The U.N. Piles On Israel

Excerpt

Regarding your editorial “Hamas’s Friends at the United Nations” (Dec. 20): The current conflict has demonstrated how dangerous it is that utterly biased officials can use the imprimatur of the U.N. to make wholly false accusations against Israel. Three officials in particular—Navi Pillay and Miloon Kothari on the Israel-Palestine Commission of Inquiry and Francesca Albanese as the special rapporteur for Palestine—are guilty of absurdly restrictive mischaracterizations of Israel’s right of self-defense, exculpation of terrorist attacks and false and inflammatory allegations of Israeli war crimes. These combine to increase international pressure on Israel to leave Hamas in power, and they set precedents that will hinder America’s future ability to defend itself against terrorists.

The blatant bias of these three U.N. officials, both prior to their appointments and in their subsequent performance, means that their appointments were, and their service are, contrary to U.N. ethics rules. The appropriate remedy is to terminate their appointments.

Orde F. Kittrie is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a law professor at Arizona State University. He previously served for over a decade in legal and policy positions at the U.S. State Department.