Geneva’s Disneyland of deceit sets the stage for UN’s betrayal of Jews, Israel - opinion

Geneva looks like a storybook city, wrapped around its lake, glistening with parks and palaces. Yet when you jog past the five-story Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s mansion, and too many other international organizations, your soul shrivels.

This Disneyland of deceit has the efficiency of a Swiss clock, the cleanliness of a German bathroom, and the moral clarity of a French bordello.

Israel’s Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva hosted me last Wednesday – although I spoke independently, without representing any country. Israel’s Mission, the US Mission to International Organizations in Geneva, and the Forum for Cultural Diplomacy organized an event, “1975-2025: Confronting Antisemitism and Racism at the United Nations.”

Apparently, by UN standards, Wednesday’s turnout, with representatives from 37 nations, and the office of the director-general of UN Geneva, was impressive. Just showing up for Israel resists peer pressure these days.

We recalled that Israel’s ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog charged in 1975: “Hitler would have felt at home” here.

America’s acting deputy chief of mission, Mireille Zieseniss, branded the Zionism-racism libel “a symbolic assault on the Jewish people and the legitimacy of the State of Israel.” Teaching us to affirm, not defend, Israel’s ambassador, Daniel Meron, proclaimed “I am a Zionist.” Meron also lamented the resolution’s “seeds of hostility that continue to bear poisonous fruit today, in the streets, on university campuses, and across the digital world.”

The Forum for Cultural Diplomacy’s Grégory Lafitte warned that “when words... wound rather than heal, institutions suffer, and so does the fabric of our societies.” To heal, Lafitte advocated a UN counter-resolution celebrating Zionism’s centrality to Jewish culture, identity, and vision.

Proposing adding the word “obsession” when defining antisemitism, I denounced Jew-haters’ obsessive “triple double cross”: on November 10, 1975 – and again on October 7 – antisemites betrayed the Jews, flouted liberal ideas, and violated their defining ideals.

Branding Zionism “racism” weaponized “human rights” and diluted the sting of the word “racism,” while attacking America, the West, liberalism, and the UN’s core mission. It anticipated today’s red-green alliance, with progressives shilling for Islamist jihadists.

Still, the episode had a partially happy ending – the resolution’s repeal in December 1991.

Finally, echoing Herzog’s gesture in concluding his speech, I ripped a piece of paper, too – to exorcise dozens of anti-Israel UN resolutions. While normalizing antisemitic anti-Zionism, the UN also bureaucratized it.

David Harris, who valiantly spearheaded the repeal effort as the American Jewish Committee’s longtime leader, zoomed out from 1975’s obscenity to detail the West’s pre-Holocaust delusions. Quoting world leaders who compared Hitler to George Washington and Joan of Arc, then claimed the “mistreatment of Jews in Germany may be considered virtually eliminated,” Harris warned of a similar “failure of imagination” to resist evil today.

The moderator invited comments. Boy, I thought, this is why I wouldn’t want to be a diplomat. I’m about to lose the next hour to bland statements agreeing that singling out one form of nationalism – Jewish nationalism – in this forum of nationalisms is bad, that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are evil, and that Israel has every right to exist.

I wish.

Instead, silence.

Only one diplomat responded – Hungary’s courageous ambassador, Zsófia Havasi. Too many liberals ask: “What’s wrong with Israel that only right-wing Hungary stands up for it?” I wonder: What’s wrong with the rest of the world?

In concluding, I quoted Moynihan’s summary of the fight against UN Resolution 3379: “An issue of honor, of morality, was put before us, and not all of us ran.” Diplomats advised Moynihan to “tone done.” Fuming, he wondered how to tone down “when you’re faced with an outright lie” about America, Israel, the West. “Do you say it is only half untrue? What kind of people are we? What kind of people do they think we are? They know it’s not true.”

McGill’s old law school dean taught me: “If you don’t anger colleagues at least once a year, you’ve wasted your tenure.” Be bold, I urged the diplomats. “Don’t tone down, stand up strong.” Moynihan explained that acting “diplomatically” should only be one of many arrows in the diplomat’s quiver. Sometimes, righteous anger and moral clarity are the logical responses.

Apparently, my charge failed – although many participants denounced Jew-hatred and the anti-Israel obsession privately. Their off-the-record empathy exposed the real cowards: policy-makers back home.

Nevertheless, we must keep trying, even amid Geneva’s Kabuki theatre. Decades ago, Geneva symbolized the League of Nations’ high hopes, then the post-World War II dreams. Today, it’s the stage setting for the UN’s betrayal of the Jews, of Israel, and of its founding ideals.