On November 10, 1975, the UN General Assembly declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” (UN Photo/Teddy Chen)
Tirza Shorr: The UN, Israel, and the Devolution of Global Narratives
Israel has become the “canary in the coal mine” at the UN – an indigenous people in their ancestral homeland uniquely targeted for “colonialism.”
- 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.
Tirza Shorr is a senior researcher and program coordinator at the Jerusalem Center. Her research specialty is the ideology of leftist movements and the Red-Green alliance.
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