On successive days recently, two of the world’s most controversial, outspoken, and important leaders came to the current session of the United Nations General Assembly and delivered to its member nations representatives in person, and the whole world via broadcast and video, a blunt and eloquent appraisal of how much the global organization had abandoned its original purposes and lost its original respect and credibility.
Economist Javier Milei was unexpectedly elected president of Argentina last year, and with eloquence and bravado has been transforming that country’s chronically inflationary economy and its unstable government with already some success using libertarian and conservative principles and policies. Milei has traveled around the free world to oppose leftist ideology, government bureaucracy, and threats to human rights. In a daring appearance at the annual gathering of the world’s elites at Davos, Switzerland, he chastised the attendees for their arrogance.
Now he has done it again with his speech to the General Assembly, boldly scolding the majority of member states for abandoning the original Charter of the United Nations. Citing the current majority who take the sides of totalitarian regimes in disputes, allow human rights oppressors to sit on and prevail on the United Nations Human Rights Commission, adopt failed socialist ideas and policies, and oppose the only democratic nation in the Middle East, Israel, Milei told the General Assembly that the United Nations had lost its way and no longer had any credibility.
Pointedly quoting Woodrow Wilson, who had advocated the world’s first global organization, the League of Nations, Milei suggested that the United Nations was failing in even greater fashion than the League — which had failed to support small democracies threatened by Nazi and Soviet dictators between World Wars I and II. Milei accused the United Nations of not only failing to defend the oppressed, but also often joining in on the oppressing, employing socialist and woke concepts.
The next day, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu was in New York to speak also to the General Assembly and defend his nation’s current effort to respond to a murderous surprise attack on it by Hamas terrorists last October, and ongoing attacks by other proxies of Iran, with the purpose of totally destroying the State of Israel. Echoing Milei’s remarks, but with greater detail, Netanyahu criticized the United Nations majority for taking the side of the attackers, none of which are democratic states, and who also oppress women, gender minorities, and religions other than their own.
Defying United Nations resolutions demanding Israel agree to an immediate ceasefire and rejecting international organizations accusing him of being a war criminal, Netanyahu made a solid case for his nation’s military response to the assault on its very existence.
As he spoke, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were climaxing an extraordinary week-long campaign against the terrorist army Hezbollah which for eleven months had been bombarding Israeli communities on its border with Lebanon. Using historic innovation in weaponry and remarkable intelligence capabilities, the IDF had disrupted Hezbollah’s communications and chain of command while eliminating most of its top commanders, including its commander-in-chief Hassan Nasrallah, a notorious war criminal long pursued for his role in the deaths of hundreds of U.S. Marines in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Many of the United Nations delegates left before Netanyahu spoke, but he made his point, as had Milei, to those who remained, and to millions around the world listening to and watching its broadcast
In a world of socialistic, woke, and empty rhetoric, direct and candid speaking is uncommon in public and civic discussions. The world has a surplus of demagogic dictators and glib politicians. There is, however, a shortage of statesmen. At the United Nations in recent days, it was a relief that two rare statesmen told the world with bold eloquence just how things really are.
Herald Boas is a writer for AMAC Newsline.
