Hypocrisy and Misplaced Values

We live in a time of institutionalized hypocrisy and misplaced values.

As we observe protests in major cities and universities around the world aimed at Israel and Jews, we forget the inability of the United Nations to address genocide globally. As well, I question the unwillingness of the protestors to focus their ire on global practitioners of this crime rather than only on Israel that is not, in fact, practicing genocide, since the 20% of its population that is Arab is fully integrated into Israeli society.

Credibility requires applying the same principles across the board.

This is not the case today either among student protestors, their politicized university administrations and professors, or member states of the United Nations. This leads me to question whether it is a case of misplaced values or hypocrisy.

The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), set up in 1949 to deal with Palestinian refugees has supported antisemitism in its Palestinian schools and contributed to the indoctrination of young Palestinian students to hate Jews. This has been demonstrated time and again and underscores the U.N.’s partiality when in fact it should be impartial and work decisively to eliminate all kinds of discrimination and hatred.

In another example, the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) unanimously elected Saudi Arabia to chair its 69^th session in 2025.

As Chair, Saudi Arabia gets to manage the course of debate and decision-making in this body established originally to ensure the political, economic, and social rights of women globally as well as rule on the effects of conflict on women and girls, including rape, forcible marriages, kidnappings, and feminicides.

Saudi Arabia is one of the most egregious violators of women’s rights and forces its women to hide behind veils of male domination in every respect. Along with Iran and Afghanistan, it is a major practitioner of gender apartheid. How member states could tolerate such a farce is beyond me and many observers who fight daily for women’s rights and female emancipation.

Hypocrisy at the United Nations doesn’t end here.

The 2024 session of the Conference on Disarmament began in Geneva in late January and will continue till mid-September. The Presidency of the conference rotates among its member states in alphabetical order, each member holding office for four weeks.

Iran took over from Indonesia on March 18 amid harsh criticism over its non-compliance with the demands and rulings of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran continues to pursue the development of nuclear weapons despite IAEA rulings and international sanctions.

Iran is also a major backer of such terrorist groups as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Iran is responsible for the Hamas terrorist action of October 7th and remains an active player in suppressing Syrian opponents to the Assad regime.

Iran has orchestrated terrorist attacks in Western capitals such as the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) Jewish center in that same city in 1994.

An Argentine court found Iran guilty on both counts and declared Iran a sponsor of terrorism.

As noted above, Iran is also among the many Muslim countries that practice gender apartheid. The regime has incarcerated or murdered girls and women simply for wanting to show their hair and be themselves – rights enshrined in the United Nations Charter.

So much for a disarmament “advocate” and a “defender” of women’s rights.

So much for balanced student demonstrations.

Another Muslim country, Afghanistan, bans girls and women from studying and confines them to house arrest. Again, Muslim on Muslim violence that university protestors refuse to confront and protest.

Global hypocrisy is manifest far beyond the United Nations.

According to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, over the past ten years, an average of 84 civilians have been killed every day in direct connection to the war in Syria. By 2022, an estimated 306,887 civilians had been killed since the armed conflict began. These staggering numbers reveal the brutal impact of the conflict on the lives of Syrian civilians.

And the main culprit is Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

According to Al Jazeera, Syria’s return to the Arab League, with the attendance of President Bashar al-Assad at its June 2023 summit in Saudi Arabia, was mainly about symbolism. However, it reflects an important shift in how regional actors view the reality of the survival of al-Assad’s government, in ways that are at odds with the West.

More than 11 years after Syria was suspended from the pan-Arab institution in the wake of the brutal crackdown on opposition protesters and the ensuing war in the country, the emerging consensus in Arab capitals today, rightly, or wrongly, is that addressing Syria’s problems requires engagement with Damascus.

Thus, the murder of over 300,000 men, women, and children goes unpunished. Al-Assad remains in power and in good stead with his Arab confreres.

An egregious example of Muslim-on-Muslim violence.

No global outcry or university occupations here.

Other examples of unpunished genocidal practices abound.

Turkey continues its war with the Kurds, destroying their cities and killing innocents.

Muslim on Muslim terrorism and murders.

The war against Christians in the Middle East and Africa continues unabated with no protests registered by activists in Western cities. Christians have all but disappeared from Arab countries, and in Nigeria tens of thousands have been kidnapped or murdered by ISIS affiliate Boko Haram.

Again, no university protests here.

In Sudan, the Darfur genocide is systematically killing ethnic Darfuri people during the ongoing Darfur war in since 2003. It has become known as the first genocide of the 21st century and has led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict several people. An estimated 200,000 people were killed between 2003 and 2005 in this Muslim against Muslim genocide.

Meanwhile, China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang. According to the BBC, the Uyghurs are the largest minority ethnic group in China's north-western province of Xinjiang.

Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls "re-education camps" – actually concentration camps -- and has sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms.

Unfortunately, genocide is not limited to one group of people or one country.

Genocide is practiced around the world.

Human values have become so distorted thanks to the global hypocrisy of member states of the U.N. that accept genocide for their own geopolitical objectives.

Indeed, the fact that Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, can invade and murder tens of thousands of Ukrainians with impunity, speaks to the fecklessness of this organization’s member states and their cynical attitudes to the U.N.’s stated values.

It is no wonder that people everywhere increasingly doubt the ability and willingness of governments and multilateral institutions to prevent genocide.

Many governments tacitly support genocide globally for their own national interests as do members of the general public. Hatred is often an easy sell for those who seek to have their prejudices legitimized by their leaders.

And this remains a major challenge of our times for leaders and voters everywhere: to transform hatred into empathy, hypocrisy into a commitment to justice and mutual acceptance, and false values into strong moral positions.