The Other UN Story

 

The chances are, Gentle Reader, that you’re well aware of the recent visit of President Trump to the United Nations.  You’ve read about his whining about the escalator, the teleprompter, and the sound system (“triple sabotage”), and about his speech, which was rambling, narcissistic, xenophobic, condescending, and mendacious—exactly as expected, in other words.  Of course, the UN says that Trump staffers were responsible for both l’affaire d’escalator mécanique and for the teleprompter problem.  Curmie doesn’t necessarily believe them, but when the choice is between someone you’re not sure about and someone any sane person would actively distrust…

But that’s not the UN story Curmie wants to talk about.  Rather, it’s about the walkout, pictured above, prior to a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  There’s more coverage of the imaginary slights to Trump, or rather his obsession with them, than about what should have been the top UN-related story of the week.  As noted above, Trump neither said nor did anything unexpected.  Neither did Netanyahu, whose fiery speech dismissed accusations of genocide in Gaza; condemned the recent recognition of a Palestinian state by nations like the UK, Canada, and Australia; and promised to “finish the job” of eliminating Hamas.

The suggestion in a New York Times article that what Netanyahu didn’t say—there was no mention of annexing the West Bank, for example—may be the true story here is intriguing, especially in light of the peace proposal drafted by the Trump administration.  Curmie is anything but a fan of 47, but if he can indeed get buy-in from both Likud and Hamas, that would be a major achievement.  This will, of course, be believed when seen, and past experience suggests that Trump is seeking a distraction from the Epstein files touting an agreement negotiated with only one side, and to which the other side has precisely zero chance of agreeing.

This essay isn’t about what Netanyahu said or didn’t say, however.  It’s about that walkout.  The first thing to notice is that there was no similar display two days earlier when Donald Trump addressed the delegates.  Trump, after all, is a primary reason, if not the primary reason, that Netanyahu can behave the way he does.  Trump has also interfered in the domestic affairs of other nations (Brazil, Argentina…); ordered the killing of the crew of a Venezuelan fishing boat in international waters because of mere suspicion that it might have been carrying drugs; threatened to annex Greenland (from an ally!) and Canada (!); made a sport of insulting foreign leaders (e.g., Zelenskyy) and reneged on promises made in the name of this country; and, since neither Congress nor SCOTUS are interested in doing their jobs, single-handedly enacted and retracted tariffs with less self-control than a two-year-old on a sugar high.

Even if you take issue with one or more of the items in the last paragraph, Gentle Reader, you must grant that there are a fair number of UN delegates who would rather be doing virtually anything else than listen to Trump ramble incoherently for an hour.  But there they sat, or at least we saw no news stories to the contrary, and one suspects that we would have.  So, why did they stay?  Out of respect?  Fear?  Sense of responsibility?  Masochism?  Curmie declines to speculate further.  But it does throw some light on the motivation for the walkout before Netanyahu’s speech.

Let us take as given that the situation in the Middle East, especially as regards Palestine, is complex and contradictory, and that one’s attitude towards that part of the world is likely to tell us at least as much about the spectator as about the spectated.  The Hamas attack just short of two years ago was horrific, and the refusal to release the remaining hostages is unconscionable.  Israel’s response is nevertheless disproportionate, and the only question is whether intentionally starving innocent children is nonetheless ethical, given that there are different rules at play in war than in peace.

Curmie first wrote about the area on his old blog (yes, on LiveJournal) in the immediate aftermath of Hamas winning the election in Palestine over 19 years ago.  He described the moment as “it's put up or shut up time for them, unless they are truly stupid enough to try to subvert the democratic movement that brought them to power.”  Alas, they did prove to be that stupid, although as Curmie wrote in a 2010 piece on attempts by relief organizations to run an Israeli blockade and deliver food, medicine, and other items to Gaza, Curmie had “overlooked the possibility of an Israeli initiative which would allow Hamas to pass the blame—legitimately, or with at least a claim to legitimacy—to the very government they so vehemently oppose.”

If Curmie had to pick his favorite essay on Palestine, it would be this one from 2014, invoking the story of the six blind men and the elephant.  In the fable, each of the blind men engages with a different part of the pachyderm, declaring with certainty that he has encountered a rope (the tail), a pillar (a leg), a solid pipe (a tusk) and so on.  Notice that each of them is completely honest and fundamentally logical in his assessment, which, of course, is at best incomplete.

Curmie wrote:

Curmie has three real-life Jewish friends (at least two of whom have commented on the CC Facebook page) who have threatened to unfriend anyone who publicly supports Hamas. Curmie also has friends, especially in the UK and Ireland, who are not only supporting but organizing boycotts of Israeli goods. None of these folks are bad people, or even particularly narrow-minded. They are just grabbing a tail and can’t imagine how someone could possibly describe the elephant as being wall-like.

Moreover, not only can good, compassionate, people disagree about how to proceed, but we must reject false dichotomies.  As Curmie has mentioned several times (here and here, for example) it is perfectly possible to support humanitarian aid in Gaza for suffering people without supporting Hamas.  It is possible to argue against the Israeli government without being antisemitic, just as it is possible to condemn the policies of Kamala Harris without being sexist or racist. 

It is also possible, without sanctioning a governmental policy that could legitimately be described as a war crime, to understand the disquiet, even thousands of miles away from the Middle East, of American (British, French, etc.) Jews, who not without reason regard the October 7 attack of two years ago as a symptom of a global assault on their culture that has been going on for millennia. 

All of the above is a long-winded introduction to a basic point.  The way out of this morass is through argumentation, which is, of course, the very purpose of the UN to begin with: better a war of words than a war of missiles.  A week and a half ago, Curmie wrote about the attempt by a collection of student groups to disinvite an Israeli actor/director who was scheduled to give a lecture at Michigan State University: “In particular, students’ unwillingness to even listen to opposing viewpoints is deeply disturbing.”

But those are college kids.  Curmie spent half a century in which the majority of the people with whom he came in contact were post-adolescents.  Those folks are trying to find their way in a world they’re only beginning to understand.  They’re exposed to people and ideas the like of which they’ve never encountered before.  It’s unfortunate, even “disturbing,” that they are so tempted to exclude The Other, but openness to the hitherto unknown, at least to the point of allowing alternate points of view to be expressed, is part of the maturing process, and is, in Curmie’s opinion, one of the principal benefits of college. 

The delegates who so ostentatiously walked out before Netanyahu’s speech aren’t college kids.  They’re adults, and representatives of their nations.  It might not be asking too much to expect them to act like it.  Curmie wouldn’t walk across the street to hear Benjamin Netanyahu speak, but that isn’t Curmie’s damned job.  It is theirs.  Their entire raison d’être is to listen to someone with whom they disagree, search for points of accord, and try to make the world a better place for everyone.

They couldn’t be bothered, opting instead for what they undoubtedly believed was virtue-signaling but was really simply an abdication of responsibility.  But, just as that law student at Cal-Berkeley back in the spring of ’24 did her cause more harm than good by being an entitled ass, so did these yahoos hurt their cause by seeking attention rather than solutions.

As noted above, disagreeing with the Israeli government doesn’t mean you’re antisemitic.  But if you claim to be a diplomat, refusing to listen to the Israeli PM when you endured a harangue by Donald Trump pretty much means that you are.  

 

Robert Mugabe and the Irrelevancy of the UN

I owe my job to the United Nations.

Well, not literally or even directly, of course, but still… It was a course in the United Nations and World Government that finally pushed me over the edge and convinced me that I wasn’t really a Government major after all, and maybe this theatre thing would work out somehow. I’d survived one “One World” kind of course—I don’t remember the exact title—but whereas the professor for that course, too, made his ideology very apparent, I felt as if I could disagree with him without repercussions, and he was an excellent teacher, to boot.

I’m not saying the prof for the UN course was an “agree with me… or else” type—you know, the kind the right wing press thinks we all are—but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I read a couple chapters of the textbook, heard a lecture or two, and bailed. I believe it was the only course at any level I ever dropped more than one class day into the term.

But whereas I never regarded the UN as a panacea or even as a terribly enlightened body, I was always attracted to both the idea and the ideal. Even as a child, growing up an hour and a half or two hours up the Thruway from the city where the headquarters were (and are) located, I was fascinated by international diplomacy and its various manifestations. And the structure of the United Nations, the General Assembly where all countries are equal and the Security Council with its five nations with veto power, made a lot of sense to me.

My image of the UN was idealistic and probably rather romantic: enough so that my positive impression withstood the inevitable poundings caused by absurd votes, even more ridiculous vetoes, and a string of corrupt officials. I knew, of course, that no real organization could live up to my desires and expectations for the UN, but I believed, at least aspirationally. An enterprise as noble as this should not be de-railed, I reasoned, by the simple fact that the real-life manifestation was often controlled by the incompetent and the corrupt. After all, if you look at the most recent string of US Presidents, the only two without some serious ethical problems—Ford and Carter—were also the most ineffectual. Yet since the end of the Vietnam War, virtually no one but cynical right-wing politicians pandering to the wing-nut elements of their constituency (e.g., Rick Perry) has ever suggested secession or similar unpatriotic means to express disapproval.

Thus, I always got a little irked at politicians and pundits—mostly from the right—who brayed incessantly about how this country shouldn’t pay its UN dues and whatnot. Whatever its faults, the UN has its functions. If nothing else, it grants (or withholds) an international imprimatur to military actions—in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, and so on.

And then… there was the announcement this week that the newest international envoy for tourism is… would you believe Robert Mugabe? Here’s David Smith of The Guardian:

Improbable as it seems, the Zimbabwean president, who is widely accused of ethnic cleansing, rigging elections, terrorising opposition, controlling media and presiding over a collapsed economy, has been endorsed as a champion of efforts to boost global holidaymaking.

Despite that fact Mugabe, 88, is under a travel ban, he has been honoured as a “leader for tourism” by the UN's World Tourism Organisation, along with his political ally, Zambian president Michael Sata, 75. The pair signed an agreement with UNWTO secretary general Taleb Rifai at their shared border at Victoria Falls on Tuesday.

Zimbabwe's state-owned Herald newspaper quoted Rifai urging tourists from around the world to visit: “I was told about the wonderful experience and the warm hospitality of this country… By coming here, it is recognition, an endorsement on the country that it is a safe destination.”

Seriously, if we were to rate stupid ideas on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being a silly mistake and 10 being ontological imbecility, this is about a 14. It would make more sense to ask Larry King for marital advice, to name Rush Limbaugh as the head of a physical fitness commission, to commemorate Abu Ghraib on a postage stamp, to give Rod Blagojevich an endowed chair in political ethics, to care what Donald Trump thinks about absolutely anything.

This, Gentle Reader, is off the scale. Mugabe truly is the Marxist thug some on the right try to portray President Obama as being. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most corrupt leaders in the world, to have brutally suppressed political dissent, to have more than a little blood on his hands. He can’t travel himself, because of international sanctions. And this is the new face of international tourism. Brilliant.

I should point out, however, that Mugabe wasn’t necessarily the UN’s first choice. After all, the naked face-eater guy in Miami was killed Sunday, so officials had to scramble two days later to find the next-best representative of all the qualities one could expect in an honoree.

With this single, transcendent act of cataclysmic idiocy, the United Nations has definitively driven the last nail into its own coffin. I still yearn for an international organization wherein member states might be encouraged to discuss instead of invading, to negotiate instead of saber rattling, even to shout instead of launching air attacks. But this organization, the way it’s currently constituted: raze it, salt the earth, and start over somewhere else. It is officially, unequivocally, irrevocably, irrelevant.