Like America’s 9/11, the savage pogrom by ecstatic Hamas terrorists and their seizure of hostages on 7 October was a civilisational moment of moral clarity. Yet the worldwide response unmasked a crucible of radical Islamism united with the far left. In a furore against Israel, massive protests were mobilised internationally, and impassioned schoolchildren rallied with the zealotry of a medieval Children’s Crusade. The Hamas massacre and its scale and potential for recruitment were largely ignored by the United Nations, entrusted with upholding and policing human rights worldwide. After initially reproaching Hamas – designated a terrorist organisation by many countries – the UN sidelined the torture and murder of more than 1,300 people and the plight of some 240 hostages.

‘The attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,’ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres proclaimed, implying Israel had it coming after ‘56 years of suffocating occupation’. His remark makes little sense, as Israel unilaterally withdrew all security forces and farming settlements from Gaza in 2005. When Hamas gained control of Gaza in 2007, Israel, together with Egypt, maintained a blockade of the Strip to prevent Hamas from building a corrupt terrorist statelet. However, Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – the other major terrorist group in Gaza – continued firing rockets into Israel and started wars, in keeping with their foundational aims to annihilate Israel and kill Jews .

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a ‘sustained humanitarian truce’ in the war between Israel and Hamas, as well as aid to Gazan civilians. Significantly, the resolution did not condemn Hamas or its barbaric massacre, genocidal intentions and Iranian patronage.

Teachers at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) publicly celebrated and glorified the 7 October carnage, calling the perpetrators heroes and martyrs.

Scores of assault rifles have been found in Gaza’s UNRWA schools, where a curriculum of indoctrination and incitement encourages Palestinian children to hate Jews and emulate jihadis such as Hamas. Nevertheless, funds of around US$1 billion are contributed annually to UNRWA by countries including Australia.

UNRWA also blocks resettlement of refugees and inflates their number. As this UN body counts successive generations of Palestinian Arabs in their list of refugees, some 700,000 who became refugees in 1948 have ballooned into millions. But approximately 820,000 Jews who simultaneously became refugees when forced to flee their homes in Arab lands have not been officially recognised by the UN.

Israel is the only country permanently on the agenda of every session at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Consisting of 47 member states, including authoritarian and human rights violators, the UNHRC has passed more resolutions targeting Israel than all other nations combined. It would seem Guterres’ statement about Hamas attacks not happening in a vacuum better describes Israel’s long-term discrimination and demonisation at the hands of the UNHRC.

Sadly, Guterres does not condemn the extremist, authoritarian and imperialist regime of Iran that funds Hamas and other terrorist proxies in a quest to destroy Israel, dominate the region and spread the Shia revolution globally.

The UN has coddled the Islamic Republic’s mullahs and, in November, Iran was appointed to chair the influential UNHRC Social Forum 2023 that addressed human rights through science and innovation. In September, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi entered the US to address the UN General Assembly, despite sanctions in place to prevent his entry due to the role he played in the mass executions of dissidents in 1988.

Iran benefits from the voting system in the UN. As all 193 member countries have equal votes, democratic states are easily outvoted by undemocratic nations, often grouped in large, politicised blocs. What’s more, many Muslim states are committed to the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights. Based on Islamic law, this alternative document to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is incompatible with the UN’s all-inclusive UDHR.

UN bias against Israel exploded in the UN’s 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, where participating NGOs launched a campaign to delegitimise Israel, and distributed Nazi material and copies of the antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Subsequently, the strategy to attack and isolate Israel has proliferated through boycotts and false accusations of apartheid.

Apart from systemic persecution of Israel, nowhere is the failure of the UN more apparent than in its disregard of Hamas atrocities against women on 7 October. Documented cases of brutal gang rapes, torture, mutilation and murder of women and girls were based on eye-witness accounts and video footage taken by Hamas terrorists, CCTV and first responders. Some rapes were so violent that the victims’ pelvic bones were fractured.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Committee members of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women requested more proof of atrocities. Special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, went further by questioning the veracity of the evidence. UN Women, dedicated to condemning gender violence ‘irrespective of the nationality, identity, race or religion of the victims’ responded with silence for eight weeks. In contrast, their website affirmed the plight of women and girls in Gaza, based on dubious statistics provided by the Hamas Ministry of Health.

When the United Nations observed International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25, it seemed inconceivable that the gender-based Hamas barbarity on 7 October could be overlooked.

The United Nations International Children’s Fund (Unicef) was also culpable. On World Children’s Day, 20 November, Unicef ignored Israeli child hostages and Hamas’ use of children as human shields, even holding them in front of their own bodies.

Ideally, Guterres should applaud a small democracy battling to survive a genocidal regime and its proxy tentacles. His silence is symptomatic of the UN’s wilful acceptance of extremists, autocrats and human rights violators, and the shameful hypocrisy that mocks the core civilised values of an esteemed institution. Moreover, the Hamas pogrom has exposed the UN’s anti-Israel underbelly and made clear its perverted, dishonourable antisemitic culture. Like the British Labour party under Jeremy Corbin, the UN has rotten roots that must be removed if the moral standing of the organisation is to survive.