Resolution 2334 | First One Through

Black Americans have long used a phrase that captures a structural grievance: over-policed and under-protected.

The complaint is that disproportionate scrutiny produces disproportionate outcomes. If people in one neighborhood are stopped more often, searched more often, cited more often, it will generate more arrests. Those arrests are then cited as proof that the scrutiny was justified. The cycle validates itself.

*Pew Research on distrust of criminal justice systems, June 2024*

Israel occupies a similar structural position in international institutions.

At the United Nations Human Rights Council, Israel is the only country assigned a permanent, standalone agenda item — Item 7: “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” Every regular session includes debate under this item. No other state – not China, not Iran, not North Korea – is subject to a standing country-specific agenda item.

The numbers reinforce the asymmetry. Since its creation in 2006, the Council has adopted more condemnatory resolutions against Israel than against any other country. In multiple sessions, Israel alone has faced more resolutions than the rest of the world combined.

Volume creates narrative.

Layer onto that the density of global media in Jerusalem – more permanent foreign correspondents than in most active war zones – and the scrutiny becomes constant. Every military action is instantly internationalized. Allegations become juridical language before investigations conclude. Terms like “war crimes” and “genocide” enter discourse early and stick.

The latest war began with an attack Israel did not initiate and repeatedly stated it did not seek. It conditioned an end to fighting simply on the return of hostages and disarmament, to which Gazans repeatedly refused. While urban combat against embedded fighters produces tragic civilian loss, the reported civilian-to-combatant ratios in this conflict fell well below ranges seen in other recent urban wars. That context rarely leads headlines.

Black Americans understand how presumption operates. When systems assume danger, data accumulates accordingly. When institutions assume guilt, findings follow.

“It’s the broader narrative of who belongs and who doesn’t, which allows certain groups to tap in the police department, to use the police department or weaponized the police department in ways that are conducive to violence against Black people” – Lallen T. Johnson, Department of Justice, Law and Criminology at American University

Similarly, the United Nations decided that Jews do not belong in Jerusalem – the holiest city in Judaism – or east of the 1949 Armistice Lines / the “West Bank”, so have developed a criminal system that specifically and persistently targets Jews. The mere presence of Jews is labelled “illegal” and an affront to international law.

“Condemning all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, [presence of Jews] character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem,” – UN Security Council Resolution 2334

*The United Nations made a law declaring Jewish presence at their holiest location to be illegal*

When one minority community, whether it be racial or national, lives under permanent investigation, outcomes will look like confirmation of wrongdoing, even when standards are warped and unevenly applied.

Over-policing corrodes trust at home. Over-condemnation corrodes credibility abroad.

Justice requires symmetry. Blacks and Jews know it all too well.

On December 23, 2016, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2334. The resolution was disgraceful in several familiar respects in condemning Israel unfairly. To name just a few:

It falsely labeled a place called “East Jerusalem” which had only existed for a mere eighteen years from 1949 to 1967
It called East Jerusalem a “Palestinian territory”, when it never was anything of the sort, before, during or after 1949-1967
It proposed a “two-state solution based on the 1967 lines” when Israel and the Palestinian Authority had already signed agreements to negotiate lines without any preconceived final boundaries
Demanded that Jews be prevented from living in “East Jerusalem” and other “occupied Palestinian territory”, a blatantly anti-Semitic demand
Called for countries to treat Israel and Israeli territory differently, even though countries around the world – including the United States – do not distinguish in labeling their own products

The U.N. General Assembly (GA) had frequently made such horrible comments. What was new and alarming in this instance was that the resolution PASSED THE SECURITY COUNCIL, which may become legally binding.

As noted by the UN, “resolutions adopted by the GA on agenda items are considered to be recommendations and are not legally binding on the Member States. The only resolutions that have the potential to be legally binding are those that are adopted by the Security Council.” Further, “in contrast to the decisions made by the General Assembly, all Member States are obligated under the UN Charter to carry out the Security Council’s decisions…. As Article 25 of the UN Charter states, “The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.””

This alarming anti-Israel action managed to pass because the United States opted to abstain in the Resolution 2334 vote. Until that time, the U.S. had always voted against such anti-Israel measures at the Security Council because of possible ramifications.

This time, President Obama took this action in the final days of his administration because of lobbying from Jewish pro-Palestinian groups like J Street, and as payback for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepting an invitation from the Republican House Speaker to speak to a joint session of Congress about the existential threat of the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015, without coordinating with the president’s office.

At that time, a senior Obama official said that Netanyahu “spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price.“

*Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015*

Anti-Jewish attacks in the United States jumped 22.9% shortly thereafter in 2017, the largest spike since the FBI tracked hate crime data.

The ever-increasing number of boycotts and lawsuits against Israel, and the dramatic spike in harassment on college campuses and other locations of global Jewry, is related to Obama’s bruised ego and lobbying of alt-left groups like J Street.