For decades, Israel has tried, sometimes against our better instincts, to work with the United Nations. I have personally sat in numerous meetings with U.N. officials, painstakingly negotiating frameworks to ensure humanitarian aid reached civilians in Gaza. I oversaw budgets, coordinated secure passageways for convoys, and approved daily discussions with U.N. representatives about food, medicine, and fuel. We made these efforts not for Hamas’s sake, but because, as Israelis, we recognize the sanctity of human life, even beyond our own side of the battlefield.

Despite these efforts, the very organization we enabled to deliver aid has repeatedly turned against us. Instead of acknowledging Israel’s unprecedented humanitarian measures, the U.N. issued routine condemnations. Their resolutions read less like acts of diplomacy and more like indictments prepared in advance. This is not neutrality. It is hostility, dressed in the language of international law.

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It is difficult to ignore the hypocrisy. Iran, North Korea, and Syria hold seats on U.N. councils, while Israel is dragged before panels that masquerade as courts of justice. At the same time, another arm of the United Nations, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), operates facilities in Gaza. These buildings were built for education and healthcare, but instead have become arsenals for Hamas rockets and serve as infrastructure for terror.

The fact that U.N.-run schools and clinics have been weaponized in this way is almost always overlooked by those so quick to condemn Israel. The Human Rights Council spends more time singling out Israel than addressing any other crisis on the planet. This is not a coincidence. It is the result of an institution co-opted by regimes determined to undermine the Jewish state.

Last week, the U.N. released a report that accuses me personally, by name, of war crimes and, by extension, accuses Israel of genocide.

I am proud to have stood in the position to defend the State of Israel. Given the choice, I would do so again without hesitation. As minister of defense, I led the IDF as it set standards for proportionality and distinction [not] seen in any modern military conflict. No other army has put greater effort into warning civilians in every possible way: leaflets, calls, texts, and warning shots, before targeting terrorist infrastructure. These are not the acts of an indifferent military; they are the actions of a nation of conscience and responsibility.

Hamas, in contrast, hides rockets in schools, launches missiles from hospital courtyards, forces civilians to serve as shields, and still holds dozens of Israelis hostage. It manufactures civilian suffering and uses it for propaganda.

However, in international forums, and especially at the U.N., the truth rarely gets a hearing. Israel is held to impossible double standards. When the world’s only Jewish state is condemned more times than regimes responsible for documented atrocities and genocide, we must say clearly: this is antisemitism rebranded for a new era.

The U.N. report points to a phrase I used in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, after terrorists from Gaza slaughtered, raped, and kidnapped Israeli civilians, I referred to those responsible as "human animals." That description applied to the perpetrators and orchestrators of these barbaric attacks. Yet the report, like many hostile accusations since, distorts facts, intentionally ignoring the context of such sayings.

The latest U.N. report is a study in selective blindness. There are no details about Hamas’ tunnel network, no mention of their use of human shields, no serious accounting of the reality that their own rockets and booby-trapped buildings kill Gazans. There is only a passing mention of the Israelis murdered or kidnapped. Hamas-provided statistics are repeated as facts, Israeli actions are twisted, and humanitarian efforts are overlooked.

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This commission began with its verdict pre-determined and pre-written. It ignores operational realities, the complexity of urban warfare, and the unprecedented standards Israel put in place. The accusations of genocide rest on misquotes and deliberate manipulation. There is no evidence that I, or any other IDF or defense official, have ever dehumanized Palestinians as a people. For me, the real fight is, and always has been, against terrorism.

The international community now faces a choice. It can allow the U.N. to remain a platform for bias and manipulation, or it can insist that truth and accountability guide its work. Israel asks for no favors, only fairness. If the U.N. wants to serve its founding mission, it must apply the same standards to all parties. It must not let humanitarian language be weaponized in service of terror.

The U.N. was established to prevent future horrors like the Holocaust. Today, it tolerates hate speech in its halls, undermines Israel’s right to defend itself, and emboldens those determined to bring further violence to the region. By abandoning fairness and truth, it betrays the original promise on which it was founded.

Israel will continue to defend itself, protect its people, and uphold its moral obligations, even when the world closes its eyes. History will show that when the U.N. gave cover to prejudice and to lies, the people of Israel stood unbowed, determined, and righteous.