By IFEANYICHUKWU AFUBA

It is a troubling time for institutions when their mandate is compromised, privatised or personalised. The more common means of dominating an institution is making it captive of an ideology. This is often the reason why organisations divert from the heart of their constitutions. For instance, in recognition of Nigeria’s multi religious character, the Nigerian Constitution prohibits adoption of any religion as State religion. Yet, Nigeria is forcibly a member of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. In mid-November 2024, Nigeria participated at the Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the highest levels, even as Nigeria’s non-Arab and non-Islamic identity conspicuously stood out. Corruption of Nigeria’s university system is proceeding at fast speed because of misdirected anger over poor pay, this, arising from comparison with emoluments of national assembly members. Even academics scandalised by the commercialised processes of university education today are resigned to the inbuilt extortion of students by lecturers. This false order thrives because a rationalisation psyche is in force in the universities. The United Nations too is at such a crossroads today. Founded to promote the cause of world peace, the UN is today increasingly employed to prosecute ideologies of discrimination and domination.

The UN body under threat of derailing from the organisation’s core mandate is the General Assembly. To be sure, the Security Council is privatised; but it was unapologetically framed as such from the beginning. The concept of veto power is nothing but politics of might is right. But the General Assembly was conceived under the principle of equality of nations. It was created to reflect the nuances of global diversity. By this means, it offers a voice to the voiceless in the global stage. The official UN site www.un.org points out that the GA is the “only UN body with universal representation.” But even this level mechanism can be upset, shifted; and has been manipulated against the State of Israel. In it’s subtle persecution of Israel, the GA presents an example of how democracy, an otherwise healthy system can be a disadvantage in equitable decision-making.

By its 193 membership strength, you would expect a wide, multi and diverse range of subjects to be receiving the GA’s attention. And for broad, dispassionate perspectives to be injected into the consideration of these felt concerns from around the world. But, no, the GA is gradually being reduced to a tribunal interrogating petitions against Israel’s right to exist. Israel’s enemies have since perfected a plot for repetitive accusations against Israel. These similar allegations are lodged with the GA on a somewhat rotatory manner so that the subject of Israel’s atrocities is regularly a talking point at the UN. With so much vehemence and theatrics thrown into it, the setting is created for sentiments to influence deliberations on the complaints. The siege is escalated by the trick of mass numbers ranged against Israel under umbrella identities in what should be disputes between Israel and a specific member state or observer as in the case of Palestine. Whatever space left for objective examination of the issues is further assailed by the noise effect of unceasing petitions. This harangue of Israel at the UN has gone on for too long, and aside the injustice against Israel, it comes at the cost of neglect of other world conflicts.

UN Watch Database of November 3, 2024 records that “from 2015 through 2023, the UNGA has adopted 154 resolutions against Israel and 71 against other countries.” The analysis further shows that in 2024 alone, the UNGA passed 17 resolutions on Israel and only 6 resolutions on the rest of the world. Obviously taking a cue from the UNGA, the UN Human Rights Council has also proved its own obsession with Israel. UN Watch Database highlights that “from 2006 through 2024, the Council adopted 108 resolutions against Israel, 45 against Syria, 15 against Iran, 10 against Russia and 4 against Venezuela.” The preponderance of these sessions on Israel is brought about by ideological influence on the question of the Jewish State. This reconceptualisation, as earlier hinted, leads to externalisation of the inherent issues. Consequently, the Israel-Palestine issue changes to Israel, Arab-Islamic conflict, which configuration automatically puts Israel at huge numerical disadvantage.

And so, the Middle East crisis is probably more of ideological tussle than it is about land. It’s precisely the contrasting values between Judeo-Christian civilisation and Arab-Islamic heritage that pits a swarm of countries against Israel. This is why Iran, a non-Arab State with theocratic rulership, is a ringleader of the plot against Israel. It also explains why almost every Arab-Islamic summit is preoccupied with the Israel agenda. Aside the emotional drive that goes with religion, the anti-Israel axis also brings economic pressure to bear on its campaign. Between them, the Arab-Islamic solidarity controls no less than seventy percent of the world’s oil resources. This natural endowment was weaponised against Israel and the United States following the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The impact of the oil sanctions gave rise to the American energy crisis. The economic leverage through oil boycott continues to be used to enlist otherwise unwilling countries into opposition against Israel. Then, there is the awful approach of inciting resentment against Israel with propaganda and disinformation.

We see this tactics actively at play in the Gaza war. While we acknowledge Israel’s excesses in the war, the attempt to condition minds against Israel should be deplored. A few observers have wondered at the ease with which even sections of the Western media lapped up Hamas’ narrative of the war, including dizzying casualty figures and the catchphrase of seventy percent of the victims being women and children. Do mainstream, independent media really doubt that terrorist armies such as Hamas violates international law by infiltrating civilian infrastructure and exploiting non-combatants as human shield? In an article in The Telegraph of 16 December, 2024, Zoe Strimpel highlighted how a study by Andrew Fox, a disinformation researcher and former lecturer at Sandhurst, tore to shreds, Hamas’s casualty figures. Using their very own data for investigation, Fox provides insight into the propaganda of mainly civilian victims. “One way they did this was to list men as women. Adults were also registered as children; twenty-somethings as infants. Natural deaths, in the tens of thousands, were included as well. And the nub of it: the lion’s share of deaths in Gaza were those of fighting aged men.”

Aljazeera, the leading megaphone of the conspiracy against Israel, has been unrelenting in it’s one sided coverage of stories involving Israel. The television station which prides itself in the editorial policy of consistent reference to Arab land seized by Israel as “occupied territory”, finds justification in the provision that “international law prohibits the acquisition of land by force.” The same Aljazeera and their collaborators will say nothing about the UN charter which states: “All members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security are not endangered.” And Aljazeera will not update its viewers that the “occupied lands” were lost in defeated acts of aggression against Israel. The first territories were captured in the post-independence war of 1948/1949 in which Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt sought to cripple the State of Israel at birth. More territories were captured in the 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars against the combined militaries of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. These violations of the UN charter mean nothing to Israel’s detractors; their concern being to extract reward for aggression. And why, does Aljazeera not rail at Turkey over its occupation of northern Cyprus? Why is Turkey’s defiance of Security Council Resolutions 541 and 550 acceptable to the enforcers of UN declarations?

The hostility and assault against the State of Israel and the Jewish people has not abated. If anything, it has intensified in the past half a century. In the wake of the Gaza war, Israel has faced the unenviable task of fighting on seven fronts against an amalgam of three States and four terrorist militias. What else does Iran’s sectarian dictatorship do except to howl and plot for Israel’s destruction? On the existential threat faced by Israel, Wikipedia tells us: “There have been explicit or implicit expressions, statements and rhetoric made by individuals, political entities and factions within Arab and Islamic discourse advocating for the elimination of the State of Israel as a political entity. These calls often involve the use of strong language, genocidal threats or declarations aiming at the complete eradication of Israel.”

And yet, it’s this same Israel which ought to receive UN special protection in this climate of identity hysteria that is persistently bullied at the UN!

There seems no doubt anymore that Antonio Guterres, the current UN Secretary General has capitulated to the phalanx of anti-Israel mob at the UN. A measure of the UN’s wretched position on the Gaza conflict is to always demand for a ceasefire before calling for release of Israeli hostages. This miserable shying away from unconditional condemnation and reversal of lingering incidents of the October 7, 2023 massacre is a betrayal to the very essence of the world body. We are dealing with a leadership of the UN susceptible to selective history of the Middle East crisis.

In his first reaction to Hamas’s murder spree of October 7, Gutteres had in the same breath of condemning the killings, said the massacre did not occur in a vacuum! Gutteres clearly needs help. With this mindset, he renders himself unfit to drive a resolution process on the subject. With antagonistic fixation on Israel, Gutteres leadership does not seem to have found the time nor sensitivity to address other grave issues demanding urgent action from the UN. Over – concentrated on Israel, the UN watched as Russia annexed Ukrainian Crimea before declaring full war against Ukraine. The bombardment of Ukrainian cities has continued, with energy infrastructure and other critical supplies the targets of overwhelming firepower. But a partisan UN knows when to look the other way. Iran, Iraq and Turkey jostle to outdo the other in their brutal suppression of Kurdish minorities in their States. And a parochial UN has no problem choosing which independence struggles to disregard.

The UN's hounding of Israel has been counterproductive. It has only served to heighten consciousness about the interests seeking to impose their worldviews on the rest of us. Israel is not about to disappear. But the UN will get weaker by pandering to divisive forces. (NAN)