At the entrance to the United Nations in Geneva stands the Broken Chair, a vast wooden monument built to honor the victims of war and remind the world of the cost of moral surrender. It was meant to symbolize courage and conscience. Today, it faces an institution that too often displays neither.
The murderous attack outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar was tragic, yet not unexpected. It was the physical manifestation of propaganda legitimized and repeated until Jew-hatred once again became a respectable cause in society.
Since October 7, 2023, antisemitism has not only risen but intensified and spread. Initiatives and declarations have multiplied, and across the Jewish world, there are debates and discussions, mostly reactive and inward, while the Jew-hatred grows ever more relentless.
This hatred does not arise in isolation. It is sustained by distortions emanating from a city long regarded as the humanitarian capital of the world, Geneva. Every year, world leaders gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, in what chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov once called “a catwalk for dictatorships,” on a stage commanded by the UN Security Council and secretary-general.
However, it is in the UN’s human rights capital, in the marble halls of Geneva, that reports echoing the rhetoric of terrorist movements are presented as investigations, and resolutions equating Israel’s self-defense with aggression are advanced by some of the world’s worst human rights abusers, regimes like Iran, China, and Cuba that oppress their own minorities and violently silence all dissent.
The UN's anti-Israel actions
The UN Human Rights Council has become the clearest example of this horrendous moral distortion. Its permanent Agenda Item 7 guarantees that Israel is condemned at every session. Its special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, described Hamas’s October 7 massacre as “resistance,” accused Israel of “genocide,” and claimed that “the Jewish lobby” controls the United States.
Even beyond the Council, the World Health Organization’s assembly passes annual resolutions condemning Israel from its Geneva headquarters while remaining silent on Syria and Iran and even electing North Korea to its Executive Board.
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Israel and the Palestinian Territories, chaired by former UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay, has effectively conferred legitimacy on the false and destructive genocide charge now dominating public debate. Its September 2025 report declared that Israel’s actions “demonstrate intent to destroy the Palestinian people” and “amount to acts of genocide.”
These assertions, based largely on Hamas-supplied data and omitting the October 7 massacres and hostages, bear the powerful moral imprimatur of the United Nations.
Within hours of publication, these words migrated from report to headline. Reuters announced, “UN inquiry finds top Israeli officials incited genocide in Gaza,” while The Guardian ran “Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, says UN commission of inquiry.” An unsubstantiated accusation, conceived as political propaganda in Geneva, was hence transformed into a global moral verdict. From there, it entered the echo chamber of NGOs, with Amnesty International immediately issuing a statement echoing the Commission’s wording almost verbatim.
A devastating chain
The chain of devastating influence is clear: An accusation born in Geneva is eagerly amplified by media, sanctified by organizations claiming to speak for human rights, and then it spreads like wildfire across social media and the streets of our cities.
There is an important lesson to be learned for all who care about combating antisemitism. To confront Jew-hatred effectively, one must engage it where it begins, at the institutions that convert hostility into virtuous moral wisdom. Simply walking away from the United Nations as hopelessly antisemitic would be an abdication of responsibility, as the distortion that fuels this hatred shapes global discourse and, most importantly, corrupts the moral vocabulary of an entire generation.
At the UN, far too many democratic governments equate silence with balance and consensus with principle. Yet neutrality in the face of such moral corruption is not diplomacy. It is complicity.
This is why I chose now to join UN Watch in Geneva. It is the one organization confronting this dreadful apparatus head-on, swiftly, and unwaveringly. Operating in the belly of the beast, UN Watch has led the efforts to expose Francesca Albanese’s antisemitic record, support for terrorists, and abuse of UN mandate, leading to her condemnation and sanctioning by the United States.
Its findings on the UN Relief and Works Agency prompted the United States, Sweden, and the Netherlands to cut $468 million in funding after evidence revealed the unholy alliance between UNRWA officials and Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders. UN Watch has been the leading voice challenging the Commission of Inquiry on Israel, documenting its bias, confronting its members over antisemitic remarks, and pressing governments to act until all three commissioners resigned.
The fight against Jew-hatred
At this critical moment for the Jewish people, when words shape realities and good intentions are often paralyzed by caution and procedure, the fight against Jew-hatred must be fought precisely in this manner: proactively, fearlessly, and with data-driven precision.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, warned that when people defend the rights of some while denying them to others, they destroy the foundation of rights themselves. We saw this clearly on the very day of the Manchester synagogue attack, at rallies professing compassion and human rights, where not a single voice paused to acknowledge the Jewish lives brutally taken. That silence spoke louder than any chant.
The Broken Chair still stands at the entrance to the Palais des Nations (Palace of Nations), its missing leg reflecting the moral imbalance of the system behind it, as Jews are again forced to hide their identities out of fear. What starts in Geneva does not end there. It spreads, it corrupts, and it kills.
The fight against antisemitism will not be won through appeasement or compromise but by directly confronting the institutions that lend it credibility and the totalitarian partners who sustain them. That is where the struggle must be fought and where it must be won.
The writer is chief strategy & diplomacy officer at UN Watch in Geneva and previously served as head of strategy & programs at the World Jewish Congress in New York.