The Uselessness of the U.N. Has Been on Full Display Since October 7

I n Gaza, the United Nations Relief Works Agency, UNRWA, is viewed as an adjunct of Hamas, and it has done little to belie that oft-leveled accusation. UNRWA’s employees are often Hamas members, the agency’s school curriculum buttresses Hamas’s anti-Israel and antisemitic agenda, and UNRWA HQ echoes the pro-Hamas line. But all the focus on UNRWA’s bias has overshadowed the Jew-hatred and anti-Israel mania in the rest of the United Nations. It’s time the United States stopped subsidizing it.

The sheer animal savagery of Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel shocked much of the world. In most Western capitals, leaders were quick to denounce the terror group. The Arab world aligned itself with Hamas. Iran’s allies in its self-declared “axis of resistance” celebrated the killings. And at the United Nations on that fateful day? Crickets.

Indeed, much of the United Nations is quite certain who is to blame for Hamas’s attack on Israel, and its answer isn’t Hamas. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the body’s most senior official, noted in remarks before the Security Council late last month that the October 7 attack “did not happen in a vacuum,” which many perceived as a justification of the massacre. The Israeli government called for him to step down over the statement.

Martin Griffiths, who serves as U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency-relief coordinator, was even less equivocal. On October 7, via his very active Twitter account, he professed himself “extremely alarmed by the rapidly escalating events in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Violence is never the answer.” Three days later, he lamented the “bone chilling” violence “unfolding in the occupied Palestinian territory.” He made no mention of Hamas or the acts of October 7. On the 13th, he declared himself troubled by the “noose” tightening around the Palestinian population in Gaza. Did he have anything to say about the hostages or Hamas? Of course not.

To be sure, UNRWA has been outspoken since the war started. But its tsunami of tweets since October 7 has not included mention of the attack perpetrated by its Gaza protégés in southern Israel. It has only once mentioned the terrorist group that rules Gaza, insisting that not all Gazans are Hamas. Is it troubled by photos of its staff celebrating the attacks of October 7? Not visibly.

UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini regularly retweets propaganda from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, but hasn’t mentioned either Hamas or the hostages in his also extraordinarily active Twitter account.

What about the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC)? That bastion of anti-Israel, antisemitic hatred actually observed a moment of silence for the victims of the Hamas attack. But Hamas’s hostages are not of particular interest to it. And its special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, insisted that the October 7 “violence must be put in context,” citing “almost six decades of hostile military rule over an entire civilian population.”

UNESCO, which spends millions in Gaza, is deeply troubled by the deaths of journalists at the hands of both Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces. But otherwise, it’s focused entirely on Israel’s actions, not on Hamas.

I could go on and on and on — for even more, check out UNWatch’s report here.

This litany of inhumanity is not cheap. The United States pays assessed annual fees to the United Nations; for FY 2024, the Biden administration has asked Congress to appropriate $1.70 billion in funding for the U.N. ($265.8 million more than the amount appropriated in FY 2023). That’s 22 percent of the annual U.N. regular budget plus assessed contributions for U.N. specialized agencies. It also includes funding for bodies like the Human Rights Council, which the Trump administration abandoned for its unremitting Israel focus and the Biden administration rejoined without conditions.

In addition to the assessed annual fees the U.S. taxpayer hands to specialized agencies, Team Biden has asked Congress for $485.8 million more in voluntary contributions for things like the United Nations Children’s Fund and the United Nations Development Program. And then there’s some extra change the government found in the back of the couch: Per the U.S. Agency for International Development, another $7.4 billion will go to the U.N. through various other accounts at the State Department and USAID.

All told, in 2022 (the last year for which there are totals), per the UN’s own accounting, U.S. taxpayers coughed up $18,095,456,587 to the United Nations.

It has been more than a quarter of a century since the U.S. Congress that approves all this money has demanded any kind of reform in Turtle Bay. In the meantime, in addition to the pervasive Israel- and Jew-hatred that infuses even U.N. agencies unrelated to the Middle East, the Communist government of China has overtaken a variety of critical U.N. agencies, entangling its own priorities with the U.N.’s “international” agenda in a way that renders them indistinguishable.

Doubtless there are useful things that happen at the United Nations, though it takes some effort to conjure up their impact — whether in Syria, where half a million died with barely a murmur from the international body’s leadership; in North Korea, where millions have died at the hands of a brutal dictatorship; in Xinjiang, where a million Uyghur Muslim Chinese remain in Communist concentration camps, suffering the silence of the world’s most important human-rights bodies; or in Ukraine, where a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council preys on a sovereign state’s land.

Sure, the U.N.’s structure insulates the Security Council’s five permanent members from attack. But then, is it not right to ask what exactly the U.N. does for human freedom, or, more practically speaking, for the U.S. taxpayer? Hating Israel and exonerating tyrants is hardly in the best interests of American foreign policy. Perhaps it’s time to stop paying the U.N. as if it actually serves American interests in any way, because it doesn’t.