Ben Shapiro says it’s time to ‘defund the United Nations’
December 28, 2017
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After over half a century of jostling for political leverage over one another, the United Nations has been reduced to a bully pulpit that the five permanent members of the Security Council use to check American supremacy. The powerless non-permanent members and the General Assembly are forced to play second fiddle to these regional superpowers, fighting over the scraps and using their symbolic authority to condemn Israel for daring to exist.
Following the misdirected rage from the left over U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to reduce the U.N.’s budget by an historic $285 million, conservative icon and Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro has condemned the intergovernmental organization, calling it an impotent “League of Nations knockoff” and insisting that “we should stop sending cash to an organization that operates as a front for immoral agenda items.”
“United Nations knockoff”
In his most recent syndicated column, Shapiro was responding to a showdown that began after Trump took the politically incorrect step of naming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — a decision that was derided among Islamist terrorists and the European liberal establishment alike. Israel is America’s most consistent ally and the region’s only legitimate democracy, and every Arab Muslim neighbor has at one point attackedthe national homeland for Jews.
Shapiro recognizes that Israel is vulnerable not only at their borders, but within the U.N. General Assembly where they are universally despised.
Shapiro is correct to ask why the U.S. should participate in what amounts to a forum for anti-Israeli activism:
Herein lies the great irony of the United Nations: While it’s the Mos Eisley of international politics — a hive of scum and villainy — and it votes repeatedly to condemn the United States and Israel, the tyrannies that constitute the body continue to oppress their own peoples. Among those who voted last week to condemn the U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving its embassy to Jerusalem were North Korea, Iran, Yemen and Venezuela. Why exactly should the United States ever take advice from those nations seriously?
Shapiro continues by pointing out just how often the U.N. votes on matters involving the Arab-Israeli conflict, noting that the organization has ignored strife in places like Myanmar and Syria while zeroing in on the comparably stable state of Israel:
The United Nations spends the vast majority of its time condemning Israel: According to UN Watch, the U.N. Human Rights Council issued 135 resolutions from June 2006 to June 2016, 68 of which were against Israel; the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization only passes resolutions against Israel; and the U.N. General Assembly issued 97 resolutions from 2012 through 2015, 83 of which targeted Israel.
Rather than help out in Syria, Shapiro notes, the U.N. has instead insisted that Israel hand over the occupied Golan Heights to the war-torn Arab state. Surely, Syrians living under Israeli occupation are safer than those who are caught between a brutal autocratic regime and the Islamic State.
In fact, Israel has treated more than 3,000 Syrians on their northern border who were injured in their country’s civil war since 2013. Hundreds of tons food, medicine and clothing have been sent across this border in Israel’s Operation Good Neighbor in an act of humanitarian relief that would surely never be reciprocated.
Diplomacy and war
Shapiro dismisses the Obama doctrine which insists that there are only two means for dealing with conflict: diplomacy and war.
“Diplomacy is a tool, not a foreign policy,” he writes, “and the use of diplomacy to pressure other nations to follow our lead is not only smart but also necessary.”
Indeed, Trump has used these diplomatic tools with great skills since ascending to the White House. The president’s refusal to acquiesce to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s attempts to intimidate caused Pyongyang to reconsider and minimize their threats against the island nation of Guam.
Trump has employed financial disincentives against corrupt Russians oligarchs and other human rights offenders, recently declaring these abuses a national emergency and implementing targeted sanctions. In Syria, Trump enforced the red line which Obama failed to defend, striking at a Syrian airbase in response to a chemical attack from the Bashar Al-Assad regime.
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Trump’s bold unilateralism is far more effective than any of the symbolic measures at the U.N.’s disposal.
“It’s an outmoded organization that’s outlived whatever small usefulness it once had,” Shapiro concludes. “There’s no reason for us to continue cutting checks to prop up regimes that condemn us publicly for exercising the most basic standards of morality.”
