Which country was selected last week by the United Nations Economic and Social Council to serve on the organization’s Program and Coordination Committee, the body that shapes UN policy on women’s rights, human rights, counterterrorism, and disarmament? Iran. Who supported this decision? Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and other respected democracies.
At the UN, absurdity has long since become the norm. In its various human rights forums – and even at their helm – one can find, over the years, some of the darkest and most brutal regimes: Gaddafi’s Libya (2003), Maduro’s Venezuela (2019), Sudan during the height of its genocidal ethnic cleansing (2004), Iran (until 2022, and again from 2023, less than a year after the killing of Mahsa Amini, who became a symbol of women’s resistance), and even Saudi Arabia – a country that required every woman to have a male guardian (2017, 2023, 2025).
Within this upside-down world, its committees, assemblies, and corridors, Iran operates skillfully, benefiting from an antisemitic climate that elevates it to the status of class leader. For years, this dark regime – one that slaughters its own citizens, oppresses its women, arms and funds terrorist organizations, tramples nations, and threatens the destruction of Israel – has been treated as a global leader in human rights, pulling strings within a confused body that is steadily losing its moral compass.
The UN no longer leads the world – it reflects it. And on the face of the UN, one can clearly see all the ills that threaten humanity: hypocrisy, antisemitism, madness, and ignorance. While in Israel there is discussion about “darkening Tehran,” Tehran is effectively using the UN to darken the world.
Yet, in this inverted reality, this latest appointment may actually hold a sliver of encouragement – if we step back and look at the forest, not just the trees. In a broader cultural struggle, nothing exposes truth more powerfully than the full display of hypocrisy. The more blatant the distortion, the arrogance, and the mockery of intelligence become, the more the organization – once meant to bring stability and reason – sinks into irrelevance.
When everything is so warped, when the failure is so glaring and undeniable, there is a sense that the UN has gone too far – that the hall of illusions it presents has become entirely disconnected from the enlightened half of the globe.
And why is that a good thing? Because in losing its way, the UN has also lost its credibility, its authority, and its influence over the course of the world. And if you ask me, the collapse of the current UN into itself only improves our position when asking the question: Who will darken whom first?
The writer is the chairperson of WIZO.
Source:
www.jpost.com
