicity with Hamas’s October 7 Atrocities and Beyond

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) exemplifies UN complicity. UNRWA employees participated in October 7 murder and abductions.¹² UNRWA compounds held hostages, served as weapons depots and hubs of indoctrination, belying its refugee aid mandate.¹³ Post-October 7, UNRWA leadership criticized Israel, not Hamas, reinforcing a politicized narrative.¹⁴

OCHA’s Parroting of Hamas Casualty Numbers

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) uncritically parroted casualty figures from Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, skewing conflict portrayals without challenging Hamas’s resource hoarding.¹⁵ Its aid coordination failures and inability to counter Hamas’s grip on aid have exacerbated suffering.¹⁶ Yet, UN Special Rapporteur Balakrishnan Rajagopal alleged that Israel is causing starvation,¹⁷ amplifying this distortion, ignoring Israel’s strict compliance with international law.¹⁸

HRC Hypocrisy

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), since 2006, has issued over 90 resolutions against Israel, dwarfing those against North Korea or Iran, while ignoring Hamas’s crimes.¹⁹ A March 2025 report accused Israel of genocide and fabricated sexual violence claims, lacking evidence and dismissing Hamas’s documented atrocities.²⁰ UNHRC’s double standards are deeply rooted. In 2021, the UNHRC’s Independent Commission of Inquiry, led by Navi Pillay lobbied to “sanction apartheid Israel”— members like Miloon Kothari railed against “the Jewish Lobby.”²¹ This activist tilt, including academics advising anti-Israel cases, erodes UN neutrality. After the October 7 massacre, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese compared Israel to the Nazi regime, accusing it of genocide.²² This closed-circuit system that generates “evidence” for ICJ cases like South Africa’s genocide charge reveals systemic bias and corruption.²³

International Courts and Lawfare

International courts have prosecuted political “lawfare” campaigns to erase Israel, accusing it of war crimes and genocide. The UNGA requested an International Court of Justice advisory opinion on Israel’s occupation, leading to a July 2024 ruling declaring settlements illegal and ordering reparations.²⁴ In December 2023, South Africa, backed by the Iranian regime and Russia, and joined by 14 nations, baselessly accused Israel of genocide at the ICJ, a charge undermined by UN experts like Alice Nderitu and Justice Julia Sebutinde, who faced repercussions for dissent.²⁵ The courts’ politicization disregarded factual evidence, amplifying Israel-erasure narratives.²⁶

ICC’s Kangaroo Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC), lacking jurisdiction over Israel—which is not a party to the Rome Statute—issued warrants on November 21, 2024, for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant alleging war crimes like starvation and civilian attacks in Gaza post-October 7. The U.S. condemned the ICC’s ruling as baseless.²⁷ Hungary defied an ICC demand for extradition for Netanyahu during his April 2025 visit there.²⁸

Remedies

Responding to the corrupt UN-led international system demands U.S.-led pressure. There are indications of progress: the Trump administration’s 2020 sanctions against ICC’s prosecutor Fatou Bensouda,²⁹ and sanctions of February 2025 by the second Trump administration.³⁰ Additionally, Hungary withdrew from the ICC while Nicaragua withdrew its support of South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel, setting a path.³¹

The United States possesses other tools at their disposal:

• Cutting the United States’ 25 percent share of the total UN budget.³²

• Promoting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism and its Israel examples.

• Designating Hamas, Iran, and other Iranian proxies as terror entities.

• Rallying the Community of Democracies (CoD), first initiated in 2000 by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright (later steered by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2002) and Polish Foreign Minister Bronisław Geremek to unite democracies by defending sovereign rights and fighting disinformation, one of its current focuses, as a caucus group within the UN, and a more active organization.³³

The UN’s failure to uphold its 1949 recognition of Israel’s self-determination, and to protect the principle of sovereign equality, necessitates radical reform or a new legal-political framework altogether.

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Notes