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Nachum Kaplan's avatar

Good piece. Whenever I write about the UN I struggle to find adjectives that are sufficiently damning.

Daniel Clarke-Serret's avatar

Thanks Nachum. Please share it! The UN has aligned itself with the BRICS against Ukraine and Israel. It is the BRICS in all but name. Will the West now create its own UN for free countries?

Ruth Sheridan's avatar

Excellent commentary Daniel. For years I have been complaining about the UN. Guterres is another disgraceful stain in an organisation that it is no longer fit for purpose.

Joe's avatar

United Abominations

Alan Mairson's avatar

I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me decades to fully realize why the U.N. was & is such a malevolent force. On the surface, they present like the good guys. Not until I fully grasped the Jewish story could I see what makes the U.N. such an embarrassment. ... (I don't generally like to pimp my posts in other people's comments, and I may have shared this with you already, but I have a pet theory why the U.N. is so hostile toward Israel... >>

https://outofbabel.substack.com/p/swords-plowshares-spears-and-pruning )

Noah Otte's avatar

Nuance is something I’ve long stressed in my comments on Daniel’s articles. The reason I bring it up is often is because it is such a crucial thing and it’s conspicuously missing from public discourse nowadays. Antonio Guterres doesn’t really seem to grasp the concept of complexity too well. For example, it is possible to care about the humanitarian situation on the ground in Gaza AND the victims of October 7th and the hostages. You can feel sympathy for the people of Gaza AND recognize Israel has not subjected them to any genocide. You can care about displaced Gazans AND publicly call out the genocide in Sudan. Allow me to provide you some examples of complexity Mr. Secretary-General so you can begin to understand it. I’m a Trump supporter but I’m not a Trump sycophant. I support the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Palestinians being able to live there as well. I’m a supporter of the EU but also see its many flaws and favor reforming it. I think mainstream music generally speaking is awful but love Ella Langley. I enjoy many movies his company made, but also recognize that Harvey Weinstein is a reprehensible individual. I love gangster movies like The Godfather Trilogy and The Untouchables. But I have no love for real life organized crime. I am a fan of Sydney Sweeney but wasn’t fond of her latest, controversial ad. I think humans and animals are equal in that they should both be treated well, but you’ll never see me advocating for animals to vote. I have nothing against prostitutes on a personal level but prostitution should defintely not be legal. The mental health system failed Lindsay Clancy but she’s still guilty as sin of killing her three children. I despise the progressives in the Democratic Party and the MAGA movement in the Republican Party. See how easy that is Mr. Secretary-General? You should try it sometime! 😉

Let’s say I lived in Germany in the 1990s. I would be a patriotic German who bled black, yellow and red, be a champion of traditional values and the Christian Church in German, extoll the virtues of traditional German food and culture, love polka music, celebrate German reunification, embrace my brothers and sisters in the East with open arms, gladly help tear down the Berlin Wall, support a reunified Germany joining NATO, celebrate the return of full German sovereignty, vote for Helmut Kohl and the Christian Democratic Party, and be glad that liberal democracy and capitalism had triumphed in Germany. But at the same time, enjoy Techno music and Formula 1 racing, attend the Love Parade music festival, be happy to see Berlin become the capital of techno music clubs, be intrigued by the new punk music scene, attend the first Pride parades in Germany and Tutenball the famous drag show, cheer the repeal of the infamous Paragraph 175 banning homosexual sex between men, love the new fashions for men and women, welcome ethnic German immigrants from Eastern Europe, asylum seekers and refugees from Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe and foreign workers, I would be shocked by the alarming rise of racist attacks in Germany, support black Germans organizing and Black History Month being started in 1990, defend Turkish, Arab and Kurdish Germans from xenophobia, support easing restrictions on abortion, and support criminalizing marital rape.

Let’s say I lived in Afghanistan in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s. I would be a proud Afghan, fly the Afghan flag from my home, be proud of the Afghan Army which was called “the Prussians of the Orient”, have great respect for King Zahir, love visiting the cosmopolitan capital of Kabul, embrace Western-style modernization, welcome foreign guests visiting my country on the Hippie Trail and give them a private tour of my country, enjoy the rich Afghan culture, cafes and scenic landscapes, be proud of my ancestors who fought and defeated the British, support the progressive attitude of my country towards women, recommend Afghan food to all who’d listen, and be a pious Muslim. At the same time, I would oppose General Mohammad Daoud Khan and the Afghan Republic and the 1978 Saur Revolution and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, join the moderate and pro-democracy Islamic Society within the Majuhideen, deeply admire Ahmed Shah Massoud, fight against the Soviets and the Afghan Communists, rejoice at the Soviet withdrawal and thank God America came to help us, advocate good relations between Afghanistan and the United States, the West and Israel, be a staunch Muslim Zionist, fight for a democratic Afghanistan in the Afghan Civil War, oppose the brutal rule of the Taliban, join up with the Northern Alliance to resist them, and would welcome the American and Coalition forces in 2001 as liberators.

Let’s say I lived in Israel in the 2000s. I’d be a hardcore Israeli patriot, sing Hatikvah with zeal, serve in the IDF, reject the Camp David Agreement as an idealistic fantasy, oppose the peace process as pointless, fight to protect Israel in the Second Intifada, oppose Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, think it was disgraceful the Jewish settlers there were uprooted and all they built was and destroyed, facepalm when Hamas got elected in Gaza in 2007, support Operation Defensive Shield and Operation Cast Lead, call for stronger national security, and be all in favor of the Gaza Blockade. But I would also be appalled when twelve Arab Israeli citizens and one Palestinian from Gaza were killed by police during nationwide protests in October 2000, call out long-standing systemic neglect of the Arab minority by the state, I would fight to reduce historic inequalities between Jews and Arabs in education, housing and infrastructure, support the equal rights amendment within the IDF for men and women, support expanding combat roles for women, lobby to advance legislation combatting workplace discrimination and domestic violence, 100% support the Israeli Supreme Court recognizing same-sex couples as adoptive parents and ruling that the Ministry of Interior must legally recognize same-sex marriages performed in foreign countries, support full adoption rights being granted to same-sex couples, would welcome Mizrahi music, food and traditions becoming mainstream, and call for more Bedouin villages to be legally recognized by the state, and oppose the demolition of Bedouin homes.

Daniel Clarke-Serret's avatar

I completely agree with you about nuances Noah

Noah Otte's avatar

👏👏👏 A short but undeniably true article, Daniel! The United Nations does much good work around the world, no doubt. But that does not erase the fact that it is as largely toothless and useless organization that is biased against Israel and the West, plays fast and loose with the definitions of words, is plagued by antisemitism, embraces dictators and terrorists, is selective in which people they care about, and is completely politicized. The United States must defund the United Nations immediately! Not a cent of our tax dollars should be going to them. Antonio Guterres shook hands with the Adolf Hitler of our time Vladimir Putin. A man who murders political opponents, invaders other countries at will, slaughters civilians, tortures political prisoners, arranges for his political opponents and rivals to have “accidents”, is buddies with the Russian Mob, carpet bombs urban areas, fires missiles at apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, residential areas, and crowded dense cities, uses germ warfare, lets his soldiers mass rape Ukrainian women, used ethnic minorities and people from the third world as cannon fodder, wipes whole villages off the face of the Earth, embraces the far-right extremists and Neo-Nazis in the Wagner Group, loves Hamas, pals around with Xi Jinping and the Ayatollahs of Iran, kidnaps and forcibly assimilate to Russian culture Ukrainian children, throws protesters in jail, has the police beat up peaceful protesters, is a huge homophobe who despises gay people, and allows his soldiers to shoot dogs for target practice. Wow! You sure know how to pick em’ Mr. Secretary-General. Why don’t you go live in Russia? I bet you’d love it! What with all the poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction, sex trafficking, ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, crime, homelessness, old people neglected and abused, low wages, mass layoffs, skyrocketing unemployment, and sky high abortion rates! But I’m not done yet! You’d also get perks like a population that at last count two-thirds of has STDs, tuberculosis that is resistant to multiple drugs, a healthcare system that is even worse than America’s where it is common for people to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt, you’ll have absolutely no free speech, won’t be able to get due process, domestic violence is completely ignored, and there is currently a persistent HIV epidemic being ignored. Isn’t Russia just fun on the bun?!

I think you’d love it Secretary-General Guterres! Especially since your such a huge bigot yourself who has total disdain for the Jewish people, I’m sure you won’t mind at all how Russians treat women, the people of the Caucasus, Central Asians, East Asians, South Asians, Africans, Crimean Tatars, Jews, the Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Russian Far East, Muslims, Romani people, Armenians, Georgians, and disabled people. I hear you were buddies with Yasser Arafat the bloodthirsty terrorist who led the PLO. You must have been so proud of him for stealing billions from his own people, massacring Israeli Olympic athletes, jailing, torturing and murdering Palestinian dissenters, blowing up buses full of children, the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, executing school children, kissing the USSR, Red China, Communist Cuba, and Iran’s a*****, spewing antisemitism all day every day, taking innocent people as hostages, supporting far-left terrorist groups around the globe, teaching hate to Palestinian children, and ordering suicide bombings. I’ve heard you expressed sadness upon Fidel Castro’s death. I can see why as he was obviously your kind of guy. Castro was a brutal dictator who locked up more people in first few months in power than Hitler and Stalin did in their first three years in power, did mass executions, begged the Soviet Union to fire nuclear missiles at the United States, planned a terrorist attacked that would’ve killed thousands on the 1962 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, nationalized foreign companies, collectivized land, destroyed Cuba’s healthcare system, was a virulent racist and sexist, chased 80% of the Cuban Jewish population out of the country, was the Godfather of International Terrorism, admired Adolf Hitler, hired former Nazis, was buddies with Francisco Franco and embraced the Spanish Fascist regime, tried to assassinate U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy, Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan, helped Pablo Escobar stay one step ahead of the authorities and keep the murderous Medellín Cartel up and running, threw Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and gay people into concentration camps, and turned Cuba into a third world s***hole! Not to mention Communist Cuba had some of the highest abortion and suicide rates on Earth. Hey, Antonio! Guess who trained the PLO terrorists who kidnap and murdered the eleven Israeli athletes and a West German police officer at Munich in 1972? Cuba did! Guess who harbored cop killer and black nationalist Assuta Shakur? The man who’s passing you lamented in 2016. Guess who empowered that psychopath Che Guevara and let him kill as many as he wanted whenever he wanted? Your hero Fidel.

You also at the UN General Assembly hold a moment of silence for deceased Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi who was killed in a helicopter crash. Are you kidding me?! Raisi was not a man but a monster who murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people, presided over a brutal gender apartheid, give billions to Hamas, Hezbollah, The Houthis, and other terrorist groups, denied his people basic freedoms, sought to build a nuclear weapon to blow up Israel or use against the Kurds or the Gulf States, led chants of “death to America!”, and wanted to murder everyone on Earth to bring his God the Mahdi back. Mr. Guterres, you are truly sick to do a moment of silence for him but say nothing about the Israeli hostages! You repeated Hamas propaganda about a genocide in Gaza while ignoring real genocides in Sudan and Yemen. You never said one word about Syria’s slaughter of the Druze or China’s fifty-year occupation of Tibet either. Pakistan expelling Afghan refugees? Nah, it’s all good! North Korea testing nuclear weapons every other week? No big deal! Turkey slaughtering the Kurds and their own people? Completely fine! Gaza having its own version of the Jim Crow South right in its own backyard! No problem! Libya kidnapping black Africans trying to flee to the West for a better life and enslaving them and seeking them on the open market like cattle and trying to genocide Afro-Libyans and workers from Sub-Saharan Africa? Mums the word!

Daniel Clarke-Serret's avatar

Thanks Noah. Describing the UN as biased is what we call an understatement!!

Matteo51's avatar

Is “ moving forward” a further left leaning government? Run by the 20% of democrats who are far left?

Abdrazak azzouz's avatar

There were indigenous Jewish living in Arab countries till the Zionist came and convince them to be come Israelites, as like in Algeria the indigenous Jewish people that fled the Spanish Inquisition accepted the French citizenship in 1987 so, in 1962 they left with the French….there is a parallel between Algeria and Palestine , French squatters spent 130 years in Algeria but 1962 they were defeated because of two reasons, Ibn badise is a scholar that revived Islam in the heart of the Algerias and in May 1948 the massacre of 45,000 Algerians so, Sheikh Yassine who revived Islam in the heart of the Palestinians and the on going genocide these two the catalysts for walking of the Palestinians…

I always thought that Israel is powerful, after Gaza now I am persuaded that it is only a military Barack of the west in the Middle of Arab countries. Eventually it will fade way.. it is question of time.

Phred's avatar

I’m afraid your ignorance is showing.

Abdrazak azzouz's avatar

“Thank you Israel from the bottom of my heart for opening my eyes” this is a statement from people that you subdued them for years with your Zionist propaganda, and this article wont change a thing. People see that you are a stain on humanity. Worse version of Human.

Daniel Clarke-Serret's avatar

Remind me again, how many Jews are left in the Arab world?