The UN’s Moral Collapse: The Legitimization of International Terror Groups

Vol. 25, No. 13

• The year 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which declared that Zionism is a form of racism. The resolution was the apex of “postcolonial” UN resolutions passed in the 1970s, whose misinterpretation and misapplication to Israel, the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, have colored international public opinion. These resolutions have fueled international court lawfare against Israel, even after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre. The result has been the endowment of moral and political legitimacy to terrorist aggressors, negating the fundamental values of the international system.
• Defying legal standards and logic, UN resolutions have been misinterpreted in the public discourse to deem Palestinian political violence a legitimate form of political expression. This misapplication, based on the false assumption that Israel is a colonial entity, has resulted in the justification and reinforcement of terrorism, including that of Hamas. The politicization of the UN has allowed Palestinian terror organizations to be viewed as liberation movements, creating parity between the democratic state of Israel and Hamas.
• Equally politicized international courts are conducive to a Palestinian “narrative” that reinterprets history and law, encouraging a disregard of standard, adjudicated examination of evidence, aligning with the “critical justice” legal academic activist movement’s legal reinterpretations; its “corrective” lens interprets “occupation,” “invasion,” and “blockade” for “social justice.”
• Israel has become the UN’s “canary in the coal mine” – an indigenous people in their ancestral homeland uniquely targeted for “colonialism,” undermining Israel’s sovereignty and right to self-defense, illustrating the usurpation of the UN’s democratic majority rule to compel the subversion of the UN’s charter and vision.

This study honors the memory of JCFA’s dear friend and associate, Olga Meshoe Washington, South African attorney and Israel advocate, CEO of DEISI (Defend Embrace Invest Support Israel), and Board Member of IBSI (the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel), with whom JCFA has partnered in its joint diplomatic-educational “Promise” project.^*

The year 2025 marks 50 years since the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed Resolution 3379, which labeled Zionism—the movement for a Jewish homeland—a form of racism.¹ While this resolution was shelved in 1991 by a subsequent General Assembly resolution, its damage had been done. It presented and showcased the UN’s role in shaping views on Israel and the Palestinian cause. Ideological shifts at the UN have since generated endless UN resolutions and international court appeals, framing Israel as a rogue, colonialist state, undermining Jewish history and the Jewish state’s sovereign legitimacy, uniquely targeting it for isolation.

The Origins of Resolution 3379

During the 1960s and 1970s, the UN became a platform for newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, known as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Soviet and Arab states lobbied these once colonial, Western-skeptical countries to challenge Israel’s legitimacy.² In 1975, this coalition passed Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism a form of racial discrimination, denying Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, which aimed to decolonize the Land of Israel as a Jewish homeland. Like all General Assembly resolutions, being a non-binding resolution, it was nothing more than a political statement, not law, reflecting Cold War tensions where NAM and Soviet blocs used voting blocs and the threat of Arab oil embargoes to ultimately out-vote Western nations. The resolution’s repeal in 1991, after the Soviet Union’s collapse, acknowledged its divisive nature, but its legacy persists. Ten years later, in 2001, the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, saw its NGO Forum revive the narrative of Resolution 3379, labeling Israel as a “racist” and “genocidal” state, echoing the resolution’s rhetoric and fueling the global BDS movement.³

Redefining Terms in the 1960s–1970s

In the 1960s, the UN’s 1965 International Convention on Racial Discrimination expanded the definition of “racism” to include ethnic and national discrimination. The new definition was used to frame Zionism as discriminatory in Resolution 3379. During the same era, NAM nations passed resolutions supporting “liberation movements”—groups fighting colonial or foreign rule.⁴ For example, UNGA Resolution 1514 (XV), passed in 1960, declared that all peoples have the right to self-determination and that colonialism must end.⁵

The appropriated claim of “colonialism” was subject to politicized, Arab nationalist reading of history that viewed Jewish land purchase and resettlement in Israel as premeditated domination or displacement of the Arab population. It also ignores international sanction for Israel’s establishment at the League of Nations, not just the British and the West.⁶ Colonialism was usually defined by foreign settlers colonizing on behalf of a foreign power, not Zionism’s fundamental decolonization in the Jews’ indigenous homeland, which already had a significant Jewish population. The Palestinian claim of colonialism was born within the dominant context of Arab nationalism, which refused to reckon with other ethnic and national groups’ legitimate claims to sovereignty.

“Colonialism” became a political branding that would grant the Palestinian cause, originally a refugee issue after Israel’s War of Independence, solidarity in NAM. Therefore, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), with Soviet and Chinese guidance, reframed itself as a liberation struggle against “colonialist” Israel.⁷

To this end, Arafat skillfully “cosplayed” the part of a liberation fighter: in 1974, dressed in military uniform and an empty holster, he was platformed at the UN with Soviet assistance, the first time a terrorist spoke at the podium there. He branded Israel “colonialist and racist.” While some saw the speech as a sensationalist stunt, it was the beginning of the Palestinian cause’s ride on the popular Third World and leftist ideological wave. Colonialism and racism were two evils “joined at the hip” in NAM and Marxist-Leninist ideology, a line adopted and disseminated by academics and many journalists.⁸

Arafat’s speech and later Resolution 3379 represented the apex of a process in which a “narrative” – a particular interpretation of history – would upset and supplant legal certainties: Israel’s self-determination and sovereignty. If indeed Israel were colonialist and racist – the Jewish state would require cancellation and erasure by any means necessary. In official PLO propaganda and at minor UN committees starting about a decade before the “holster speech,” Israel’s enemies attempted to insert the assertion that Israel was colonialist, to further its strategy of delegitimization. This effort only intensified after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Israel’s adversaries depicted it as an expansionist aggressor that had invaded Africa to occupy Sinai despite the war being defensive.⁹

Reflecting the Palestinian “rebranding” as a “colonized people,” the 1974 UNGA Resolution 3236 backed Palestinian self-determination, independence, and a “right of return” for refugees.¹⁰ The consequence of combining Resolutions 3236 and Resolution 3379 marked the “racist” Jewish state for political erasure and replacement.

UN Resolutions and “Armed Struggle”

Building on Resolutions 3236 and 3379, the Palestinian cause then concentrated on legitimizing “how” Israel would be dislodged. In 1977, Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions extended protections to fighters in liberation movements, treating them as combatants in some contexts.¹¹ Article 44(3) of the 1977 Protocols states that though combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population during military engagements (e.g., wearing uniforms recognizable from a distance), it recognizes that in “wars of national liberation or occupied territories” combatants may not always be able to distinguish themselves. Until today, this provision has been conveniently used by Palestinian terrorists, as is a 1979 exception to the hostage-taking convention, which allowed leniency for groups fighting “racist regimes” for self-determination. In 1982, Resolution 37/43 affirmed the right of peoples to use “all available means, including armed struggle,” for independence from colonial oppression, apartheid, and occupation.¹² The resolution referenced both apartheid and the Palestinian cause to create a false equivalence, and ever since, its reference to “armed struggle” has been used to justify terrorism.

The deadly combination of the above resolutions provided a rhetorical arsenal of UN resolutions for terrorists who claimed to be resisting “colonialism.” Since the UN has not yet defined terrorism, such acts are subject to a relativist view. This approach is evident in UN reports and rhetoric in which the term “the cycle of violence” describes Israeli-Palestinian clashes, equivocating terrorists who intentionally kill civilians and initiate conflict with defensive operations that attempt to reduce civilian casualties.

International Courts and Legal Challenges

The Palestinian narrative has also generated legal actions, known as “lawfare,” against Israel in international courts, especially after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took some 250 hostages. In December 2023, with financial and political encouragement from Iran, South Africa filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging Israel’s Gaza operations constituted genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.¹³

The case is still ongoing in 2025, though there’s no evidence of genocidal intent, as is required by the Genocide Convention, and with major discrepancies and inaccuracies found within the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health death count.¹⁴

Additionally, in November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC), at the behest of the Palestinians, issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes, such as targeting civilians and causing starvation, though the ICC’s jurisdiction concerning actions by Israel, as well as regarding the Palestinian legal standing before the Court are disputed (Israel is not a Rome Statute member and no Palestinian state exists that has the legal authority to grant the Court jurisdiction).¹⁵

Moreover, humanitarian aid has been liberally provided by Israel during most of the war. During the war, on September 18, 2024, the UNGA passed a resolution urging Israel to end its “occupation” of Palestinian territories within a year, threatening boycotts.¹⁶ A November 2024 UN Security Council draft calling for a ceasefire without hostage release was vetoed by the U.S.

The above actions reflect the international community’s acceptance of the Palestinian narrative of Israel as a colonial aggressor attempting to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians while ignoring Hamas’s 18 years of aggression towards Israel, beginning with rocket wars and continuing with its brutal October 7 massacre and its aftermath.

Intellectual Roots of the Narrative

The Palestinian cause gained global support through postcolonialism, a belief that former colonies should resist Western dominance. In the 1960s, thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre argued that violence could be justified for liberation.¹⁷ In the 1970s, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida’s ideas on power and language influenced “social justice” legal theories.¹⁸ Palestinian-American scholar and Foucault acolyte Edward Said, in his 1979 book The Question of Palestine, called Israel the “last bastion of colonialism.” These ideas shaped the NAM, which dominated the UN by the 1970s. The PLO reframed Palestinians as a colonized people, gaining NAM and Western academic support. This narrative views Jewish settlement in Israel as “colonization,” despite Jewish historical ties and constant presence. This ideology has filtered into universities, law schools, and the media, impacting public opinion on Israel’s fundamental rights to self-determination and sovereignty.

In the American discourse, the “apartheid” narrative was mainstreamed with the 2006 publication of the New York Times best-selling book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by former U.S. President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter. Supporters, including academics like Norman Finkelstein and left-leaning Israeli politicians like Yossi Beilin, praised Carter for breaking a U.S. taboo on criticizing Israel’s policies, while figures like South African anti-apartheid activist Tony Karon argued the term was “morally valid.” Later, human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch echoed Carter’s claims in their reports.¹⁹

Soon the politicized international courts began forwarding this narrative, reinterpreting history and law and often disregarding standards of adjudicated examinations of evidence, in favor of “social justice” aims. The approach aligns with the “critical justice” legal academic activist movement’s reinterpretation of law.²⁰ Critical justice’s “corrective” lens interprets terms such as “occupation,” “invasion,” and “blockade” with the declared objective of “social justice.”²¹ Over time, neo-Marxist, postmodern, Critical Theory, and postcolonial thought school proponents²² have pushed the Palestinian narrative while simultaneously encouraging the deconstruction of conventional law and history to further it. This activist climate now envelops the UN and the international courts.²³ Ireland, for example, on December 11, 2024, requested from the ICJ a broadening of the definition of “genocide” to implicate Israel in the recent case, which could illustrate a practical application of the critical social justice approach in redefining legal terms.²⁴

Bias in the UN and Courts

The UN’s voting blocs amplify bias, with NAM’s majority passing anti-Israel resolutions, often outvoting Western allies like the United States, which vetoes Security Council drafts. UN “special rapporteurs,” like Francesca Albanese, unabashedly exhibit the biases of postcolonial dogma. Since the ICJ, the UN’s “world court,” often uses UN-generated reports, the system operates as a “closed-circuit.” That is, reports by UN “independent advisors” and “special rapporteurs” such as Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Farkhi,²⁵ and advisor Ardi Imseis,²⁶ who have publicly exhibited anti-Israel bias,²⁷ may be used²⁸ to establish “patterns of behavior” – which may be subjective – rather than prove specific legal elements.

In a recent example of how UN staff have spread misinformation, on May 20, 2025, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Michael Fletcher told the BBC in an interview that “14,000 babies” in Gaza could die “in the next 48 hours” if aid does not reach the Gaza Strip. Fletcher’s false claim misrepresented an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report projecting malnutrition over the course of a year if aid was withheld. Though the UN retracted Fletcher’s statement, the misinformation continues to appear in BBC, New York Times, and other major media outlet headlines. ²⁹ It is not difficult to imagine how these biases and factual inaccuracies could affect the results of cases such as that of South Africa vs. Israel currently pending.

Israel is not the only victim of the system: African states have complained of disproportionate targeting by the courts,³⁰ which spare powerful nations like China and Russia. Russia dismissed an ICC warrant against President Vladimir Putin in 2023 for war crimes against Ukrainians, with former Russian President and then Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev issuing a threat to target the ICC in the Hague with hypersonic missiles in retaliation.³¹

In general, the UN’s failure to prevent atrocities in Cambodia, Syria, and elsewhere brings into question its effectiveness and continued utility and capability of carrying out its Charter principles.³² One of the UN’s agencies in Gaza and the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority – UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) – has been shown to run institutions that serve as centers of anti-Israel subversion. UNRWA schools not only indoctrinate children into Jew hatred and violence, but they also serve as weapons depots and Hamas militants’ headquarters, with UNRWA staff, including teachers, within Hamas’s employ. UN resolutions and rhetoric lend moral weight to Hamas’s atrocities as “resistance,” leading countries like Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, Norway, and Armenia to recognize “Palestine” after the October 7 massacre, essentially rewarding terrorism.

Implications for Israel and the West

Israel faces unique and blatantly discriminatory UN scrutiny, despite Israel’s democratic status, its Charter right of sovereign equality, and indigenous ties to the land. The narrative of Israel as colonial, rooted in Resolution 3379’s legacy, challenges its sovereignty and self-defense rights. Some Western nations, like Norway, support Palestinian statehood to address colonial histories, but this may set a precedent for questioning other democracies. The UN’s focus on “social justice” distorts terms like “occupation” or “genocide,” defined strictly in law but applied loosely to Israel, fueling public confusion. The 2004 ICJ non-binding advisory opinion on Israel’s life-saving security barrier, labeling Judea and Samaria “occupied,” has also shaped these debates, though the territory is disputed and subject to the agreements set out in the Oslo Accords.

Changing the Narrative

Addressing UN bias requires action. Clarifying, on the floor of the UN, legal terms like “occupation” or “war crimes” can counter the pervasive and legally inaccurate narrative-driven claims, helping the public understand their strict definitions. UN resolutions are nothing more than political opinions, not laws, and international courts remain contested spaces. The viral, invasive, and pervasive postcolonial dialogue has jeopardized the sovereignty and defense of Israel, a member state, causing the UN to betray its fundamental charge to defend the sovereign and equal rights of its member states and to foster peace.³³ The UN’s contempt for Israeli sovereignty ultimately panders to terrorist entities, but may also has broader implications for other member states, including the once-colonialist Western states that fund the lion’s share of the international system. Democracies must defend strict and traditional interpretations of international resolutions to break this trend.

Olga Meshoe Washington stressed how UN Resolution 3379 – “Zionism is racism” was an antisemitic relic of Soviet propaganda that “shifted the libel and the attacks against Israel from a geopolitical space to a human rights space,” aiming to deny Israel’s right to self-determination. Olga emphasized the falsehood of the apartheid claim against Israel and its misappropriation of South African history. She said in December 2023: “So people now march on the streets proudly saying that they are upholding human rights values by protesting the fact that Israel is an apartheid state…it’s an affront to Black people who really suffered apartheid. It also erases our history. If everything becomes apartheid, what truly is apartheid?…it also acts as a smokescreen to really address the suffering of…the people in Gaza at the hands of Hamas.” (JCFA War Room interview, during the Swords of Iron War, with Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch), https://jcpa.org/video/the-true-cost-of-the-israel-apartheid-narrative/ December 13, 2023 16:37-17:17. See also Olga Meshoe Washington, “The Israel-Apartheid Lie and the Appropriation of South Africa’s History,” in Israelophobia and the West: The Hijacking of Civil Discourse on Israel and How to Rescue It, Dr. Dan Diker, editor, https://jcpa.org/israelophobia-and-the-west/ )

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Notes