U.S. THROWS ISRAEL'S FATE TO HOSTILE U.N.

Dealing with the Devil. A diplomatic disaster in the making by Anne Bayefsky (NRO)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on the brink of handing President Bush the worst diplomatic disaster of his presidency. She is poised to agree to two United Nations resolutions that will tie the hands of both Israel and the United States in the war on terror and, in particular, inhibit future action on its number one state sponsor — Iran.

The catastrophe is the brainchild of Secretary General Kofi Annan, who has effectively turned the United Nations into the political wing of Hezbollah. Rice and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns are working furiously to satisfy a timetable dictated by Annan, not by the interests of the United States.

How did the United Nations become the forum for producing peace between Israel and its neighbors, which have rejected the Jewish state’s existence for the past six decades? In the last three weeks, a multi-headed hydra of U.N. actors has risen to defeat Israel on the political battlefield in an unprecedented disregard of the U.N. Charter’s central tenet: the right of self-defense.

Existing Security Council resolutions have for years required “the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south, [and] ensure a calm environment throughout the area, including along the Blue Line, and to exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it.” A combination of Iranian aggression, Syrian support, and Lebanese impotence and malfeasance, has actively prevented the implementation of the existing resolutions.

But how did the U.N. respond to the aggression against the U.N. member state of Israel, which was launched once again from Lebanese territory and which continues to the present hour? By accusing Israel of murder, mass genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, the deliberate attack of children, and racism. U.N. actors have even denied that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization and analogized it to anti-Nazi resistance movements. ....

In short, the United Nations — which to this day cannot define terrorism — did not come to the aid of a U.N. member under fire from one of the world’s leading terrorist organizations. It came to the aid of the terrorist by attempting to prevent the member state from exercising its right to hit back. The Geneva Conventions clearly state that combatants are prohibited from using civilians as human shields, but if they do so, the presence of civilians does not render the area immune from military operations. Israeli soldiers and civilians are paying with their lives daily as a consequence of Israel’s efforts to avoid disproportionate action — a dramatic exercise of restraint taken in order to reduce Lebanese civilian casualties.

But in the face of the U.N.’s obvious predilection to subvert Israel’s well-being and American foreign policy interests, to whom has Secretary Rice turned to save the day? The United Nations! The result has been as predictable as it has been disastrous.

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