Israel Alone Denoted as “Occupiers” by United Nations

A new research study indicates that the United Nations, in their official condemnations of Israel, treats the country much differently than they do virtually any other nation in the world. The study, carried out by Eugene Kontorovich of Northwestern University School of Law, reviewed seven prolonged occupations that arose out of war and found that only Israel was declared an “Occupying Power” by official U.N. General Assembly resolutions.

Kontorovich also discovered that when the U.N. finds a country to humiliate, they go all out. Not only do they officially refer to Israel as an Occupying Power, they have done so no less than 530 times over the past forty years. According to the U.N. General Assembly, they are using the definitions forged by the Geneva Conventions. Under Article 49, an “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The U.N. claims that Israel is in violation of that international rule.

But in the study, Kontorovich found that many other countries have engaged in similar levels of settlement activity – many of them to a degree that makes the Israeli/Palestinian situation look like small potatoes.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, Kontorovich said that the results of the study proved how worthless the U.N. was when it came to fairly applying international sanctions.

“Our findings don’t merely quantify the U.N.’s double standard,” he wrote. “The evidence shows that the organization’s claim to represent the interest of international justice is hollow, because the U.N. has no interest in battling injustice unless Israel is the country accused.”

The study found that the U.N.’s double-standard was not just historical. Five of the seven occupying situations are still unfolding to this day, including: Russia’s occupation of Crimea and portions of Georgia, Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus, Armenia’s occupation of certain sections of Azerbaijan, and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara. The other two – Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor and Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia – have long been concluded.

In none of those cases, said the study, did the U.N. ever refer to “settlements” and they only rarely referred to the invading countries as “occupiers.”

Kontorovich is worried that Obama, in his lame duck months, might reverse a longstanding U.S. veto of U.N. sanctions against Israel, thus betraying our closest Middle Eastern ally.

If he does, it could be the costliest mistake of his presidency – and that’s saying something.