RIGHT SPEAK: The Moral Destruction of the UN Since October 7: “Let us beat swords into plowshares.”

The Moral Destruction of the UN Since October 7:

“Let us beat swords into plowshares.”

In the northern garden of the United Nations there is a sculpture named “Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares” inspired by the Prophet Isaiah’s famous verse:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

These words, spoken 2,700 years ago in the Land of Israel, so captured humanity’s yearning for peace that even the godless Soviet Union was inspired to gift the statue. Donated in 1959, it depicts a muscular proletarian hammering a sword into a plowshare—heralding a world where nations will cultivate life rather than wage war.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists invaded southern Israel. They shot, burned alive, tortured, raped, and kidnapped Israeli soldiers and civilians, foreign workers, even fellow Arabs. No one was spared—not elderly Holocaust survivors, not infants who were brutally murdered before their parent’s eyes. Nationalities from across the globe were represented among the victims. The terrorists documented their atrocities with bodycams.

One video shows two terrorists attempting to behead a Thai man with a hoe—turning a garden tool into a weapon of sadistic brutality. His only crime was seeking honest work in Israel’s fields. As they struck him repeatedly, one screamed “Allahu Akbar.”

Palestinian terror had become the nihilistic inverse of Isaiah—turning ‘plowshares’ into ‘swords.’

It was a day reminiscent of the darkest, most brutal days in history—one that demanded condemnation by all civilized people. The United Nations, whose motto is “Peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet,” refused to do so.

In late October 2023, the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the “immediate cessation of hostilities” but rejected an amendment that would have condemned Hamas’ massacre.

That moral surrender set the tone for what followed. Since October 7, the Security Council has debated at least fourteen draft resolutions on the Israel–Gaza war, adopting four, while the General Assembly has passed more resolutions on Israel than on any other country during the same period. Iran was called out—not for lighting the Middle East on fire through its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah—but for repressing its own people.

This was accompanied by immoral posturing from UN Secretary-General António Guterres. He declared, “The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas,” only to contradict himself moments later by adding that the attacks “did not happen in a vacuum,” implicitly blaming Israel for the ills of Palestinian society. This, despite the UN’s own statements recognizing Israel’s peace efforts—from the Oslo Accords of the 1990s to the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, which it hailed as a “watershed in the pursuit of peace.”

The United Nations Transgresses its Own Charter

The sins of the United Nations are not only against Israel—whose rebirth as a nation was approved by the world body in 1949—but against the principles of its own Charter.

Rewarding Evil

Article One of the UN Charter mandates “the suppression of acts of aggression and other breaches of the peace.” Yet following the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the United Nations rewarded its perpetrators’ cause. In May 2024, Palestine was elevated to near-member-state status. During the 2025 General Assembly, led by France and Saudi Arabia, several European nations granted full recognition to a Palestinian state. In exchange, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—who has publicly praised the October 7 atrocities—pledged to end stipends to terrorists’ families. The payments continue.