by David Krusch
The death and destruction caused by World War II and the Holocaust was
something unprecedented in modern human history. The
horrors of Nazism and facism led to the deaths of hundreds of millions
of people, including the near destruction of European
Jewry. After the ultimate victories in Europe and
Asia, the Allies created an organization where the nations
of the world could join together and strive to defeat
future threats against international security. This
organization, the United
Nations, was to be a forum for the making and enforcement
of international law, as well as a safeguard to protect
peoples of the world against racism and genocide. According
to author Pedro A. Sanjuan, the UN has done exactly
the opposite, and its policies have been such that it
actually aided in the spread of racism, anti-Semitism,
and corruption throughout its member nations.
The UN Gang is Sanjuan's vivid
personal account as a United
States representative at the UN in the 1980s-1990s.
Appointed by then-Vice President George Bush, his real
job was to monitor Soviet activities in the UN for the United Staates. In
the very early stages of his time at the UN, Sanjuan
found that most of its important and strategic positions
were controlled by the Soviet KGB, and strong Soviet
influence went all the way up the ranks to the Secretary-General.
This book is a testament to the absurd, and in his dry
and biting sense of humor, Sanjuan chronicles his many
awkward encounters with other UN diplomats and Soviet
KGB agents.
From the time of his arrival to the
UN, Sanjuan realized that the environment toward American
diplomats, especially those appointed and confirmed
by the U.S. government, was disturbingly hostile. He
describes an incident about his first day of work at
the UN, where he found a small bag of cocaine hidden
in the receiver of his office phone, which he later
discovered was placed there by Soviet agents. The security
people at the U.S. mission simply told him this sort
of thing happened all the time at the UN.
Expressions of anti-Semitism and other
forms of racism occur regularly within the halls of
the United Nations Secretariat in New York. According
to Sanjaun, whose first encounter with Soviet Undersecretary-General
Viacheslav Ustinov began with a question: "So your
father was Jew, yes?" Through rumors and word of
mouth, it had reached all levels of the UN that the
new American "spy" was Jewish, and should
be regarded as a hostile threat. Though he isn't Jewish,
Sanjuan found himself in the position of defending himself
against anti-Semitic remarks in encounters with other
UN diplomats.
Sanjuan felt an obligation as a non-Jew
to confront the bigotry he found at the UN: "Although
I do not deny that Jews, deeply religious or merely
bound by a tradition, would be expected to oppose anti-Semitism
in any of its varied manifestations, I most certainly
do not agree that combating anti-Semitism is the exclusive
responsibility of the Jews...Knowing as I do the devastating
effects of unchallenged anti-Semitism, I feel strongly
that it is my responsibility to fight anti-Semitism
wherever and in every way I can - for the very obvious
reason that I am not a Jew."
Not only was the United Nations bogged
down with hundreds of redundant offices and useless
secretaries, corrupt diplomats, anti-Semitism, and an
influx of KGB agents, it was also a place where Islamic
extremists met freely to discuss jihad against America and Israel.
The Islamist influence at the UN became so powerful
that the UN, a supposedly secular organization, established
a mosque inside the penthouse at the Dag
Hammarskjold Library with scheduled prayer times,
even though no other religious group at the UN had similar
places for worship. Taking advantage of their diplomatic
immunity, Islamic extremists posing as diplomats discussed jihad and attacks against the United States and Israel at
the UN without ever having to worry about being arrested.
In fact, Sanjuan believes the September
11, 2001 terrorists were so successful on such a
limited budget, they must have had large quantities
of information gathered and processed by other parties--possibly
the extremists/diplomats at the United Nations. He offers
no evidence to support this conspiracy theory, but he
did observe that when news of the attack broke, "clusters
of anti-American sympathizers on the staff openly expressed
their glee that at last America was getting what it
deserved, not very different from the celebrations by Palestinians captured on TV."
To conclude the memoir,
Sanjuan proposes some reforms that would
help clean up the UN. He suggests that religious
activities should be kept out of the Secretariat,
that racism and anti-Semitism cease to be
the UN's institutional disease, and that
it should be transparent when it comes to
its accounting and spending practices. In
order to stop the anti-Semitic culture at
the UN, Sanjuan suggests that offenders should
be expelled no matter what position they
hold, including the Secretary-General. This
book is a fascinating, and very important,
account of the UN. After reading this book,
no doubt many people will echo Sanjuan's
sentiment, “Let
us hope our leaders have the wisdom to save
the UN from itself before it is too late.”
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