The United Nations celebrates its 77th anniversary today. Joe Biden commemorated the day in a statement in which he also called “Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack on Israel” an “inflection point in world history.”
“The decisions we make now will determine our course for generations to come,” Biden said. “When we stand together and recognize the common hopes that bind all humanity, we hold in our hands the power to bend the arc of history. So often, the work of the United Nations has been a reminder of those hopes, bringing us all closer together and pushing us to recognize one another as human beings worthy of dignity and respect.”
As I wrote today, the branch of the United Nations devoted to women’s rights certainly made some telling decisions after Hamas attacked Israel. UN Women waited almost a week to issue a statement — in support of Palestinian women and children. The organization was, and has remained, silent on the rape and murder of Israeli women and the slaughter of children.
The United Nations is a “worthless” institution, Noah Rothman wrote this month. You might expect it to rally behind innocent victims of terrorists who commit egregious crimes against women and children. The UN women’s assembly’s disdain for Israel shows the institution’s worthlessness and exposes its grossly amoral aims. Ignorance alone hasn’t driven the international community of women away from Israel — UN Women’s perversion of the events at hand is willful.
The institution’s statement “on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (also available in Arabic, but not in Hebrew) called the “humanitarian situation in Gaza” dire and asked for “unrestricted access for humanitarian actors into Gaza.” UN Women spearheaded a new campaign this week (#WomenForPeace) to demand an end to conflict. “The voice and action of women are needed more than ever,” Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said. “When women come together for peace there is no voice more compelling, no force more unstoppable,” UN Women’s executive director, Sima Bahous, said. “Women must lead the path to peace. It is time to stop the killings,” former president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said.
Meanwhile, Israel’s U.N. account posted a statement today about the organization’s silence on the rape and murder of Israeli women and children: “The silence by the United Nations women’s rights ‘champion’ on the countless reports of rape and sexual abuse committed by Hamas on Israeli women, men, and children is deafening,” it said. “Silence is complicity. The victims need support, solidarity, and justice.”
The U.N. marks another year in demonstrating how much value the organization places on dignity and respect.