When the flydubai flight to Tel Aviv suddenly took a perilous nose dive, the Israeli plumber who led the struggle to yank the plane’s terrorist pilot from its cockpit said that he and his fellow passengers attacked “like lions” to abort the suicide mission, saving 174, mostly Israelis, from certain death.
Tellingly, at last month’s U.N. General Assembly (UNGA), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a similar metaphor to describe Israel’s role generally in fighting Middle East terrorists. He said Israelis “fought like lions” in a seven-front war to defeat terrorists like the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syrian rebels, West Bank terror groups, Iraqi militias and Iran.
In his speech, Netanyahu also contrasted Israel’s brave behavior with that of some 100 “moral cowards” who walked out of his UNGA presentation and with those nations that over years and decades have sat on their hands instead of fighting the West’s jihadi enemies.
Most other United Nations members who spoke at the New York event did nothing to dispel aspersions that they—and the world body generally—lack principles, resolve and courage. Indeed, their speeches largely focused not on the world’s greatest problems, but as usual on one of the world’s smallest nations—Israel—and one of its most inconsequential problems (i.e., the Palestinians).
By contrast, U.S. President Donald Trump, in his UNGA address, accused its members of being effete posers who speak nobly of peace, progress, stability and other abstract goals, but who are paralyzed when it comes to acting forcefully against shared enemies, especially when actions involve risk.
Trump might have added that the world body, which represents some 193 nations, barely touched on the world’s most pressing problems. Absent from the majority of speeches were commitments to resolve such immediate challenges as Russia’s imperialist war on Ukraine, Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and Islamic hegemony, or China’s threatening gestures toward conquering Taiwan.
Likewise, absent were U.N.-member presentations that addressed longer-term global threats
Since a majority of U.N. members are autocracies, it was unsurprising not to hear passionate calls to liberate suffering masses through democratization. Nor did anyone seriously address looming challenges like global jihad, AI technology revolution and data centers, globally plummeting fertility, immigration crises or worldwide energy shortages.
While Trump did not use the term “cowards,” he might well have, pointedly calling out U.N. members for ignoring the world’s most imminent threats.
Foremost among the dangers on Trump’s mind, of course, was Iran. While the president affected no false modesty in extolling his (and America’s) initiative and success in forcefully thwarting Iran, he faulted other nations—and previous U.S. presidents—for neglecting to subdue the Islamic Republic. He also criticized the United Nations for its bloated bureaucracy and the International Criminal Court as a travesty of justice. Finally, he warned of the dangers of uncontrolled immigration, terror organizations, and autocratic perils threatening America’s backyard, the Western Hemisphere.
Overall, Trump described a singular nation, the United States, acting boldly and decisively to address and solve pressing problems—implying that other member states were endangering themselves and the world order with their passivity and irresoluteness. While some critics accuse Trump of rogue unilateralism, others see the United States as providing leadership in addressing and resolving many of the world’s most troubling (and deadly) challenges.
As if to support Trump’s and Netanyahu’s accusations of timidity and hollow self-righteousness, the U.N.’s chief executive and most other UNGA speakers dominated the event’s messaging with condemnations and complaints … about the tiny dot on the world map that is Israel. The Jewish state’s alleged crimes and misdemeanors on the world stage were persistently lamented—genocide, occupation and settlements, starvation, forced displacement and “ethnic cleansing.”
None of the presentations sympathized with the fact that the Gaza war was started when Islamist fanatics committed a genocidal massacre, nor was Israel thanked by any speakers for almost single-handedly decapitating the Middle East’s jihadi terror infrastructure.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres disingenuously claimed Israel’s “onslaught” of killing and ruin was “unlike anything” he had seen. Guterres apparently has forgotten Sudan’s civil war, in which 10 million to 12 million have been displaced and 200,000 to 300,000 have been killed—dwarfing Gaza’s death toll of about 75,000. Guterres was also apparently sleeping during Ethiopia’s apocalyptic Tigray war (2020-22), which saw 300,000 battle-related deaths in 2021-22 alone. Finally, he must have forgotten the Russia-Ukraine war, which has raged for nearly four years and killed upwards of 400,000.
While member speakers spared no words in cataloging Israel’s fictitious “war crimes,” not a single one mentioned the political, economic and social catastrophe that is today’s Muslim Middle East and North Africa (nor did they praise its only democracy, Israel).
Foremost among the lies leveled at Israel, Netanyahu repudiated U.N. members’ genocide allegations, which he called “the biggest lie of the century.” He disproved that lie, listing the myriad steps Israel took to protect and support Gaza civilians, including strike warnings, evacuations, vaccinations and millions of tons of food aid, reiterating that Israel’s army is “the most moral in the world.”
In short, recent events in the Middle East—in the sky above it, and on the ground and sea all around it—Americans and Israelis have behaved bravely and responsibly to defeat Iran and its terrorist proxies, the neighborhood’s despicable bullies. Rather than thanks, those hypocrites who profit equally from U.S. and Israeli good deeds, especially Western nations, respond with harsh criticism. The United Kingdom and the Netherlands are now even levying sanctions against products and crops from Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.
Even worse, many of those Western nations, especially Western Europeans, have placidly sown the seeds of global jihad through uncontrolled immigration of Islamist populations. They are only beginning to reap the whirlwind of their own national destruction. (France’s population now has nearly 7 million Muslims, and for thanks, its streets are now daily ablaze with rampaging violence.) European nations have behaved as foolishly and arrogantly in protecting their own societies as they have in ignoring the dangers on the ground in the Islamist Middle East.
While Israel and the United States draw outsized condemnations from the international community, their values and courage to act in the face of clear and present dangers will help them stand proud, prosperous and secure as weaker nations falter and succumb.
Originally published on Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME).
