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Replacing the U.N.
F
Edwin Black
During a swing
through Michigan,
Edwin Black will also
participate at 12:30
p.m. Sunday, April
23, at Congregation
Beth Shalom at the
unveiling of a bust of
Raoul Wallenberg by
sculptor Daniel Biber.
or years, foreign policy crit-
ics, politicians and outraged
members of the public have
been militating to defund and quit
the United Nations. The empty
sheet of bitter discontent with the
U.N. has now been filled in with a
new name and a new movement
calling to “defund and replace”
that troubled organization with a
new world body: the Covenant of
Democratic Nations (CDN).
Ignition switches have been
clicking since last December
when the highly controversial
U.N. Resolution 2334 declared,
among other libels, that Israel’s
Jewish connection to the Western
Wall was effectively illegal. With a
new U.S. administration and the
installation of Nikki Haley as U.N.
ambassador, the anti-Semitic, anti-
Israel, undemocratic and diplo-
matically dysfunctional ligatures of
this international body have finally
been spotlighted.
We have recently seen Haley
excoriate the U.N. for its anti-
Semitic obsession with battering
Israel — essentially putting the
U.N. on notice as a credible entity.
Her influence elicited a similar
response from the UK. She set in
motion the debunking of a falla-
cious U.N. Human Rights Council
document that declared Israel an
“apartheid” state; this engineered
by the very nations that have insti-
tutionalized religious apartheid.
That report was formally rejected;
and, in consequence, the agency’s
Jordanian director abruptly
resigned.
Then, the world witnessed how
the U.N. Security Council stood
palsied and aphasic as Syria’s
Assad inflicted yet another poison
gas attack against his own civilian
population, murdering women and
children. This resulted in the uni-
lateral launching of 59 Tomahawk
missiles by President Donald
Trump during a state dinner given
for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A conversation of ideas has been
unleashed proposing an official
international conference that
would produce a carefully pro-
pounded diplomatic convention to
be ratified by countries as a bind-
ing treaty to forge the Covenant of
Democratic Nations into opera-
tional reality. The entire process
would be limited to nations gov-
erned by democratic principles
with equal respect for all people
regardless of religion, gender, race,
identity or national origin, as well
as formulating a mechanism to
resolve disputes.
A prime mission of the new
world body would be to re-ratify,
amend or nullify all acts and reso-
lutions of the United Nations and
its agencies. Thus, the Covenant
would create a new body of long-
overdue, reformed, clarified and
updated international law. Just
as American laws perpetrating
slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and
institutional inequality were over-
turned, updated and reformed dur-
ing the Civil Rights Era and right
through our present decade, so,
too, would the inequity and misuse
of international law and process be
overturned by the CDN. Most CDN
nations would remain as vestigial
members of the U.N., overseeing its
collapse from decaying economic
and bureaucratic processes, as was
done when the League of Nations
was dissolved after World War II
and replaced with the present U.N.
Understandably, some suggest
that once born, the Covenant may
eventually sunset its own existence
after its reform work is done.
The Covenant conversation
launched in earnest on Jan. 23,
2017, when a panel of like-minded
voices assembled in the Rayburn
House Office Building. Rep. Trent
Franks (R-Ariz.), who currently
supports a bill to defund the U.N.,
opened the launch proceedings
by declaring, “This is a criti-
cally important issue. The United
Nations started out with a noble
charter … But it has become an
anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-
democratic, anti-freedom mob
… We need some type of alterna-
tive — a Covenant of Democratic
Nations … We need to repeal and
replace.”
The launch in Washington, D.C.,
was only the beginning. Additional
panels and town hall meetings
convened Jan. 31 in Manhattan,
Feb. 6 at Palm Beach Synagogue,
then in San Francisco, then in the
Australian Parliament in Canberra
on Feb. 13, and then on to Los
Angeles after that.
The latest chapter will be
written in Detroit at 5 p.m. on
Sunday, April 24, at the Corners,
2075 Walnut Lake Road, West
Boomfield, when a panel, chaired
by this writer, lays out the case.
Panelists include former U.S.
House Intelligence Committee
chairman Pete Hoekstra, ZOA-
MI president Sheldon L. Freilich,
George Washington University law
professor Martin Adelman and
MSU civil rights icon Dr. William
Anderson, who fought alongside
Martin Luther King for equal
treatment for all. The free event
is spons ored by ZOA-MI, Spill the
Honey, StandWithUs, EMET and
others.
In many ways, the League of
Nations began with a speech,
Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points.
The United Nations began with a
short, written declaration. For the
Covenant of Democratic Nations,
the conversation has now begun. •
Human rights advocate Edwin Black is the
author of IBM and the Holocaust and the
initiator of the Covenant of the Democratic
Nations effort.
guest column
Bittersweet Shabbat
A
I am writing to share my experience
ll day, I debated whether to go
of the deeply moving evening. I will
to the Re//Turning program
preface and say if the things I say offend
through The Well. The planned
you, I am sorry. I did feel joy. We
event was a Shabbat service
all love to read about beauti-
and dinner at Temple Beth El.
ful Jewish gatherings and new
No, not the one on Telegraph
beginnings. I also felt anger and
and 14 Mile. The one on
pain. And I am sure some read-
Woodward Avenue and now
ers will think I am not entitled to
known as Bethel Community
such judgment as I did not live
Transformation Center (see
during the Jewish migration out
last week’s cover story).
of Detroit and even today am
Rabbi Dan Horwitz’ promise
an irregular contributor to the
of a “truly breathtaking” sanc- Jane Gazman
Jewish community.
tuary won over my photogra-
Yes, the sanctuary is breath-
pher side and muted my sense
taking. Breathtaking like a full-
of walking through a trigger
force punch in the gut. But it is
wire to set off uncontrollable
obvious, once, when she was loved and
emotion. Yes, I snapped some photos.
maintained, she was breathtaking like
And, yes, I snapped crying through the
today’s Fox Theater. The details, though
entire service.
8
April 20 • 2017
jn
crumbling, are exquisite. There are
paintings on the ceiling. One looks like
a young man arriving at Ellis Island. I
would love to know the story of the art.
There is no question Temple Beth
El was built with no expense spared.
I walked to the second floor, having
confirmed which stairs are safe. I saw
a pillow pushed through broken glass
to keep the cold out. I saw familiar long
bookshelves without a single text. I saw
the home next door. Falling to pieces.
The thing most unsettling to me is
our abandonment of our synagogue. We
moved a half-hour away, and we com-
pletely forgot about her for decades. Let
me rephrase. We acted like she left with
us and never returned. And she is still
right there on Woodward. She is remi-
niscing about our weddings and bar/bat
mitzvahs and sermons and gatherings.
She never forgot about us. And I am a
stranger to her congregation, and yet
my heart engaged deeply and I felt her
and I was so grateful I made the deci-
sion to come.
We must start again somewhere, and
The Well event was a meaningful return
(see page 32). The synagogue needs
investment as does her community.
Writing a check is easy for some. But it’s
not for me and it’s not for many. Let’s
organize. Let’s be a part of the commu-
nity we once called home. Let’s return
Temple Beth El and her surrounding
Detroit community to a place of joy. •
Jane Gazman of Farmington is working as counsel
at the Miller Law Firm in Rochester.