‘So what are you writing about this week,’ my wife inquired.
‘How the United Nations is unfit for purpose and become something of a laughing stock,’ I replied.
Is Iran a seminal force on the UN Human Rights Council?
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, Iran is now a seminal force on the UN Human Rights Council.’
‘You’re joking!’ she responded, incredulously.
‘Sadly, I’m not. There’s a major UNHRC event currently taking place in Geneva under the chairmanship of Iran’s ambassador to the UN.’
‘Well,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I suppose President Putin must think he’s in with a chance for the Nobel Peace Prize.’
The vague purpose of last week’s Swiss lakeside UN jamboree was to study the potential contribution of science, technology and innovation in promoting human rights.
Tehran’s approach to human rights
Given Iran was in the chair we can be sure it didn’t dwell on the summary arrest and incarceration of protesters, the beating (sometimes to death) of women who fail to wear the hijab, the torture and execution of dissidents and the hanging of gays from cranes — all of which are a well-established feature of Tehran’s approach to human rights.
But Iran is well-placed to share its expertise with others about the role of innovation in suppressing human rights.
Along with China, it is in the vanguard of developing facial recognition technology to identify ‘enemies’ of the regime and deal with them accordingly.
Nor does it lack friends and allies on the UNHRC.
Along with China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Afghanistan and several other well-known bastions of freedom, it effectively calls all the UN shots on such matters, which means the world’s most repressive regimes are rarely embarrassed by anything the UN has to say about their appalling human rights records.
Not so Israel which, despite being the only democracy in the Middle East (just about the only country in the region, for example, where you could march under a Pride flag without the risk of being beaten to a pulp), is a constant target of the UN’s ire.
There was no respite even after Hamas’s barbaric attacks on October 7.
READ ALSO: Hamas vows to REPEAT October 7 attacks and bring about the ‘annihilation’ of Israel
Indeed the UN couldn’t wait to blame it all on Israel, continuing its long tradition of attacking Israel for being attacked.
Why Hamas invaded Israel?
After a perfunctory condemnation of Hamas, the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, a former socialist prime minister of Portugal and generally regarded as a political pygmy, moved quickly on to what he really wanted to say.
The Hamas invasion, he averred, ‘did not happen in a vacuum’ but was the product of ‘years of suffocating occupation’.
It was as close to justifying the attacks as you could get without saying so explicitly. He went on to demand Israel resist the urge to retaliate even as Hamas rockets still rose from Gaza City en route to Israeli targets.
While Israel has grown accustomed to the UN taking anti-Israel stances, it was nevertheless outraged. Its ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, accused Guterres of ‘justifying terrorism’ and demanded his resignation.
Guterres did later claim that his comments had been ‘misinterpreted’ and pointed out that he had also said ‘the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas’.
But the damage was done.
Erdan now wears a yellow Star of David, in an echo of the Nazi era when Jews were forced to display just such a star in public to make it easier to identify and demean them.
He says he won’t take it off until the UN Security Council condemns the ‘atrocities of Hamas’.
It looks like he could be wearing it for quite some time.
