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The UN Is Obsolete; Israel’s Defense of Itself Just Proved It’s a Good Thing
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani attends an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, at UN headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
For decades, the UN has been a forum for anti-Israel bias and symbolic gestures. This week’s General Assembly drama — mass recognition of a Palestinian state, lectures about ceasefires, and leaders publicly abandoning hope in the institution — only confirms that the world no longer relies on a body built for moral posturing rather than practical action.
The UN was born to prevent genocide and keep the peace. Yet this week’s General Assembly laid bare how far the institution has drifted from that founding purpose.
World leaders poured into New York to declaim, condemn, and recognize; the headlines were dominated less by meaningful enforcement than by theatrical denunciations and symbolic recognitions. Several European governments used the UN stage to formally recognize a Palestinian state — an outraged diplomatic rebuke to Israel that, while loud, offers no practical mechanism to stop terrorism against Israel or feed the starving. The actions by countries to recognize a state of “Palestine” are real and consequential as a political signal, but they are not a solution to the operational realities on the ground.
What the General Assembly specializes in is moral theater. Speeches this week ranged from calls for immediate ceasefires and humanitarian corridors, to scathing rebukes of Israel’s campaign against Hamas.
Spain’s king and many other leaders pressed for an immediate halt to the fighting; others used the platform to assert global values and moral outrage. At the same time, US President Donald Trump used his podium to excoriate the institution itself and to make clear that Washington will not allow the UN to dictate a policy that weakens the Western moral order, or Israel’s right of self-defense. The cacophony played out on live television; the result was clarity, not consensus: the UN can supply rhetoric, not remediation.
The practical consequences of the UN’s paralysis have been obvious for months. The Security Council — the only UN organ able to issue binding measures — has increasingly been reduced to spectacle, as members trade accusations and resort to vetoes. This week’s special council sessions underlined the growing isolation of the US position and the paralysis of the council. Many states demanded immediate steps to halt Israel’s operations, while Washington insisted that any meaningful move must condemn Hamas and protect the chance of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal.
The UN’s failure is not merely rhetorical — it extends to the world body’s humanitarian role. We have now seen governments and publics lose confidence in the UN’s ability to prevent aid from being diverted and weaponized. The controversies over aid distribution in Gaza — including the UN Office of Project Services tracking that many aid consignments have not reached their intended destinations and US officials pointing to extremely high interception figures — have fed a crisis of credibility. Washington and Jerusalem’s response was to back new mechanisms to deliver life-saving assistance outside the UN framework; critics call these moves dangerous and partial, but they are a pragmatic response to a broken distribution system. The dispute over how much aid has been diverted, and by whom, is contested; what is not contested is the loss of public trust in the UN’s delivery capabilities.
If the UN cannot be trusted to apply its own neutrality standards, safeguard aid, or protect civilians impartially, then it ceases to be the practical instrument the world needs. This week’s events show something more uncomfortable: large parts of the international community prefer symbolic condemnation to hard enforcement. Countries can — and increasingly do — act through coalitions, bilateral arrangements, and ad-hoc institutions when lives are on the line. The rush to recognize a Palestinian state at the General Assembly is an example of symbolism substituting for the painstaking, security-first work required to disarm terrorists, free hostages, and then build lasting institutions.
For Israel, the lesson is blunt: survival cannot be outsourced to an assembly of speeches and resolutions. When Hamas masterminds mass murder and holds hundreds hostage, a world that treats that barbarism as merely another item for debate is failing the very cause the UN was created to defend. Israel has thus acted — and, in doing so, exposes the UN’s limited role. Some will call that action unilateral or ugly; others will call it the only realistic choice left in a world where the most binding international body is paralyzed by politics. Either way, this week’s General Assembly demonstrated that the UN provides a stage, not a strategy.
The UN may survive as a diplomatic forum. It can still host conferences, deliver statements, and register condemnations. But its transformation from an authority that organizes collective security into a global soapbox is now complete. If the international order is to be more than rhetoric, democratic states must stop pretending that a broken multilateral institution can substitute for decisive leadership and accountable coalitions capable of both providing aid and stopping terror. The UN’s obsolescence is no tragedy — it is an invitation for effective, moral action to migrate from podiums to policy.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx
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Jewish Columbia University Graduate Employees File Complaint Against Anti-Israel Union
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas Columbia University students march on Oct. 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Photo: Roy De La Cruz via Reuters Connect
Jewish students employed as graduate workers by Columbia University have filed a federal complaint against their campus labor union — Student Workers of Columbia, an affiliate of United Auto Workers (UAW) — alleging that its bosses devote more energy and resources to pursuing “radical policy proposals” than improving occupational conditions.
The National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), a nonprofit organization which fights for worker mobility and freedom of representation that is providing the students legal counsel free of charge, announced the action on Monday. In a release shared with The Algemeiner, it said the students, who have formed the advocacy group Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression (GRADS), are subjected to abuses which magnify problems inherent in compulsory union membership — chiefly that they may be forced to accept as representatives of their interests union bosses who act in “bad faith” and hold offensive beliefs.
At Columbia University, this issue has manifested in UAW’s unrelenting effort to inveigle school officials into adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and other measures, including abolishing relationships with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and Tel Aviv University.
“These and similar actions constitute bad faith bargaining … and violate the duty of fair representation that respondent union owes to all represented graduate students,” state the charges, which GRAFS filed at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
“Far from facilitating a more harmonious relationship between graduate students and the Columbia administration, UAW union bosses are simply ramping up radical extremism at a university that has already seen more than its share of chaos,” National Right to Work president Mark Mix said in a statement. “While it’s wrong from the start that any student is forced to accept union boss ‘representation’ they oppose, it’s even less acceptable that UAW union officials are trying to use their monopoly bargaining privileges to enforce their divisive politics on the entire campus, including undergraduate students.”
Experts told the US Congress earlier this month that antisemitism runs rampant in campus labor unions, trapping Jews in exploitative and nonconsensual relationships with union bosses who spend their membership dues on political activities which promote hatred of their identity and the destruction of the Jewish homeland.
Testifying at a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism” held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, the witnesses described a series of issues facing Jewish graduate students represented against their will by the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) union.
During an interview with The Algemeiner after the hearing, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney for NRTW, said union antisemitism highlights the issues inherent in compulsory union representation, which he says quells freedom of speech and association. He pointed to the case of Cornell University PhD candidate David Rubinstein, who testified before the subcommittee about his own tribulations and a climate of hatred which evades being redressed because the ringleaders fostering it hold left-wing viewpoints.
“The only reason that David is forced to be represented by UE and is theoretically forced to pay them dues is because federal labor law allows that and in many cases requires it,” Taubman explained. “What I told the committee is that ending the union abuse of graduate students and people like David requires amending federal law so that unions are not the forced representatives of people who don’t want such representation.”
He added, “Unions have a special privilege that no other private organization in America has, and that is the power to impose their representation on people who don’t want it and then mandate that they pay dues because they quote-un-quote represent you. That is the most un-American thing that I can imagine.”
Rubinstein told The Algemeiner that he is a Democrat who supports many of the causes for which unions advocate but that what he described as UE’s support for Hamas leaves him no choice but to seek every avenue for disassociating with it.
“As a Jew, I cannot support an organization which spends its time not advocating for wages and health care but rather for ‘intifada revolution,’” he said. “The union antisemitism is empowered by the Cornell administration’s persistent weakness and consistent reneging on its promises to defend the rights of Jewish students.”
Rubinstein added that Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff came close to exempting students from paying UE dues but abandoned the policy change after its members threatened to strike and thereby disrupt university operations.
“The threat of being terminated, the demands for money, and the constant harassment that others and I have experienced from UE would have never been possible had it not been for the weakness of Cornell leadership,” he added.
Campus antisemitism has drawn NRTW into an alliance with Jewish faculty and students across the US.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Iran, China, Russia Pledge Coordinated Action Against European Efforts to Reinstate UN Sanctions on Tehran
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN headquarters in New York, US, Sept. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jeenah Moon
Iran, China, and Russia have pledged coordinated action against European efforts to reinstate United Nations sanctions on Tehran, denouncing them as “illegal” after repeated negotiations failed to reach an agreement over the Iranian nuclear program.
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi met with his Chinese and Russian counterparts to explore deeper diplomatic collaboration amid escalating tensions with the West.
“We agreed on coordinated action against the unlawful efforts of Germany, France, and the UK to bring back sanctions that had been lifted,” the Iranian diplomat said.
Last month, Britain, France, and Germany formally initiated the 30-day process to activate the snapback mechanism, accusing Tehran of violating the 2015 nuclear deal meant to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief — a move Iran condemned as “unjustified and unlawful.”
Russia and China, both signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal, have backed the Islamist regime in Tehran while firmly opposing Europe’s efforts to reinstate UN sanctions.
Facing the looming threat of economic sanctions and still reeling from its 12-day war with Israel, Iran is seeking support from its allies to restore and strengthen its defense capabilities.
On Wednesday, meanwhile, Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), announced that Tehran signed an agreement with Moscow to build more nuclear power plants in the country, further deepening their ties.
Earlier this year, Russia pledged to build eight nuclear power plants in Iran, including four in the southern province of Bushehr.
According to a press release from the AEOI, the newly signed deal aims to expand bilateral cooperation on the “peaceful use of nuclear energy,” with the goal of strengthening energy security, advancing technology, and promoting sustainable development.
This week, Iran also received Russian MiG-29 fighter jets, while the country awaits delivery of more advanced Sukhoi Su-35s, emphasizing the regime’s latest push to rebuild its military capabilities.
“Once these systems are fully in place, our enemies will understand the language of power,” Abolfazl Zohrevand, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee, told local media.
The Iranian lawmaker also claimed that Tehran is receiving China’s HQ-9 and Russia’s S-400 air defense systems “in significant numbers.”
According to the Associated Press, Iran has also started rebuilding several ballistic missile facilities as part of a wider effort to restore its missile program, which was significantly damaged during its war with Israel.
The United Kingdom, France, and Germany — collectively known as the E3 — have offered to delay the reimposition of UN sanctions for up to six months to allow more time for negotiations on a long-term agreement over Iran’s nuclear program.
However, the offer depends on Tehran restoring access for UN inspectors, addressing concerns about its enriched uranium stockpile, and engaging in talks with Washington.
Unless Iran and the European powers reach a deal to postpone the reimposition of sanctions within the next few days, the snapback process will move forward.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed that the country would withstand any renewed sanctions and continue pursuing its national interests, emphasizing that Tehran would “never bow before aggressors.”
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful civilian purposes. However, Western countries have accused Tehran of seeking the capability to develop nuclear weapons.
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Slovenia Imposes Travel Ban on Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during ‘Christian Conference’ in Jerusalem, July 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Slovenia on Thursday imposed a travel ban on Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a government statement, after last year officially recognizing a Palestinian state and in July banning two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers.
“With this action Slovenia confirms its commitment to international law, the universal values of human rights, and a principled and consistent foreign policy,” Neva Grasic, the Secretary of State at the Foreign Ministry, said according to the government’s X account.
EU member Slovenia imposed an arms embargo on Israel in August and introduced a ban on imports of goods produced in Israeli communities in the West Bank.
Grasic said the government acted against Netanyahu because he stands accused by the International Court of Justice of committing war crimes in Gaza. Netanyahu adamantly denies the charges.
“The public is aware that proceedings are underway against him for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Grasic said.
“With this decision, the government is sending a clear message to the state of Israel that Slovenia expects consistent compliance with the decisions of international courts and international humanitarian law,” she added.
The tiny Alpine country along with other European countries has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and increased aid deliveries to the enclave.
In July, the government imposed an embargo on exports, imports, and transit of arms to and from Israel, two weeks after it declared Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich persona non grata over “genocidal statements” and incitement of violence against Palestinians.
In August, Slovenia introduced a ban on imports of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and approved an additional aid package for Palestinians in Gaza.