By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 September 2025

In mid-November 2023, just six weeks after the Iran/HAMAS pogrom in Israel on 7 October 2023, Gianni Vernetti wrote a brief article for the Italian publication La Repubblica reflecting on the corruption of the entire United Nations system that had been revealed by the organisation’s reaction. A rough translation of the article is given below.

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If the UN is Silent About Hamas

The war in the Middle East also shakes the credibility of the Glass Palace [Palazzo di Vetro, i.e., the United Nations headquarters]

By Gianni Vernetti

20 November 2023

La Repubblica

The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas is causing seismic shifts in international relations that go well beyond the Gaza Strip and directly involve the organisation born from the ashes of the Second World War: the United Nations, whose credibility risks being severely tested by the new conflict that is inflaming the Middle East.

It has been a month and a half since the pogrom of October 7 in the south of Israel and the UN has not yet managed to condemn, with unequivocal language, the most terrible attack on Jews since the time of the Shoah. The terrorist group that planned, financed, and organised the violence against the civilians in the kibbutzim—that massacred over 300 young people at the Nova Festival, that tortured and mutilated, that systematically raped children and women of all ages, and that continues to hold hostage 240 civilians aged between six months and 85 years who are guilty only of being Jews—has never even been named in any resolution or official declaration. In short, for the United Nations, Hamas simply does not exist.

The intolerable silence about Hamas on the part of the largest organisation of sovereign states on the planet has its roots partly in the structural limits of the organisation itself and partly in a series of “customs” that have seen the organisation itself enmeshed with the most radical and violent components of the Palestinian world.

It is no secret that the main UN agency operating in the Palestinian Territories has for some time been considered by many independent observers as excessively close to the political and military structure of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This is UNRWA, the United Nations agency tasked with providing humanitarian assistance and support to the Palestinian refugees. The boundaries between the political apparatus of Hamas and UNRWA in the Strip are very thin: in the schools managed by the organisation, the curriculum is reviewed and coordinated in agreement with Hamas, and a large part of the much-mythologised “Hamas welfare” (similar to the narrative of “ferocious dictators who do something good…”) is in reality made up of [UNRWA] projects with a strong imprint from the jihadists.

The evidence now emerging, then, shows a fact pattern wherein Hamas’s military wing operates out of the civilian structures in the Strip: there is no hospital, school, clinic, or food distribution centre that does not conceal a tunnel, a [missile] launch pad, or weapons depot of the terrorist group.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also revealing the limits of the entire architecture underpinning the United Nations, staring with many of its bodies.

The constant presence of Iran, the power behind Hamas, within the United Nations Human Rights Council over many years has stripped the body of all remaining credibility. Iran, which hangs homosexuals, massacres unveiled girls, pursues an illegal nuclear program, and exports terrorism and instability throughout the entire Middle East, was elected a few days after October 7 to head the Social Forum of the [United Nations] that should protect the fundamental rights of individuals worldwide. The double standard of the Glass Palace when it comes to upholding international law is the reason for the profound crisis of legitimacy at the Security Council, where two of the worst regimes on the planet, Russia and China, have the power of veto.

The credibility of peacekeeping missions is also being seriously strained by the new Middle Eastern conflict, beginning with the UNIFIL mission in southern Lebanon, which still includes a significant presence of Italian military personnel, and which should be a deterrent force to prevent a new conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The extremely weak rules of engagement of the mission render the military presence of the United Nations practically irrelevant, as has been demonstrated by the military build-up of these past years which has allowed Hezbollah to become a major military force with an arsenal of 160,000 missiles, posing a threat not only to Israel but to the stability of the entire region.