Misleading claims about Israel frequently circulate at the United Nations. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, consists of 57 member states and aims to represent the voice of the Muslim world.
Together with non-aligned movement members, this organization is the largest working group within the United Nations. Among its objectives is to protect and secure the rights of Muslim nations. In its own words, “the organization has the singular honor to galvanize the ummah into a unified body and has actively represented the Muslims by espousing all clauses close to the hearts of 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide.”
In 1968, the United Nations created the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of Occupied Palestine. They meet to report on and categorize alleged “Israeli abuses.”
In November 1975, the world body created the “Committee to Exercise the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People “(CEIRPP). This committee was formed when the United Nations decided to declare that “Zionism is racism” (to be reversed in 1991).
The Palestinian people were not done yet. Two years after that, CEIRPP decided to create yet another body: the Division of Palestinian Rights. This committee reports directly to the General Assembly, the Security Council and the secretary-general.
On top of that, the United Nations has a permanent agenda item, Item VII, in the U.N. Human Rights Council—titled Human Rights Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Territories—that mandates that the human-rights situation regarding Israel and the Palestinian territories be debated at every single session.
This leaves Israel as the sole nation with a standing agenda item against it—the only nation with a devoted, permanent, dedicated agenda item. Israel is singled out three times a year under this particular agenda item.
Irrespective of how dire the human-rights situation might be in Hamas-controlled Gaza, for Christians in Nigeria, in the Sudan, for the Uyghurs in China, the population of North Korea or civilians in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel remains the only nation state to be constantly singled out.
Things reached an all-time nadir on May 29 when U.N. Secretary General-António Guterres included Israel as being responsible for sexual violence, alongside Hamas and ISIS. As Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, stated: “We are usually pursued by the United Nations, but what happened today is beyond imagination. To put our sons, our daughters together on a list with Hamas terrorists, with ISIS, that is something we cannot accept. We will work with the U.N., but we will not work with terrorists.”
Danon got a phone call from Guterres. “He had no names. There were no answers.”
This comes on the heels of a painstaking report of sexual abuse undertaken by Hamas, which began on Oct. 7, 2023, when terrorist operatives and other Palestinian Arabs stormed into communities in southern Israel and committed the vilest sort of atrocious—sexual acts against men, women and even little children that were “systematic, widespread and integral.”
Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy and her team of researchers worked laboriously, analyzing more than 10,000 photographs, Go-Pro videos (shot by Hamas members themselves), bone-chilling testimonies and sound bites of crimes committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians.
As she said, “very early, when we saw the denial that what was so quickly happening, we understood we had to start documenting this in the most rigorous, legal way. We decided to establish an archive. It was a moment of understanding that this is what has to be done. It’s a kind of violent material that no one wants to see. We took it as an obligation to bear witness and to document this.”
It took more than two years. They were the best experts in international law and gender-based violence and trauma, undertaking painstaking documentation. They quantified it with data points. There were more than 430 filmed testimonies. They found 13 categories of sexual abuse, rape, gang rape and the burning of sexual areas.
When the hostages were released, they spoke about the ongoing sexual assault and torture during their captivity.
What sort of allegations can a body of the United Nations actually fabricate that strain credulity against the most moral army in the universe?
As Elyakim-Levy states, “Our children will see this. Our grandchildren will see this. … It is a way of fighting antisemitism with this report. It is a watershed moment. The denial motivated us. We wanted to give voice to the victims. It’s about how we can even begin to fight that which we don’t know. Why are we doing this work? Will someone even care?”
Apparently, the United Nations does not.
