The Futility of Relying on the International Community
by Isi LeiblerSeptember 2, 2012
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=4258
Over 120
countries – equating to two thirds of total United Nations membership – convened
in Teheran to partake in the 16th Summit of
the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) hosted by the Iranian Islamic
Republic.
The Iranians
boasted that 3 Kings, 27 presidents, 8 Prime Ministers and 50 Foreign Ministers
attended. Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsy was present, breaching Egypt’s long
standing estrangement from Iran which he now describes as “a strategic ally”,
even though he condemned Assad’s regime in Syria. India, the world’s most
populous democracy, participated with a delegation of 250 headed by Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, stating shamelessly that its objective was to increase
trade and commerce with Iran.
Despite appeals
from the United States and others, UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, also
attended. He did so only days after his condemnation of Iran for defying
repeated Security Council resolutions demanding that it end its uranium
enrichment program and repeatedly contravening the UN Charter by calling for the
destruction of Israel.
In his address
to participants, Ban, without explicitly naming Iran, did condemn “threats by
any member state to destroy one another, or outrageous attempts to deny
historical facts such as the Holocaust”. He also called on Iran to stop
supplying arms to Assad in Syria and expressed regret that Iran’s refusal to
halt its nuclear enrichment program.
Ban’s media
spokesman, Martin Nesirsky stated that in private meetings with Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad, the UN leader also referred to
the vicious verbal attacks on Israel as offensive, inflammatory and
unacceptable.
But this did
not detract from the fact that combined with representatives from 120 nations,
the UN Secretary General’s presence effectively provided legitimacy to Iran and
sabotaged efforts to isolate it as a pariah state, the regime which serves as a
launching pad for global terrorism. In fact, only last week, Iran proudly
proclaimed that it had dispatched members of its Revolutionary Guard Corps and
other fighting personnel to support Assad’s criminal rule in Syria.
At the opening
of the conference, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini made yet another feral
anti-Semitic speech, shamelessly exhorting the world to annihilate Israel the
cancerous growth, referring to the “blood-thirsty Zionist wolves” who kill and
torture Palestinians and control the global media. Yet the UN Secretary General,
together with the other 120 participants remained passively glued to their
seats. In many respects, the atmosphere was reminiscent of the late 1930s when
the European nations, bent on appeasing Hitler, abandoned
Czechoslovakia.
Had the
Iranians, instead of targeting Israel, been describing a country like the UK as
the cancer of Europe and calling for its elimination, it would have been
inconceivable for Ban and the participating countries to attend a meeting hosted
by such rogues. But apparently, for Israel, anything goes, provoking Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to appropriately describe the Tehran NAM summit as
“a disgrace and stain on humanity”.
To exacerbate
matters, in their closing statement, the 120 participants mockingly denounced
the UN Security Council “unilateral sanctions” and unanimously endorsed Iran’s
right to pursue “a peaceful nuclear program” including “nuclear
enrichment”.
Nor was there a
single dissenting voice when Egyptian President Morsi handed over the rotating
presidency to Holocaust denier, President Ahmadinejad who will now preside over
NAM during the next three years.
Any criticism
or deviation from Iranian policy such as Ban’s censure of Iranian behavior or
Morsy’s condemnation of Syria’s Assad was predictably censored by the local
media who presented the Summit to the Iranian public as a vindication of their
policies and a global rejection of efforts to isolate and impose sanctions
against their government.
Not
surprisingly, the Iranian leaders jubilantly proclaimed that the broad global
participation vindicated them and represented a repudiation of US and Western
efforts to deter them from becoming a nuclear power. All in all, it was a major
PR victory for this evil regime and an indictment of the dismal state of the
international community.
The willingness
of so many countries to attend such a conference in Teheran at this time and
unanimously endorse the Ayatollah’s nuclear policies, clearly demonstrates the
abysmal failure of Obama’s initial policy of “engaging” with Iran and his
subsequent decision to impose sanctions and isolate the rogue state.
This episode
underlines the futility of Israel relying on the international community to
resolve potential conflicts.
It also
reaffirms the disfunctionality of the United Nations, which the Obama
Administration continues to appease.
Nothing
epitomizes this more demonstratively than the prominent role of Syria, Iran,
Libya, Cuba, Saudi-Arabia and similar dictatorships have contributed towards
formulating the policy of the so-called United Nations Human Rights Council.
Ironically, both Syria and Sudan, whose leaders are recognized war criminals,
notorious for brutally butchering their own people, are candidates for seats on
this bogus organization’s council scheduled for election next month.
Ironically, the
US is the principal financial donor to the UN - to the tune of a staggering $6
billion annually. It is highly unlikely that UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon
would have dignified the Iranians with his presence, had the US threatened to
review its funding to the UN budget if he proceeded to undermine efforts to
isolate Iran for defying Security Council demands and repeatedly calling for the
annihilation of a member state.
The United
States and Western democracies must recognize that they will become utterly
impotent if their global policies continue to be effectively subject to veto by
international bodies dominated by an alliance of Islamic nations, dictatorships
and tyrannies.
Democracies
should unite and seek to create a world order which will strengthen freedom,
encourage oppressed people to achieve self-determination and if required, be
willing to employ military power to deter the barbarians at our gates. Failure
to confront these problems now, threatens the long-term survival prospects for
Western civilization.
In Europe, the
motivation to resist antidemocratic forces has been substantially weakened by
the immigration of large numbers of Moslems who have undermined the foundations
of genuine multiculturalism by seeking to impose their way of life on indigenous
communities. This has been aided and abetted by the postmodernists –– whose
anarchical leftism and confused anti-colonialism have led them to allying
themselves with terrorist organizations and apologists for the most rabid
racist.
The message
emerging for us in Israel is that we must retain our relationship with
democratic countries, in particular the US, which despite the Obama
administration’s appeasement of Muslim extremism, has not capitulated to Islamic
pressures like the Europeans.
Ultimately, the
bottom line is that we must not succumb to pressures from those seeking to deter
us from taking steps to thwart threats to our survival. Nor should we be tempted
to rely on undertakings from other, “friendly” nations. We have learnt from
bitter experience, that when the chips are down we must rely on ourselves. As
Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon recently stated “the righteous work may be
done by others, but we have to prepare as if no one else will do it for
us”.
The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.comHe may be contacted at ileibler@netvision.net.il
This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom
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