Should great countries blindly bend to the will of the “international community” and what’s proclaimed as international law? Iranian President Hassan Rouhani certainly wishes the United States would do so.
In his Thursday speech to the UN General Assembly, Rouhani warned the US Congress not to pass laws that (according to his interpretation) violate the Iran nuclear deal. And he accused our Supreme Court of already committing such violations.
The nuke deal — reached between Iran and six major powers and endorsed by the UN Security Council — is a “lesson” on resolving problems in the world, Rouhani said. If America fails to implement it, it would “constitute an international wrongful act, and will be objected to by the international community.”
Mostly, Rouhani warned, violations would “further erode [America’s] credibility in the world.”
As an example of such wicked violations, he cited a recent Supreme Court ruling that awarded compensation for families victimized by Iranian terrorism.
According to Rouhani, this ruling was further proof that “Zionist pressure groups could go as far as having . . . Congress pass indefensible legislation, forcing the highest American judicial institutions to violate preemptory norms of international law.”
Rouhani’s not alone. Similar malign Zionist obstruction of international law was the theme of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ UN speech.
Abbas urged diplomats to study Israeli violations of “the preamble of Resolution 181, Paragraph C.” That’s the 1947 UN “partition plan” that proposed Arab and Jewish states in what was then known as Palestine. Never mind that the resolution — all of it, not just that one paragraph — was vehemently opposed by the Arabs, and accepted by the Zionists.
Abbas glided over his recent decision to forgo elections that would give his own rule a veneer of legitimacy. (He’s in the 11th year of a four-year term.) Instead, he warned America against vetoing a Security Council resolution that would declare Israeli settlements illegal under international law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pretended to get in on the UN “lovefest,” beginning his own speech by declaring, “what I’m about to say is going to shock you: Israel has a bright future at the UN.”
Israel? The UN’s perennial whipping boy?
Yes, Bibi cited the ways international bodies discriminate against Israel — passing dozens of resolutions against it, while rarely bothering to even pretend to uphold the same supposed standards when it comes to other nations. Such lopsided attention to perceived Israeli sins has turned the UN from a “moral force” to a “moral farce,” he said.
Yet, Netanyahu insisted, this is going to change. Israel’s success in combating extremism and cyber attacks is forcing countries that used to condemn the Jewish state to cooperate with it and learn from it. Recycling 90 percent of its water, Israel leads the world in conservation. It shines in advancement of women, gay rights and other civil liberties.
So, yes, Bibi said, he knows there are plans to pass more anti-Israeli resolutions at the United Nations. But in the long run, while “you may not know it yet,” he told UN delegates, “your governments back home” will change their attitudes, because they’re going to need Israel’s contributions.
This sudden outpouring of faith in the international community — from rogue states and Western ones alike — raises the question: Where does America stand?
After all, America largely created the current international structures — global financial systems, world tribunals, the United Nations itself. And few presidents have ever embraced the strictures of the “world body” quite as enthusiastically as President Obama.
He made the Iran deal “legal” by passing the agreement at the UN Security Council rather than in Congress. He aimed to commit America to the Paris agreement on greenhouse-gas emissions by executive action rather than as a Senate-ratified treaty.
In his UN speech Tuesday, Obama may have been thinking about Russia’s bullying in Syria and Ukraine, or China’s aggression in the South China Sea, when he chided “powerful nations [that] contest the constraints placed on them by international law.”
But on Thursday, we saw the danger in vesting the United Nations with so much power. Rogue states — even those Obama wants to bring in from the cold — will seek to turn it around on us.
Alas, Obama’s successor will have to deal with the consequences of a United Nations whose conception of international law is being shaped by the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And, despite Israel’s successes, it’s doubtful such a United Nations will be embracing it, or American values, anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment