In the entrance hall to the United Nations in New York, there’s a passageway where all visitors pass through. Along the walls, there’s an exhibition reminding those visitors of the victims of terrorist attacks from around the world.

But among the many exhibits of attacks, including those in New York and in Boston and in Kenya, there’s one glaringly obvious group that is missing.

The UN has even dedicated a specific day for the International Day of Remembrance of and Tribute to Victims of Terrorism, held on August 21 this year, along with an Instagram tribute page devoted to terror victims. Once again that same group was completely missing.

And that is Israeli victims of Palestinian terror attacks.

That’s because the United Nations is unable to see Israelis as victims of terrorism and Palestinians as perpetrators of these attacks.

For the United Nations, the October 7 attacks never seemed to have occurred – only Israel’s response to them.

This should come as no surprise.

For decades the UN has been obsessed with the Jewish State, passing more resolutions each year against Israel than the combined states of serial human rights abusers such as Iran, Syria, North Korea, China and Russia.

Its various committees are dominated by these same abusers often leading to farcical situations such as when Iran, in which women are so brutally oppressed that their situation led to months of mass nationwide protests in 2022, was appointed to the UN Women Rights Commission in 2021 for a four-year term. However, after a successful campaign led by UN Watch they were eventually expelled in December 2022.

These kinds of absurd appointments can only make sense when we remember that the UN is not made up of democracies that value human rights and freedoms in the way Western societies do.  Just 84 of its 193 member states are rated as Free Democracies. That means it is dominated by non-free societies, including brutal dictatorships like Iran and North Korea.

For countries like that, the UN is a platform for a global audience in which, rather than being ostracised for their awful and oppressive views, they are elevated instead.

Although bias against Israel is nothing new at the UN, since the October 7 terror attacks, this bias has become so acute and obvious, that it is impossible to ignore.

At least it should be, but shockingly, it isn’t.

Despite one of the most brutal terror attacks in modern times, where the Palestinian Hamas terror group raped, tortured, and murdered some 1200 innocent Israeli men, women and children and kidnapped a further 250 more, this world body that sees itself as some kind of moral barometer for the international community has never been able to bring itself to condemn this evil attack. And now it seems determined to pretend it never even happened.

It did however hold a moment’s silence for the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, known as the “Butcher of Tehran” for his brutal role in 1988 in the “Death Commissions”, which ordered the execution of Iranians citizens accused of crimes against the regime.

This kind of absurd, twisted morality is unfortunately not limited to any one body or person at the United Nations but permeates the entire institution.

For example, UNRWA, the main UN body for Palestinian refugees, after being implicated in scandal after scandal for years, has now been directly implicated in terror activities on October 7, even firing staff members for their involvement.  Yet countries, including Australia, continue to fund them, turning a blind eye to the obvious systemic problems of the organisation.

UN Women is another example. It’s one of the UN bodies that says in its charter it is an “entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls.”

One of its goals is also that “All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence.”

Who can argue with goals like that?

But as the United Nations has proven over the years and especially since October 7, these are just words without substance and platitudes without meaning. Despite the overwhelming evidence of sexual violence committed against Israeli women and children, including the testimonies of witnesses and the physical evidence of human remains, UN Women remained shamefully silent.

Only on December 1, almost two months later, did they finally issue a weak statement of condemnation against “gender-based atrocities and sexual violence” during the October 7 attacks.

Israeli women were thus victimised twice. Once by the monstrous actions of the Hamas terrorist groups whose depraved cruelty sent shockwaves through Israeli society, and secondly through the abhorrent behaviour of groups like UN Women whose so-called charter, when it came to Jewish lives, was nothing more than a lie.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yet again confirmed this in April 2024, when he left off Hamas in a report on organisations suspected by the UN of committing acts of sexual violence during conflict. What makes this kind of action even more preposterous is that the UN even sent out a Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, to investigate the sexual violence and stated in a report  “that rape likely occurred during the Hamas attacks, and said there was convincing evidence hostages were facing sexual abuse in Gaza.” But now these inconvenient findings appear to have been “disappeared” by the UN’s bureaucracy.

As recently as the last few weeks, the UN Security Council held an emergency session after an Israeli strike on a terror compound set up in a former school building in August killed at least 31 Palestinian terrorists – yet they failed to hold a similar emergency session on a Hezbollah rocket attack that murdered 12 Druze children on the Golan Heights a month earlier.

The message is clear: Palestinian terrorists killed in Israeli defensive air strikes in their headquarters are more worthy of the UN’s attention than innocent children murdered while playing soccer in the afternoon on a sports field.

It’s these kinds of hypocritical actions that should demonstrate to all free-thinking individuals and countries that the United Nations is a morally corrupt organisation, contemptuous of the values Western society holds dear. Given this, it can never achieve the great moral purposes for which it was created by these same Western societies after World War II.

Western countries like Australia, whose values are being mocked and subverted, should hold an immoral organisation like the UN to account and scrutiny, rather than continue to serve as enablers of its indefensible actions in the vain hope that it can still somehow achieve the noble goals for which it was created.

“It is a land that HaShem your G-d seeks out constantly (Doresh Otah), the eyes of HaShem your G-d are upon it from the beginning of the year until its end” (Devarim11:12). Rabbeinu B’chayei writes that one should not misconstrue the true meaning of this verse as indicating that this Derisha, or divine Hashgacha, is limited to the borders of the Holy Land. G-d’s eyes surely survey the world in its entirety. This verse means to stress that this Derisha, or divine providence, begins from the holy land, and only then it spreads out from here to the rest of the universe.

The Ohr HaChayim adds an important caveat to the above. The verse states “Hashem Elokecha Doresh”, G-d your Lord, seeks out the land. G-d’s divinity, he writes, is spread out over the Land of Israel as a direct result of the fact that the People of Israel reside within it. When the people are exiled from their land, and the Shechina is no longer felt amongst them, the Land, too, is no longer to be so exalted.

The Ohr HaChayim’s point regarding the source of the holiness of the land – tracing and linking the Land’s holiness to the Jewish presence within it – brings to mind an amazing truism of Jewish national history. Jewish presence causes the land to flourish, while our absence leads to its desolation. The source of this contention is found in Vayikra 26:32: “I will bring the land into desolation and your enemies, who dwell in it, shall be astonished at it.” As Rashi explains “Our enemies will never find solace in our land because it will be desolate” and the Ramban adds that this is a guarantee that throughout the ages our Land will never be hospitable towards our enemies.

If the desolation can be directly attributed to the lack of Jewish population, it is no wonder that the continuous ingathering of the exiles over the past hundred years has so dramatically caused the picture to change. In Devarim 8:9 the Torah states that in coming to the Land we are assured of the blessings of abundant natural resources and food supplies. “A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it…”

We have long become accustomed to the fact that modern day Israel not only provides for its own agricultural needs, but even exports vast quantities of fruits, vegetables and flowers to foreign markets. If we no longer feel amazement at this, than we should at least pause to note how as the Jewish presence continues to grow, the prospects of a prosperous flourishing Eretz Yisrael are being multiplied before our own eyes. This is perhaps most strikingly evident in the recent discovery of vast quantities of natural gas off Israeli shores. When fully developed, the Leviathan gas field, promises to provide all of the gas that Israel could ever use, as well as large quantities available for export. Egypt, which up until recently sold energy to Israel, may soon become our customer. G-d seeks out this land. Jews the world over have witnessed, and personally experienced, the Almighty’s Hashgacha over this tiny land.

Yes, it is certainly true that most such miracles can be explained as the result of natural causes. And yet, even many non-religious people sense that the continued existence of our people in this land is to be traced back to one source, to the Holy One above. If indeed Israel’s success waxes and wanes with the growth of its Jewish population, it follows then, that if we want to fulfill our share in contributing to Israel’s continued success; if we want the Land to grow and flourish and enhance the power of the Shechina here in Eretz Yisrael, we must encourage those who tarry in the Galut to finally make the move! Someone once told Rav Kook: “G-d willing, I will move to the land of Israel”. “G-d is certainly willing”, Rav Kook replied. “What really matters is that you be willing, too…” (Shivchei Ha’Ra’ayah, p. 208).

RABBI YERACHMIEL RONESS was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. After serving as a congregational Rabbi and as a Hillel Director in New York City, he made Aliyah in 1983 with his wife Dina and their five young children.

Ever since, Rabbi Roness has dedicated his life to promoting Aliyah. First, as Rabbi of the Jewish Agency’s Absorption Centers, and subsequently as the executive director of the Aloh-Naaleh organization.

This article was taken from Rabbi Roness’s new book: Aloh Na’aleh – Eretz Yisrael and Aliyah in the Weekly Parshah.  The book is for sale on Amazon.