In the ashes of the Second World War, as the scale of human cruelty came fully into view, the world vowed that such devastation would never again be permitted to unfold unchecked. Cities lay in ruins. Tens of millions were dead. Entire nations had been consumed by ideologies that thrived on aggression and racial hatred. And among the victims were six million Jews—murdered not on battlefields, but in ghettos, forests, and industrial death camps.

It was in that shattered moral landscape that the United Nations was born.

The UN was not conceived merely as a diplomatic forum. It was envisioned as a safeguard against the very forces that had unleashed catastrophe: unrestrained nationalism, racial supremacism, and the indifference of nations to the suffering of others. Its Charter, signed in 1945, pledged to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and to reaffirm “faith in fundamental human rights.” For a Jewish people freshly scarred by genocide and centuries of stateless vulnerability, this promise carried profound meaning.

And in 1947, the United Nations appeared to act in accordance with that mission.

After decades of British rule in Mandatory Palestine, and following exhaustive international deliberations, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181—the Partition Plan. It recognized the right of both Jews and Arabs to self-determination in the land. For the first time in nearly two thousand years, the international community formally acknowledged Jewish political sovereignty in their ancestral homeland. Against the backdrop of the Holocaust, the vote was widely understood as both a legal recognition and a moral reckoning.

The Jewish leadership accepted the plan. The surrounding Arab states rejected it and chose war.

When Israel declared independence in May 1948, five neighboring armies invaded. The fledgling state survived. The United Nations admitted Israel as a member state in 1949. On paper, at least, the institution created to protect human rights had helped midwife the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty.

But history did not freeze in 1949.

As the decades passed, the moral clarity that had animated the UN’s founding began to blur. The post-war consensus fractured. Waves of decolonization reshaped the General Assembly. New blocs of nations, many emerging from colonial rule themselves, brought legitimate grievances—and new political alliances. In this evolving landscape, Israel increasingly found itself isolated.

The turning point came in 1975, when the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism.” For the Jewish state, and for Jews worldwide, the resolution was more than a political slight. It represented a profound inversion of the very principles the UN had been created to defend. The national liberation movement of a people who had endured statelessness and genocide was recast as an expression of racial oppression.

The resolution was repealed in 1991, but its shadow lingers.

In the years since, Israel has been the subject of a staggering number of condemnatory resolutions in UN bodies—far exceeding those directed at regimes with far graver human rights records. The UN Human Rights Council has maintained a permanent agenda item focused solely on Israel, a distinction reserved for no other country. Commissions of inquiry have been repeatedly established to scrutinize the Jewish state, often with mandates that presume guilt.

This is not to argue that Israel, like any nation, is beyond criticism. Democracies are defined in part by their capacity for self-scrutiny. But the disproportionate focus has fostered a perception—widely felt by Israelis across the political spectrum—that the institution founded to ensure fairness has instead singled them out.

How did this reversal take hold?

Part of the answer lies in geopolitics. During the Cold War, Arab and Soviet blocs aligned diplomatically against Israel. Later, majorities formed within international forums that reflected regional alliances rather than neutral adjudication. Over time, narratives hardened. The language of anti-colonial struggle, once aimed at dismantling European empires, was redirected toward a Jewish state whose origins were rooted not in imperial expansion but in national restoration.

In this reframing, Israel ceased to be seen as a people returning home after exile and catastrophe. Instead, it was recast as an extension of Western power—an anomaly in the Middle East rather than an indigenous society with ancient roots in Jerusalem, Tzfat, and Hevron. The moral urgency that once animated the UN’s support for Jewish statehood was eclipsed by a new global discourse in which Israel became a symbol of contested narratives about power and victimhood.

The tragedy is not merely diplomatic. It is philosophical.

The United Nations was founded on the premise that small nations and vulnerable peoples deserved protection under international law. The Jewish people were, for centuries, the archetype of such vulnerability. The rebirth of Israel was meant to resolve that condition—to ensure that Jews would no longer depend solely on the goodwill of others for survival.

Yet today, many Israelis look at UN chambers and see not the fulfillment of a post-war promise, but its erosion. They see an institution that once affirmed their right to sovereignty now frequently questioning its legitimacy.

History is rarely static. Institutions evolve, sometimes in ways their founders never intended. The United Nations remains a vital forum for diplomacy and humanitarian coordination. It has done immeasurable good in combating disease, delivering aid, and mediating conflicts. But its record regarding Israel reflects a tension between its founding ideals and its contemporary politics.

In 1945, the world sought to build a system that would prevent the abandonment of the persecuted and the defenseless. In 1947, that system recognized the Jewish people’s right to national rebirth. The question confronting the UN today is whether it still remembers why it was created—and whether it can apply its principles evenly, even when doing so is politically inconvenient.

The establishment of Israel was not an accident of history. It was a response to centuries of exile and the horrors of genocide, affirmed by the very international body meant to safeguard human dignity.

To understand the present, we must recall that beginning.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)