When terrorists in Hamas-run Gaza busied themselves in recent years launching well over 2,000 rocket and mortar attacks on Israel, including hundreds of attacks in recent months, the U.N. shrugged it off as business as usual. That’s not to say that the U.N. ignored the attacks entirely. As the bombardments went on, and on, a few U.N. officials did occasionally call for them to stop. But these statements were invariably coupled with calls for Israel to practice “restraint,” or, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon put it last week, “maximum restraint.” Under the circumstances, this amounts to a demand that Israel refrain from defending itself.
That might make sense were the U.N. itself devoted to protecting Israel by genuinely rolling up terrorists in Gaza. But the U.N. offers no such service. On the contrary, lacking even an official definition of terrorism, the U.N. works alongside the Palestinian terrorist groups that infest Gaza, especially Hamas, which controls the enclave and is dedicated in its charter to Israel’s destruction. The U.N. has made an entire sub-industry out of subsidizing Gaza, serving as a conduit for Western tax dollars to bankroll a wide array of social services. That helps free up Gaza’s terrorist overlords, backed by Iran, to focus their energies on acquiring and using munitions to attack Israel. In recent days, these attacks have included the launching of Iranian Fajr-5 rockets, with a range that extends as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The pattern has been that Hamas and its brethren terrorist groups in Gaza pay no heed to the U.N.’s feeble calls to desist. The job of preventing the attacks on Israel falls squarely on the Israelis. In the U.N.’s morally inverted cosmos, this sets the stage for savaging Israel, as soon as Israel acts to defend itself. Courtesy of the U.N., chalk up a gain for the terrorists.
So, when Israel finally struck back on November 14 by killing Hamas military commander Ahmed al-Jabari and targeting terrorist nests and rocket-launching sites in Gaza, the U.N. swung immediately into overdrive. In short order, Secretary-General Ban phoned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express “concern” about “the deteriorating situation.” The U.N. Security Council held a crash meeting that same evening, in closed session, to discuss “the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.”
The U.N.’s Palestinian-refugee agency, UNRWA (the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), headquartered in Gaza, promptly began issuing situation reports, noting in passing that the rocket attacks out of Gaza should stop, while deploring in detail Israel’s actions to stop them. From Geneva, the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, pronounced herself “appalled,” and her spokesperson declared she was “following the unfolding situation in Gaza and southern Israel with considerable alarm.”
With terrorists in Gaza continuing the rocket attacks, and Israel continuing to strike back, Ban decided to ramp up U.N. efforts at intervention, releasing a statement that “I am heading to the region to appeal personally for ending the violence and contribute to ongoing efforts to that end.” By Monday, Ban had landed in Cairo, for the beginning of an emergency swing through the region.
For the sake of clarity, as U.N. declarations of dismay now flood the news, let’s replay this tape. Terrorist attacks on Israel are of no urgent concern to the U.N. But when Israel tries to defend itself by striking the terrorists, U.N. officials at the highest levels start scrambling to put a stop to what they call a deteriorating situation.
Where were all these U.N. officials while Israel was living through the bombardments that finally provoked its current response, Operation Pillar of Defense?
