This is an excerpt from an opinion article by former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
For decades, Israel has tried,
sometimes against our better instincts, to work with the United Nations. I have personally sat in numerous meetings with U.N. officials, painstakingly negotiating frameworks to ensure humanitarian aid reached civilians in Gaza. I oversaw budgets, coordinated secure passageways for convoys, and approved daily discussions with U.N. representatives about food, medicine, and fuel. We made these efforts not for Hamas’s sake, but because, as Israelis, we recognize the sanctity of human life, even beyond our own side of the battlefield.
Despite these efforts, the very organization we enabled to deliver aid has repeatedly turned against us. Instead of acknowledging Israel’s unprecedented humanitarian measures, the U.N. issued routine condemnations. Their resolutions read less like acts of diplomacy and more like indictments prepared in advance. This is not neutrality. It is hostility, dressed in the language of international law.
It is difficult to ignore the hypocrisy.
Iran, North Korea, and Syria hold seats on U.N. councils, while Israel is dragged before panels that masquerade as courts of justice. At the same time, another arm of the United Nations, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), operates facilities in Gaza. These buildings were built for education and healthcare, but instead have become arsenals for Hamas rockets and serve as infrastructure for terror.
The fact that U.N.-run schools and clinics have been weaponized in this way is almost always overlooked by those so quick to condemn Israel. The Human Rights Council spends more time singling out Israel than addressing any other crisis on the planet. This is not a coincidence. It is the result of an institution co-opted by regimes determined to undermine the Jewish state.
Last week, the U.N. released a report that accuses me personally, by name, of war crimes and, by extension, accuses Israel of genocide.
I am proud to have stood in the position to defend the State of Israel. Given the choice, I would do so again without hesitation. As minister of defense, I led the IDF as it set standards for proportionality and distinction [not] seen in any modern military conflict. No other army has put greater effort into warning civilians in every possible way: leaflets, calls, texts, and warning shots, before targeting terrorist infrastructure. These are not the acts of an indifferent military; they are the actions of a nation of conscience and responsibility.
Hamas, in contrast, hides rockets in schools, launches missiles from hospital courtyards, forces civilians to serve as shields, and still holds dozens of Israelis hostage. It manufactures civilian suffering and uses it for propaganda.
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