This one is easy, or I hope it is. I shouldn’t have to go into much detail about how most of the United Nations disgraced itself today, even by the lowered standards of its recent bottom-of-the-metaphorical-barrel ethical incoherence, by walking out of the hall just before Netanyahu began his speech.
Delegates didn’t walk out on Fidel Castro, who betrayed his nation and enslaved it after promising to be Cuba’s liberator. They didn’t walk out on Nikita Khrushchev, who was a significant architect of The Great Purge under Stalin that murdered between 700,000 and 1.2 million people. The United Nations has defended, supported and honored dozens of depots, dictators and mass killers, but its members chose the freely elected leader of the only democracy in the perpetually violent and messed-up Middle East—which the U.N. is primarily responsible for messing up in the first place—to show such symbolic contempt, disrespect and stupidity. As Netanyahu said in the clear and persuasive speech that followed this insult, the gesture supported terrorism, giving Hamas reason to believe the horrific sneak terrorist attack in 2023 was a diplomatic success, in addition to killing innocent Jews, the Palestinian national pastime.
“They burned babies in front of their parents,” Netanyahu reminded the nearly empty chamber. He rejected the creation of a Palestinian state—“They don’t want a Palestinian state along side of Israel,” he said. “They want a Palestinian state instead of Israel.” He vowed to continue the military campaign in Gaza to “finish the job” against Hamas, and defiantly accused world leaders of shying away from support “when the going got tough” for Israel, which, he said, was fighting a seven-front war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis in Yemen among others.
Verdict: true.
Netanyahu, in what must have been a United Nations first, wore a large button on his lapel with a QR code…
…. which he urged attendees and viewers to scan.
Yikes. I hadn’t seen all of that before.
The code linked to a website filled with gruesome images and videos of the Oct. 7, 2023. And indeed, this is what the nations whose representatives walked out on his speech are supporting.
Yes, it is anti-Semitism.
The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia were among the few national delegations that remained seated for Netanyahu’s address.
If the U.S. wants to remain a member of this useless ethically-rotted organization, fine, but it should not fund it or host it. Kick the thing out of our country. It can relocate in that Palestinian state it lusts for.
Woodrow Wilson must be rolling over in his grave, or at least wishing he could from his private fiery pit in Hell.
Ethics Alarms 
You could’ve summarized it
“Ethics Dunces: members of the UN assembly”
Shortest article you’d’ve ever written.
I was tempted. You read my mind. But I’m sure Extradimensional Cephalopod will find a way to argue that there are two valid sides to the matter. I can’t wait…
Nah, these are professional diplomats deciding they don’t want to hear what a world leader has to say. It’s literally part of their job to understand the different points of view in a conflict, and they are choosing not to do that. If this were their personal behavior, I’d engage with them about that. However, this is blowing off their professional responsibilities to make a cheap statement. “Oh, we don’t like you, so we’ll just leave.” Goody for you, but the conflict is still there, and your job is to understand the situation well enough to fix it. Maybe you should listen to the people directly involved. Or do you have something more important to do?
My verdict is that they should be fired and blackballed from public office.
I thought you would reach that conclusion, and I apologize for baiting you.
I realized the un was a scam after a required 6th grade class trip for my public school students. It was on this trip that the representative from Saudi’s Arabia would not meet us because there were Jewish students among us. following that I refused to shill for their useless unicef Halloween collection scam.
The UN still owes me for a month’s work I put in writing an ethics report for them.
I knew their reputation for diverting funds so contractors didn’t get paid, so I wasn’t surprised. Not as bad a rep for stiffing contractors as the Trump group, but not far off. My own fault, really.
As regards Bibi, I will never forgive him for sullying the reputation of Israel. Genocide may be the only solution to Gaza, but it has to be a last resort.
Why do I say it may be the only solution? Read this. Not what others say about them, but what they themselves do.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
Was the swipe at Trump needed to make your point about the UN?
Zoe,
“As regards Bibi, I will never forgive him for sullying the reputation of Israel. Genocide may be the only solution to Gaza, but it has to be a last resort.”
Could you elaborate on this statement. I do not understand it based on the last paragraph. My only disagreement with Netanyahu is that he has not used the imagery of the atrocity of October 7 to make the world face the fact that once Israel is destroyed the rest of the western world will follow. Unless free societies push back on the theocratic autocrats of the Moslem world western women will not have to worry about the abortion issue because they will have no rights at all and those who fall into the LGBT camp may just find themselves falling from tall buildings
“As regards Bibi, I will never forgive him for sullying the reputation of Israel. Genocide may be the only solution to Gaza, but it has to be a last resort.”
I don’t think reasonable people believe Israel is the bad guy here. You cannot sully your own reputation among those with an intractable hatred of all things Jewish.
I do not believe that an aggressor’s casualties of war can even remotely be considered genocide. Even if Israel basically makes the Gaza strip a wasteland to win the conflict and prevent further attacks such actions were precipitated by Hamas. It is no different than our actions after December 7, 1941 or our involvement in the European theatre. It was not genocide when we firebombed Dresden or wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I thought I cut Zoe’s quote and placed it in the beginning. I must have just copied it. My mistake for the duplication.
I really don’t know why Israel is hiding the images behind a QR code. They should buy air time and run the imagery as a documentary. People need to have to see what they are supporting.
Such images evoke strong emotions, the decision to eradicate Hamas had to be one of a Nation State, not an enraged populace.
James,
The continuing barrage of images of bombed hospitals by the media and staged emaciated Palestinian children for photo journalists is why Israel is being condemned.
Are you saying that the initial aggressor can use negative imagery that resulted from the retaliation to promote its aggressive righteousness while the nation attacked should be barred from showing what was done to them?
“The things I saw beggar description…. I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”—General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a letter to Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, April 15, 1945
“Upon Eisenhower’s orders, American troops came in and photographed the camp to document its horrors. Additionally, U.S. troops in the surrounding areas were brought to Ohrdruf to bear witness. Eisenhower was forever changed by the horrors that he witnessed at Ohrdruf, so much so that he kept the images that he had taken in the den of his Gettysburg home.
Liberating Ohrdruf and other Concentration Camps was not the stated objective of American military campaigns in Europe. However, Eisenhower saw the importance of chronicling and collecting evidence of the Nazi atrocities. On paper, this was not the job of Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he prioritized the documentation of the Holocaust and ensured that it would not be forgotten. His commitment did not end in Ohrdruf, as he continued this necessary work of evidence collection and documentation.
Dwight D. Eisenhower emphasized and understood the importance of bearing witness to the Holocaust. In doing so, he not only called upon the United States troops and media, but also felt it important for Germans to bear witness. He emphasized that ordinary Germans needed to view these camps and see the horrors that they had ignored. “
Documenting History: Eisenhower and the Holocaust (U.S. National Park Service)
no, I am saying the initial decisions should not depend on the emotions of the public. The examples you cited were all after the hostilities commenced or were used in the aftermath to support or justify the actions that ended the conflict.
military actions should be decided upon by reason and an appreciation of the costs and likelihood of success. Soldiers are often driven by emotion, Generals should be driven by victory
The initial decision to support Israel was based on the October 7 attack and we are forgetting about that. This is not about enraging the populace it is about reminding the world that the group claiming genocide and turning the world against the original victim with its propaganda why what Israel is doing is reasonable and necessary.
Israel is the only combatant that is forced to provide food, clean water and power to its enemy or else it is condemned. That seems to me to be damn unreasonable and maybe the conflict would have been over a long time ago if they were not vilified for not doing more to protect those who voted for the group and ideology that seeks to end the existence of the Jewish state.