It is hard for many of us to reconcile the low station of the United Nations today with the very high and idealistic hopes that were the midwife of its birth.

In retrospect, it is clear that the birth of the organization and the broad multilateral agreement regarding its charter occurred in an anomalous moment of modern history – a window of time and hopeful purpose that was quickly tightly shuttered by the hands holding fast to  ethnic hatreds, dogmatic ideologies and contentious superpowers.

The charter of the UN was signed on June 26, 1945. Article 1 sets out the four purposes of the organization:

“1. To maintain international peace and security…;

2. To develop friendly relations among  nations… and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character…; and

4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948. It was humanity’s collective aspiration, if not its promise, too, that nations would never again tolerate the hideous barbarities and atrocities of World War II.

Even a small sampling of the sections in the preamble provide a sense of the loftiness of the declaration: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…

“Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…”

Seldom has a document shone so brightly into a dark world.

Seldom has a light been so quickly extinguished.

The important, life-affirming provisions of the charter and the declaration have been consistently trumped by the overarching imperatives of avarice, tribalism, intolerance, triumphalism, geopolitics, power politics and immovable ideologies.

In addition, and most determinant of all, we see clearly today, that the founding ethos of the UN is based on traditions and frameworks of values that spring primarily, though not exclusively, in the cumulative layerings through time of the universalist teachings of the West. These teachings do not generally reflect or mesh with the traditions or value systems from other cultures and societies on earth. In some cases, sadly, these teachings are mutually incongruous, even at odds with one another. For example, there is only minimal common ground, if even that, between theocratic Muslim society and liberal, secular, western society.

At the first session of the General Assembly in 1946, after the grotesque ruin of World War II, 51 member states participated. Six decades and three years later, some 192 states sit in the General Assembly, the majority from what we consider the developing or Third World. Twenty-two of the 192 states are Arab League members; 57 states belong to the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Thus, in the high-ceilinged, marble-and wood-finished, palatial chamber of the General Assembly, Israel does not stand a chance.

As has been well chronicled by scholars and experts, the UN is the chief fountain spewing hateful, anti-Israel rhetoric. It is not an accident of scheduling that the “Durban II” conference is meeting in Geneva during Yom Hashoah v’Hagvurah – a further demonstration of unwithering contempt for Jews and the Jewish state. Durban II is the followup to the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, which Arab countries and the Palestinians turned into a forum for an all-out assault on Israel.

Sometimes we dismiss the UN and its agencies as lacking any practical weight or significance. But this is a false notion. Throughout the many far-flung, impoverished, drought-stricken, starved, oppressed, medically underserved parts of the Third World, the imprimatur of the UN does carry weight even as its trucks bring food, medical supplies and humanitarian aid to the outstretched hands of weary needy populations.

Thus, rather than dismiss the UN, we must try to fight the corruption and the moral inversion as embodied in Durban II. And we must also remember that the fight is not that of Jews or Israel’s alone. The government of Canada has proved that. So, too, has the American administration. Of late, the European Union has also inveighed against the transparent aims of the conference.

Last week, a day after Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann from Nicaragua, president of the General Assembly, criticized the United States on a trip to Iran where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian leaders, the Obama administration rebuked him for his strident, partisan criticism of the United States and Israel.

Alejandro Wolff, the second-highest ranking U.S. diplomat at the UN, said Brockmann “has repeatedly abused his position to pursue his personal agenda, and in doing so he diminishes the office and harms the General Assembly.”

D’Escoto has accused Israel of “crucifying our Palestinian brothers and sisters” and has labelled Israel an “apartheid state.” He has also called for a boycott of the Jewish state. Such is the rostrum of the UN. Any calumny can be spoken there.

But all of them must be answered.