Letters to the Editor
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‘The U.N.’s Diminished Dignity’
Columnist Alicia Colon writes that the United Nations was a legitimate institution “once upon a time,” but is now “a corrupt anti-American band of thieves and despots” [“The U.N.’s Diminished Dignity,” New York, October 6, 2004]. Yet the reason the U.N. is so vile today is that it never had any legitimacy in the first place.
Despotism has been accepted at the U.N. since its inception; the Soviet Union was one of its founding members. Any organization that accords dictatorships recognition as sovereign governments has no claim to legitimacy or to represent “international law.”
Law is a set of principles defining and limiting government power; rights are moral concepts that allow government power to be subordinated to rational principles rather than whims. No government whose power is arbitrary and unchecked can recognize any such concepts as law or rights, nor can any such government therefore maintain that it exists by right.
No dictatorship has any valid claim whatever to rights, legitimacy, or sovereignty; to the contrary, any such government is an outlaw that its oppressed people – or any external free country – has a right to topple by force.
If the U.N. considers such lawless oppressors legitimate, it must thereby lose the respect and recognition of anyone genuinely concerned with law or rights.
The U.N. has as much claim to represent law as the Supreme Court would have if Charles Manson and his cohorts were installed on that body in open defiance of their criminal past. Those who are willing to tolerate this sort of monstrosity have no right to be called idealists. The reason the U.N. is what it is today is that it never represented anything good to begin with.
PAUL BLAIR
Manhattan
President Bush and Israel
It was interesting to read the exchange of letters between Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI [“Living in a Closet,” September 30, 2004] and Ellen Singer, an executive committee member of AFSI [“Living in a Closet,” October 7], since I think the difference of opinion reflected in those letters is indicative of a serious problem within the American Jewish community.
I have great respect for AFSI and its tireless efforts on behalf of Israel and, in most cases, I support its views, but the question of when and how to express such views should be seriously considered before going public with them.
While I agree with much of what Ms. Freedman writes in her letter – particularly with respect to the so-called “Road Map to Peace”; the scandal-ridden, chock-full-of despots organization known as the United Nations; the “Palestinian blood lust” and its role in global terrorism, and the right of Israel to defend itself – I disagree with her comments regarding President Bush.
Israel has never been treated by an American president as favorably and respectfully as it has been treated these past four years, nor has it ever been fortunate enough to have an American president stand up to the rest of the world and make the kind of bold statements in its favor that Mr. Bush has made.
For the first time in history, an American president has not held Israel to a different standard than he holds his own country or allowed his Nobel Peace prize aspirations to dictate Israel’s security needs.
While leading the battle against the scourge of the 21st century – Islamic terrorism, aka Islamo-fascism – and taking firm and decisive actions to protect our country – “global tests” be damned – Mr. Bush has not demanded that Israel do what his own country was not prepared to do.
The problem is that Mr. Bush is constrained by the flip-flopping statements and policies of the current Israeli government. After all, it was Prime Minister Sharon who began talking about a “Palestinian state” and Mr. Sharon who rushed to embrace those self-anointed arbiters of peace, i.e., the Quartet – which includes Russia, the European Union, and the U.N. – and their “brilliant” answer to Palestinian terrorism: more Israeli concessions, but this time under the auspices of the “Road Map”
It is not only unrealistic, but also unfair, to expect of an American president to be more righteous for Israel, than Israel’s democratically elected leaders.
And while the issue of whether or not American Jewish organizations should be publicly speaking out against Israeli government policies is a hotly debated issue within the American Jewish community, one thing is clear: American Jewish leaders should not be condemning an American president for supporting Israeli government policies, just as they should not be lobbying for an American president to accept any of the magical plans periodically devised by various self-anointed representatives.
Although I, too, am personally angered when concern for the “daily humiliation of the Palestinian people” overrides concern for the daily murders of Israeli men, women and children, American Jewish leaders should beware of accusing Mr. Bush of being “deceitful and illogical” and calling for a new president to reclaim America’s “moral compass.”
Calls like that might very well be answered with the election of a weak, morally challenged appeaser – such as Senator Kerry – as president. Not only would that be a catastrophe for the American people, in this time of war, but it would be a disaster for the state of Israel.
RONNI SHALIT
Manhattan
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