Mick Hartley

Well yes, we knew this, but now someone has taken the time to do some research on the UN's obsession with Israel. Eugene Kontorovich and Peggy Grunseid at the WSJ – At the U.N., Only Israel Is an ‘Occupying Power’:

Our research shows that the U.N. uses an entirely different rhetoric and set of legal concepts when dealing with Israel compared with situations of occupation or settlements world-wide. For example, Israel is referred to as the “Occupying Power” 530 times in General Assembly resolutions. Yet in seven major instances of past or present prolonged military occupation—Indonesia in East Timor, Turkey in northern Cyprus, Russia in areas of Georgia, Morocco in Western Sahara, Vietnam in Cambodia, Armenia in areas of Azerbaijan, and Russia in Ukraine’s Crimea—the number is zero. The U.N. has not called any of these countries an “Occupying Power.” Not even once.

It gets worse. Since 1967, General Assembly resolutions have referred to Israeli-held territories as “occupied” 2,342 times, while the territories mentioned above are referred to as “occupied” a mere 16 times combined. The term appears in 90% of resolutions dealing with Israel, and only in 14% of the much smaller number of resolutions dealing with the all the other situations, a difference that vastly surpasses the threshold of statistical significance. Similarly, Security Council resolutions refer to the disputed territories in the Israeli-Arab conflict as “occupied” 31 times, but only a total of five times in reference to all seven other conflicts combined.

General Assembly resolutions employ the term “grave” to describe Israel’s actions 513 times, as opposed to 14 total for all the other conflicts, which involve the full gamut of human-rights abuses, including allegations of ethnic cleansing and torture. Verbs such as “condemn” and “deplore” are sprinkled into Israel-related resolutions tens more times than they are in resolutions about other conflicts, setting a unique tone of disdain.

Israel has been reminded by resolutions against it of the country’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions about 500 times since 1967—as opposed to two times for the other situations.

In particular, the resolutions refer to Article 49(6), which states that the “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” This is the provision that the entire legal case against Israel settlements is based upon. Yet no U.N. body has ever invoked Article 49(6) in relation to any of the occupations mentioned above….

Our findings don’t merely quantify the U.N.’s double standard. The evidence shows that the organization’s claim to represent the interest of international justice is hollow, because the U.N. has no interest in battling injustice unless Israel is the country accused.

More at the Washington Post:

[S]ome may be inclined to shrug off the U.N.’s particular interest in Israel, on the theory that “one has to start somewhere.” In this view, international law is deeply intertwined with politics (which is true), and the international legal system is weak and immature. Dealing with alleged Israeli wrongdoings is the first level in an eventual broader and more systematic approach. Another response is that if it is impossible to censure serious wrongdoers — say, Turkey and Morocco, whose occupied territories are now mostlypopulated by settlers — something is better than nothing.

But the data — which covers the past 50 years — show this is not happening. If anything, causation seems to run the other way. Turtle Bay’s focus on one country has apparently robbed it of the ability to address the world’s many situations of occupation and settlements. This shows the double role of the scapegoat: It does not just get all the blame, but it also effectively absolves others. The U.N.’s blindness to settlements around the world is actually the flip side of its focus on Israel.

[Turtle Bay? UN headquarters is situated in Turtle Bay, Manhattan.]