Marty Peretz , unsurprisingly, counts himself among those irreconcilably disgusted at the mere prospect of the Durban Review Conference. He seems, unfortunately, just as misguided and misinformed.
And [the Durban Review Conference] is already fixed to bring ignominy on Israel…and also shame and dishonor to the United Nations. Americans are truly disgusted with the U.N., and not only because of its treatment of Israel.
As I’ve articulated before — and as everyone who has heard any of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rants can attest to — it is not a surprise that Iran and some other countries and NGOs are going to mouth anti-Semitic statements. But doing so brings ignominy on no one other than themselves. And if Peretz is willing to heap “shame and dishonor” on the entire United Nations simply for the membership of this handful of “bad actors,” he probably has a much bigger problem — one that indicts the entire reigning system of sovereign states and international organizations writ large — than with one single conference.
Perhaps even more glaringly off-the-mark is Peretz’s inference about popular American sentiment toward the UN. If he had read our polling [slideshow below], he would know that Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of working with the UN and other countries and international organizations. To accuse them of the opposite is to simply slather Peretz’s own animus against the UN onto the millions of Americans who believe in the organization. And that, to me, seems truly ignominious.