UN's facade has fallen
This week in New York, the United Nations showed the world exactly what it is.
On Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, will take the podium to defend Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip. There will be no handcuffs and no consequences, only a microphone and a hall full of diplomats nodding politely.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the people being bombed, couldn’t even get into the building. He was denied a US visa and has to address the Assembly remotely. The occupied people’s leader appears on a screen while the occupier gets the stage. That isn’t diplomacy. It’s a ranking of whose lives count, with the UN emblem stamped on it.
Look at what Netanyahu is defending. The UN’s own Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and Amnesty International reached the same verdict. Tens of thousands are dead, whole families have been wiped out, hospitals have been flattened, and famine has been declared. In the West Bank, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem, Israel’s own leading human rights group, all call the system apartheid. In 2024 the International Court of Justice declared the occupation unlawful.
Then there is Washington. On Tuesday, Trump stood before the Assembly and urged the 125 ICC member states to walk away from what he called a “rogue institution.” He never mentioned Israel, whose leaders face war crimes charges at the court. He didn't need to. His administration has already sanctioned ICC officials in response to the Netanyahu warrant. The most powerful country on earth is using its full weight to keep one man out of a courtroom.
The man delivering that sermon is a convicted felon, and a federal judge has ruled that what a jury found him liable for was rape in every sense but the narrow legal one. He wants the world’s war crimes court dismantled while carrying his own long record in the courts.
Europe is no better. The EU is Israel's top trade partner, and its own review concluded Israel had likely breached its obligations under their trade pact. Spain, Slovenia and Ireland moved to suspend the agreement, and Germany and Italy blocked it. Europe's “values” stop where its balance sheet starts.
The same Western capitals treat Putin, who also faces an ICC warrant, as a pariah, and rightly so. Netanyahu, facing an ICC warrant of his own, gets a standing ovation. The law was never the problem. The problem is who it applies to: international law for enemies, impunity for friends.
The UN was built on “never again.” This week it made clear once again that this promise has conditions.
The facade has fallen.