When Israeli narrative ruled for decades, Genocide was Sanctioned through bias! No Surprise Israel seeks to ban UNRWA
Seven Israel allies, including UK and Germany, condemn proposed Unrwa ban: Germany, France, Britain, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea warn the bills could have 'devastating consequences'
The article by Middle East Eye focuses on how seven allies to Israel seek to hold Israel accountable if UNRWA is banned. These are the same countries that some months ago accepted UNWATCH supported claims that portrayed UNRWA to be working in support of Hamas (a resistance group, termed terrorist group by Israel, US and some other countries) and in fact stated many of its Staff are "terrorists". The earlier move by the allies of Israel without any critical thought to withdraw funding to UNRWA added to the sense of impunity that Israel felt and became fuel to its never-ending journey into darkness, to indicate what is possible under a Genocide. It also derailed the humanitarian process that is difficult to get back on the rails given the constant bombardment, forced displacement, and shooting at fleeing population.
The role of UNWATCH and its supporters is central to this act of injustice against the Palestinians who only assert their right to sovereignty and rail against human rights violations by Israel.
Structural bias and resultant injustice
UNWATCH & its bias: UNWATCH came into existence in mid 1990's with a clear goal to- assess whether United Nations is accountable to its founding Principle? An NGO set up by one individual was given the unilateral right to assess the functioning of the UNITED NATIONS which is supposed stand for Governance of its global Member States. To call this democratic is a joke when that definition of democracy is fine-tuned as per the needs of a few nations.
How a subtle narrative can shape world view is indicated in the name UNWATCH, for it gives the impression that it is officially a part of UN and hence has the right to access and assess the functioning of United Nations, a symbol and institute stated to stand for global governance.
Bias of UNWATCH at Creation
From the time of its creation till a decade ago, it was working in close association with the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, a clear indication that it was asserting the voice of Israel with Israeli policy and antisemitism being its primary goals. That in itself is not questionable, but it becomes an act of injustice when UNWATCH claims its goal is to assess whether UN is deviating from UN's founding principles but remains totally silent on Palestinian rights and on Israel's war crimes and illegal occupation before 2023 and later [1].
The bias of UNWATCH from its birth continues till date for it does focus extensively on Israel in comparison to other UN Member States and in fact in the initial years as per its reports given on UNWATCH website, the main focus was " Israel Should be admitted into the Western European and other Groups", another area of focus was to indicate that professionals within UN who spoke against US Policy on war against Afghanistan and Iraq or spoke against Israel should be thrown out [2], it is interesting to note that UNWATCH feels so powerful that it feels it has the inalienable right to decide who will work within the UN Structure and who cannot, its sense of normalcy about it so great that its states these sentiments loud and clear in its documents and web site. Not surprising when Professionals and leaders of international agencies, held UNWATCH work in great esteem and never raised any doubt about its professionalism [ibid] Except in 2006, as mentioned by UNWATCH on its site that Syrian representative in 2006 said "there is a need to control role of NGOs within UN functioning" [ibid].
Bias in UNWATCH assessment of Palestine
It's strange that assessment made on Palestine and role of UNRWA was never questioned by anyone till recently, there are some basic violations that happened it the process of evaluation and structure of evaluation.
Violation of the Structure for evaluating UNRWA's functioning in Palestine: Evaluation has to be carried out by an unbiased professionals or agencies, with skills to evaluate.
Here the two agencies selected for evaluation UNWATCH and Institute for Maintaining Peace and Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-Se) [3] are both biased towards Israel, they state so in their mission and focus and the IMPACT-Se that evaluated UNRWA work in Palestine is based in Israel. Even an incompetent professional would point out this is unethical and yet not even one stalwart within global governance raised any doubts about this biased self-sustaining process of a pro-Israeli narrative.
Even with regard to specific issues the matters raised by UNWATCH are biased, for example, according to UNWATCH, it is unacceptable to encourage students to stand up for Palestine or be willing to die for their country, at the same time UNWATCH sees nothing wrong in Israel insisting all have to undergo military training, or orientation to a functional role in the military for Israeli society starts at a very young one as soon as they start their education. When Israel does it, it is democratic and moral but Palestinian are taught that to love their country, is an act of terrorism.
UNWATCH wanted schools not to mention the reality of occupation, or the fact that Israel is stealing Palestinian land (which anyway the schoolchildren would be aware of) and to also not to state that Israeli soldiers kill Palestinians all these facts are considered by UNWATCH as acts of terrorism or that encourage terrorism [2].
Take an assertion made by UNWatch, as one of the reasons for demanding that Palestine should never be recognised, the Palestinian stand that Palestinians cannot sell land to any Israeli Jew. How is this unfair, any country has the right to decide whom to sell their land to or whether they want to sell their land to any foreigner. How is that Israeli Jews are considered to be so privileged a lot that they have the right to interfere in another nation's sovereignty [4].
In another instance, UN Watch considers support of Palestinian authority for its citizens that resist Israel occupation, to be an act of terrorism, instead of stating Israel's illegal occupation and siege of Palestinians are acts of terror [ibid]
It is interesting to note that IMPACT-Se assessment of Israel states the country is a democracy and focuses on peace and, but the assessment report never mentions the war crimes, illegal occupation, or imprisonment of Palestinians without charges or even its shooting of children. NOT One MEMBER STATE of UN raised any objection to such assessments.
UN WATCH - Lack of Professionalism
1. UN WATCH report on the Poisoning of Palestinian Children (2017) is a clear example of its lack of professionalism and bias, for it lacks context of Palestine, its schools, the everyday reality of Palestinian children and the only focus is that of rights of the US State Department and that of the Jewish community. An evaluation of a programme meant for specific target group is supposed to be from the perspective of the target population and not from the perspective of its illegal occupier Israel.
The report also raises the question why is the US State Department funding a school program with a focus on conditioning students to accept and respect their occupier Israel, as Israel commits war crimes including arresting children without charging them, ofttimes at night. Given this context is it surprising at present Genocide is happening.
2. UN WATCH report presents raw data, never indicating the sample from which it was collected, no conceptualization to analyse the raw data the keywords used to analyse, the only focus on highlighting emotionally strong words so that the bias is strengthened and cemented [5]. It is an insult to human intelligence and integrity that such evaluation reports are accepted as facts to make judgement and ensure justice.
Bias justified and strengthened through association:
UNWATCH uses the definition and categorisation of Freedom House, with regard to assessing different UN member states. As to how ethical the Freedom House classification is, is evident from its map for 2021, where Israel is one among the few countries other than the Untied Stares, Canada and those in Europe to be indicated as a totally free country [6]. For electoral purposes, Israel is one district, and citizen will elect the party they would like to be in the government (as it uses the closed-list method of party-list proportional representation) [7] and its member who actually get the right to be part of government is selected by concerned parties, a party's selection of candidate can depend on the order in which their name appears in their party's list, or it can be based on the decision of one member in the party or they can put all names together and have a lucky draw. Not sure how all these are representative either of democracy or freedom.
Freedom House is also polite enough not to consider illegal occupation of Israel as an issue when stating Israel is a Free nation.
UN CHARTER and Principles
UNWATCH justifies its existence as monitoring UN's Role with regard to its founding principles, what are UN founding Principles that UNWATCH claims to safeguard.
UN Founding Principles as per UN Charter,
Under Article 2: (1) The Organization is based on the principle of the Sovereign equality of all its members,
Article 2 (2) All members, in order to ensure to all of them the right and benefits resulting from membership, shall full fill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present charter,
Article 2(4) All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the UN [8]
My Curiosity is very Simple, HOW is UNWATCH addressing the question of whether the adherence to UN Founding Principles is functioning in an ethical manner? Can an NGO be given such a freedom as to propound bias as facts and have no one question the agency? How can such a system deliver justice?
Such a system can only ensure bias, make bias a part of its structural reality, in time with systematic conceptualizing and implementation, it turns systemic, ensuring no space exists for Justice.
4. UN Watch Shadow Report Exposes Palestinian Antisemitism Ahead of First UN Racism Review - UN Watch
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