One hundred seventy-three condemnations for Israel, 80 for the rest of the world: Time to end the United Nations

The U.N. General Assembly has opened its 81st session with the usual invocations of peace, cooperation, and shared human values. Unfortunately, the United Nations no longer embodies those ideals. As a believer in multilateralism, strong alliances, and a shared humanity that transcends nationality, it pains me to say it, but the U.N. should be dissolved.Its treatment of Israel makes that plain. If recent history is any guide, the world’s only Jewish state will once again face more condemnations during this General Assembly than every other nation combined. The pattern has become so routine that we scarcely notice how extraordinary it is.From 2015 to 2024, the assembly adopted 173 resolutions concerning or condemning Israel. During that same time period, 80 were drawn regarding every other country combined. That includes Syria amid one of the bloodiest civil wars of this century, Russia invading and occupying Eastern Europe, and North Korea’s prison camps. Never mind Iran’s brutal massacre of thousands of citizens in January. China detains and imprisons vast numbers of Uyghurs, and Christians are massacred in Nigeria, all while the U.N. trains its heaviest fire, year after year, on one small Jewish democracy.What explains the U.N.’s disproportionate condemnations of Israel? Arithmetic.The Organization of Islamic Cooperation comprises 57 states, 56 of which are voting members of the General Assembly. In addition, there is the larger Non-Aligned Movement, roughly 120 member countries that coordinate their positions across U.N. business. On Israel, these blocs form a coalition that produces disproportionate majorities, with dogmatic regularity, against the Jewish state, often before debate begins.This is what John Stuart Mill, the 19th-century philosopher, called “the tyranny of the majority.” That is, the instance when a numerical majority uses its power to impose its willful prejudice until it becomes truth.And Mill had not even encountered modern media.At Turtle Bay, they complain about the Security Council’s outsize power. But it is the tyranny of the majority, amplified by its strategic media campaigns, that carries real weight. Consider Gaza’s contested famine predictions. In March 2024, famine was declared imminent; by June, the reviewing body concluded that the available evidence did not indicate famine was occurring. Another famine analysis was rejected for insufficient evidence, and a December 2024 warning was withdrawn after serious flaws in its population data were exposed. When the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System finally declared famine in August 2025, Israel disputed the finding on the same methodological grounds that had undone the earlier warnings. But the media covers the charge far more than the retraction. The moral bankruptcy extends well beyond Israel. U.N. peacekeepers have repeatedly been accused of sexually exploiting and abusing the people they were sent to protect. The Oil-for-Food program became a historic corruption scandal. The committees tasked with protecting human rights and women’s rights are made up of the worst violators on Earth. I actually cannot think of a single successful U.N. program, one not riddled with corruption, fraud, or graft.Dictatorships sit in judgment of democracies, while American taxpayers remain the U.N.’s largest financial backers, and the broader international system increasingly threatens to subject American soldiers and officials to politically motivated prosecution abroad.OPINION: THE UN HAS A CARTEL BLIND SPOT. THE ‘SHIELD OF THE AMERICAS’ IS THE REALITY CHECKMill warned against the seductive authority of power found in numbers, the way majorities acquire moral weight simply by being majorities. He observed that this social tyranny could prove more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, because it settles into the lazy habit of deciding, without debate, who deserves condemnation. Israel continues to suffer the consequences.The ideals that inspired the U.N. still matter. The world needs international cooperation grounded in peace, human dignity and shared values. After 81 sessions, we should have the honesty to admit what these votes actually measure, acknowledge what the United Nations has become, dissolve this failed institution, and build something better.Joan Leslie McGill is a foreign policy analyst and executive director of the U.S. Israel Education Association.