Syria leads U.N. Security Council
By Joseph Farah
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
14.6.02

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
That's my reaction to the fact that, this month, the terror-sponsoring nation of Syria is serving as president of the United Nations Security Council. If you thought international politics couldn't get more absurd, you thought wrong. Last week the terror group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in northern Israel that killed 17 people. Islamic Jihad is openly and brazenly headquartered in Damascus. It is funded by the Syrian regime. It couldn't operate for five seconds without the permission and the backing of Syria. And now, at least temporarily, Syria leads the U.N. Security Council. It's a sick joke.

It's a great example of why America is stone cold crazy for participating in the charade known as the U.N. This is an unaccountable international agency that snubs its nose at everything decent and honorable – and particularly at the United States, which foots most of the bill. This is a wannabe global government that hates the Jewish state and everything for which it stands. But it loves tin-pot dictatorships like Syria. Not only does Syria support Islamic Jihad, a group so radical it has been aligned with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida both before Sept. 11 and after, it also supports Hezbollah, the group believed to be behind the Beirut bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks.

And, yet, the U.S. sits there and takes it. The U.S. quietly accepts the insult. The U.S. doesn't even offer as much as a protest at the injustice, the slight, the gross immorality and duplicity of Syria leading the U.N. Security Council. Worse yet, as I have pointed out regularly in this space, there is only one Middle East nation occupied by a foreign army. It's not Palestine. It's not Kuwait. It's little Lebanon, the one Arab nation with some experience in autonomous self-government, that is occupied by 30,000 Syrian troops. It is Lebanon that is not permitted to govern itself by its larger, more powerful neighbor. It is Lebanon that is forced to serve as the staging ground for international terrorists by Damascus.

Syria should be an international pariah. If the U.N. served any purpose whatsoever, it should be to impose sanctions on outlaw regimes like Damascus. Syria should not even be permitted to serve on the Security Council. It should be booted from the U.N. altogether for imposing its political will on a neighbor through force of arms and for its open support of terrorist groups. More than any other nation on earth, Syria sponsors terrorism – more than Iran, more than Iraq, yes, even more than oil-rich Saudi Arabia. But, instead, the U.N. rewards terror states. Syria, by the way, is also a proud member of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which illustrates why no one should ever take seriously anything that emanates from the group with regard to human-rights abuses. Syria weighing in on human rights?

Syria has killed thousands of its own citizens in the massacre of Hama. There are no opposition parties in Syria. There are no elections. There are no opposition newspapers. It is pure totalitarian government at its worst. In Lebanon, its proxy regime prohibits Palestinians from voting, from owning property, from holding jobs as a means of keeping the Arab refugees as political pawns in its perpetual state of war with Israel.

Never was there a more clear-cut enemy of peace, freedom and justice than Syria.
Let's see:

0. Syria supports some of the worst terrorists on the face of the earth, including those who practice suicide bombings against both Israel and the United States.
1. Syria occupies its neighbor Lebanon and steadfastly refuses to withdraw its troops and permit Beirut to govern itself.
2. Syria runs a brutal form of totalitarianism against its own people.

Yet, Damascus is permitted to sit in judgment of the human-rights conditions in other countries by the U.N. And, at least this month, it is permitted to serve as president of the U.N. Security Council, the most important arm of the international body. If this all makes you as sick as it makes me, it's time to scream about it. It's time to tell your elected officials in Washington that you are as mad as hell and are not going to take it any more. Is this the way you want your tax dollars spent? Is this the kind of internationalism that you want to support? Is this really the road to a more peaceful and just world?

Joseph Farah is editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily.com and writes a daily column. Get an autographed, first-edition copy of Joseph Farah's 1996 book, "This Land Is Our Land," published by St. Martin's Press.