In 1955, Israel was facing a problem that shares eerie similarities to the one that has been plaguing our country since October 7. In March of that year, a wedding at a moshav near the border with Gaza was attacked by Palestinian fedayeen terrorists, who crashed what was supposed to be a celebration with grenades and bullets, turning festivities into fear.
David Ben-Gurion, who had already served his stint as prime minister and had spent the last two years on a kibbutz sabbatical, had reentered the political arena as defense minister, and was deeply affected by the tragedy.
His solution? Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, regardless of what the powers at the world’s foremost global institutions thought, including the United Nations. “Oom-shmoom,” he bristled, declaring that it was the blood, sweat, and tears of Jews that had earned them primacy over the land, and not some UN resolution (Oom is Hebrew for UN; the phrase was repopularized by former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin).
That antipathy in Israel towards the international institution has remained until today. Last year, Pew surveyed how countries felt about the UN. Israel far and away had the highest level of enmity toward the organization, with no other country coming within 15 percent of Israel’s disapproval rating of the global body.
The reason for that large gap was showcased this week, when Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, went on the BBC.
“There are five trucks just sitting on the other side of the border right now,” he said on Tuesday. “They have not reached the communities they need to reach. This is baby food, baby nutrition. There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.”
Needless to say, 14,000 Gazan babies did not die in two days.
Propaganda against the Jewish state
To many Israelis, this is part and parcel with the propaganda disseminated widely against the Jewish state, cynically manipulating public perception by fudging facts amidst the fog of war and trying to appeal to emotion by drastically and dramatically overstating the damage done on the ground.
This distortion does nothing to aid the cause on the ground. To call it a well-intentioned attempt to rally people against the very real suffering in Gaza is to miss the point. It is alarmism in search of a good cause, an extreme amplification that smacks of scapegoating. It is the goy who cried wolf. Exacerbate the issue by exploiting the most vulnerable to raise the stakes geopolitically and emotionally, then claim yourself as the savior.
It calls into question the motives of representatives of a supposedly peace-oriented organization, whether they are trying to achieve actual results or grandstand for what amounts to geopolitical clout and cultural cachet.
Israel at the UN feels like it is unduly maligned, its very soul and essence disturbingly distorted by people who only wish it harm. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza can’t and shouldn’t be ignored. But neither should the cries of grieving parents of hostages.
In March, Ayelet Samerano, the mother of a hostage, spoke to the United Nations Human Rights Council:
“I know what an attack is. An attack is when terrorists, including UNRWA employees like Muhammad Abu Itiwi, enter a music festival and murder innocent young people. An attack is when a UN social worker, paid by this organization, kidnapped my son into Gaza: A UN employee who took upon himself to do good, yet did evil. No, UNRWA is not under attack. UNRWA is the attacker.”
Israel has historically not felt adequately represented by the UN. Look no further than the infamous UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism, a bastardization of the concept from people who seemed not to understand its very roots and importance to an often marginalized and massacred people.
To be an effective international broker, the UN cannot dismiss the true grief and struggle of the Israeli people, as it has. The horrors of this war do not extend only to one side. The UN has no right to gaslight us about our history and our hostages.
The heart of Israel is and will remain with the hostages. We know what an attack is.
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