WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Elise Stefanik – If the United Nations continues its antisemitism, the US must withdraw support

Published September 25, 2024, 8:18 a.m.

By: House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik

People have watched in disgust in recent weeks as the country’s higher education institutions have once again been engulfed by vile antisemitism led by students and endorsed by university leaders.

Sadly, the higher education system is not the only institution infected by the deep rot of antisemitism. This week, hundreds of heads of state and government will descend on New York City for the annual meeting of the United Nations, which just this week issued a full-throated condemnation of Western nations for supporting Israel in its war against Hamas.

The U.N. has proven again and again that it is a cesspool of antisemitism that has completely turned against Israel in its darkest hour. Nearly one year ago, the world witnessed in horror the most vicious, brutal attack on Israel and the Jewish people since the Holocaust, a barbaric terrorist assault committed by Hamas that claimed more than 1,200 innocent lives. Israel’s women, children, and elderly were ripped from their homes and massacred, raped, and beheaded.

Despite these atrocities, there is an abject failure within the U.N. System to hold Hamas or its pro-terrorism puppet masters in Iran accountable.

The World Health Organization, for example, refused to acknowledge Hamas’s abuse of hospitals in Gaza as terrorist safe havens.

After receiving criticism for its deafening silence on Hamas’s use of sexual violence, U.N. Women eventually posted, and then disgracefully deleted, a condemnation of Hamas, succumbing to pressure from antisemitic, pro-Hamas factions.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs revised the death toll in Gaza down by 50% because it relied on false information from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.

The absurdly misnamed “Human Rights Council,” composed of some of the world’s worst human rights abusers, has a standing antisemitic agenda item related to Israel and adopted a resolution stating that Israel should be held responsible for war crimes, all while failing to condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas.

Perhaps most revealing, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which had a Hamas data center underneath its Gaza City headquarters, employed nearly two dozen staff members who ended up being directly involved in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and another 100 with terrorist ties.

Even U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could not bring himself to condemn Hamas after the recent murder of six hostages, including one American — an absolute disgrace.

The U.N.’s moral depravity since Oct. 7 is antithetical to American and Western values and, unfortunately, only the latest evidence of the long decline to moral decay of this once revered institution.

And it is directly tied to the failed policies of the Biden-Harris administration, which have emboldened our adversaries and advanced anti-American and anti-freedom sentiments around the world. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris gifted Iran billions in sanctions relief and actively worked to pause weapons shipments to Israel that were statutorily required by Congress. For months, the Biden-Harris administration blocked Israel from entering Rafah, where hostages are held, and the White House publicly cast doubt on the decisions of Israel’s democratically elected government.

Moreover, the administration’s choice to abstain from voting on critical U.N. Security Council resolutions, which failed to condemn Hamas or tie the release of hostages to any ceasefire deal, vindicated the use of terrorism and put the onus on Israel for stopping a war it didn’t start in the first place.

In contrast, the Trump Administration’s “America First” policies projected strength to our allies and adversaries alike and ushered in an era of peace, prosperity, and stability. He moved the U.S. Embassy to its rightful place, Israel’s eternal capital of Jerusalem, negotiated the historic Abraham Accords in the greatest stride toward peace normalization in more than a quarter century, eliminated every dollar of U.S. funding to UNRWA, and withdrew from the corrupt and antisemitic Human Rights Council.

Building on the Trump Administration’s success, House Republicans recently passed legislation to sanction International Criminal Court officials who investigate or prosecute the United States and its allies and cut off funding to UNRWA.

However, if we are serious about reforming the U.N., more must be done to eliminate antisemitism, restructure budgetary processes, transform human rights entities, and counter communist China’s influence.

In the U.N., Americans see a corrupt, defunct, and paralyzed institution more beholden to bureaucracy, process, and diplomatic niceties than the founding principles of peace, security, and international cooperation laid out in its charter. We must strive for a U.N. in which no one nation is expected to foot the bill but receive no accountability or transparency in return, in which no despot or dictator can sit in judgment of others while deflecting attention away from their own human rights abuses, and in which no organization corrupted by the likes of the Chinese Communist Party can dictate sweeping conventions and international standards across its membership.

The world is looking to the U.S. for moral leadership. As Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran and its terrorist proxies such as Hamas create a dangerous axis of evil that threatens the shared global commitment to peace, prosperity, and freedom, the U.S. must boldly defend our principles at every opportunity.

As the largest financial contributor to the U.N., the U.S. must present the U.N. with a choice: reform this broken system and return it to the beacon of peace and freedom the world needs it to be, or continue down this antisemitic path without the support of American taxpayers.