Things Worth Remembering: Mr. Biden, This Is How You Defend Israel

Welcome to Douglas Murray’s column, “Things Worth Remembering,” in which he presents great speeches that we should commit to heart. Scroll down to listen to Douglas reflect on Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1975 speech, in which he reminded America that Zionism is not racism.

For the last week, hordes of diplomats have been wining and dining their way around Manhattan, where they have been quartered for the United Nations General Assembly. Anyone familiar with this annual circus could be forgiven for tuning out.

So it might have escaped your notice that multiple UN grandees have availed themselves of this illustrious opportunity to demonize the world’s sole Jewish state. Israel is battling Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, two terrorist groups that will not rest until they have obliterated a nation America has always counted among its closest allies.

And yet, this week, very few Americans seemed to bat an eyelid when a self-professed democratic leader—Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—said, on U.S. soil, on the first day of the General Assembly: “Just as Hitler was stopped by the alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his murder network must also be stopped by the alliance of humanity.”

A historically illiterate, deeply offensive comparison between the architect of the genocide of European Jewry and the leader of the world’s only Jewish state. How could Erdoğan justify saying such a thing in a room full of global leaders? 

Sadly, it’s an easy question to answer. Thugs and autocrats and antisemites have always viewed the United Nations as a cudgel meant to batter the West. Just as every country on Earth whose name includes “the people’s republic” is neither for the people or a republic, every UN member that uses its membership to decry the deaths of innocents in Gaza—but not Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, North Korea, China, or anywhere else—could not care less about innocents. This is posturing pure and simple, and it’s meant to elevate Erdoğan’s standing among his fellow bottom-feeders while cornering Israel, undermining its raison d’être, chipping away at the founding ideals of the United Nations.

Unfortunately, the American president lacks the fortitude or moral vision to say as much. In his remarks in New York, Joe Biden offered up a potpourri of platitudes that will move no one: “Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” “a diplomatic solution is still possible,” and so forth.

To imagine what might have been, we may recall a very different Irish Catholic Democrat, who, 49 years ago, gave a very different speech at the United Nations. One that robustly defended Israel. One that condemned the organization’s treatment of the Jewish state. One that articulated the values of democracy and pluralism and tolerance, which so many Western leaders now seem congenitally incapable of articulating.

I refer, of course, to the late, great Daniel Patrick Moynihan—who was the U.S. ambassador to the UN during one of its most egregious betrayals of Israel.