Monday, July 30, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
Continuing the discussion of international law from where
we left off, it’s easy to criticize and even condemn multi-national
institutions, even the most successful of them.
For example, today historians agree that NATO represents one of the
most successful political and military alliances in human history. But during its entire history, many leaders
(American and European, Right and Left) complained bitterly about the
institution, decrying it as a “military occupation” or asking why US taxpayers
had to pick up the tab for European countries that continually wobbled on which
side to be on in the Cold War.
Yet despite these critiques (some of which were legitimate), this
remarkable multi-lateral organization managed to keep at peace a continent that
had been at war for centuries. And given
how many people during the Cold War insisted that the only options for the West
were capitulation or nuclear annihilation, NATO (plus patience) showed that
there was an acceptable alternative to this false choice.
Given its size, pretentions and corruption, The United Nations is an
easier target for similar criticism. Yet
it too has played an important role in the post-war world.
Take the Security Council, a part of the UN often criticized as
undemocratic (given that it preserves in amber outdated international power
relationships, giving the victors from World War II veto power over binding
decisions made by the UN as a whole). If
you think of the Security Council as presiding over a global democracy, this is
clearly unfair. But if you look at it as
means for facilitating communication between superpowers at odds with each
other (like the US and USSR during the Cold War), the Council provided a way to
diffuse tensions by presenting compromises that might be rejected if
originating from one or the other Cold Warrior as UN proposals brought by
“neutral” third parties.
In exchange for this important mediating role, it was required of
participants to act as though the UN had more international authority than its
actual clout would dictate. But this was
OK for those who felt that organizations like the UN might eventually evolve
into an organs of global governance. For
by creating informal powers for such an organization and getting nations to act
as though these powers were legally enforceable, there was hope that this
informal legalism would formalize over time (much like many common law
traditions eventually evolved into enforceable binding law within nations).
But for such fiction to eventually become reality, it was necessary
that these informal practices perform a useful function (as they did during the
Cold War) and that the leveraging of international organizations for narrow
national purposes did not go too far.
Unfortunately, the temptation of powerful states to use newly emerging
international institutions (not just the UN, but also NGOs working to create
codes of international and human rights law) for their own partisan purposes
was just too great. And nowhere is this
more apparent than in the exploitation of these weak institutions by Israel’s
political enemies.
Much of the “rap sheet” BDSers routinely read out regarding Israel’s
alleged violation of international law is made up of accusations brought before
organizations like the UN to be voted on by what has been called the “Automatic
Majority.” This term originally referred
the UN General Assembly where the fact that every nation (small or large,
democratic or not) got a single vote, allowing ruthless actors (like the Soviet
Union) to stitch together a coalition that could be counted on to condemn the
behavior of the USSR’s democratic enemies while ensuring that the human rights
spotlight would rarely if ever be turned on the members of this automatic
majority.
Sadly, this exploitation did not go away in the post Cold War world but
instead was picked up by other powerful groups (such as the Arab League and
Organization the Islamic Conference) which, via their numbers and a corrupt
bloc voting system within the UN, can be assured that any accusation they make against
Israel will become “law” (or at least an official declaration that Israel is in
breach of law).
At the same time, these very organizations (which represent the
greatest human rights abusers on the planet) are careful to never bring the
crimes of members of the automatic majority to the floor, thus keeping the
finger pointing eternally at Israel (and, on occasion, the US).
Yes, there are occasions when the accused rouse themselves to fight
back (as when the US got the UN’s infamous 1975 Zionism = Racism resolution
reversed in 1991). But for the most
part, this exploitation of weak international institutions by powerful national
interests has become the norm in international affairs. To restate a simple example I’ve used before,
how much more likely is it that Saudi Arabia will obey UN resolutions regarding
human rights for women vs. the UN following Saudi Arabia’s lead regarding the
passing global blasphemy laws?
When the 1975 Zionism = Racism resolution was debates in the UN, Daniel
Patrick Moynihan (then the US ambassador to the UN) prophetically warned that
the vote would send a message to the world that international institutions
created after World War II to keep the peace were becoming tools to help the
powerful wage war by other means.
Many remember his famous quote that “The United States...does not
acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous
act.” But fewer remember the prophetic
warning he gave to smaller nations (including many voting Yes on this “infamous
act”) that they were destroying the very institutions they might one day need
to turn to if they ever found themselves targeted by powerful predators.
Israel will likely survive the slings and arrows thrown at her by
accusers using international organizations, human rights institutions and human
rights itself as tools of propaganda.
It’s not entirely clear that the same can be said for the institutions
that have allowed themselves to be turned into weapons of war for someone
else’s benefit.
