Haley’s comet of the UN

PETA KROST MAUNDER

“Nowhere has the UN’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than against our close ally, Israel, and in the General Assembly session just completed, the UN adopted 20 resolutions against Israel and only six targeting the rest of the world combined.

“In the past 10 years, the Human Rights Council has passed 62 resolutions condemning the reasonable actions Israel takes to defend its security. Meanwhile the world’s worst human rights abusers in Syria, Iran and North Korea, received far fewer condemnations. This cannot continue,” were her words. And she hadn’t even got the job yet.

She has now, and she continues to take no prisoners and doing what she pledged to do: “not stay silent when our values are challenged”.

It is heartwarming to see such a politician actually “seeing” Israel for what it is and recognising how it is being bullied.

Now I don’t for one moment see Israel as blameless and angelic. It is not! But, it is so tiresome to constantly being condemned for trying to exist and for every move it makes, whether it is good or bad.

So, who is Nikki Haley and is she possibly just a Trump apologist?

This impressive woman is the daughter of immigrant Sikh parents from Punjab, India, who arrived almost penniless in their new home. Already, this makes her not your common or garden Trump acolyte.

She grew up being different in South Carolina, with a mother who wore a sari and a father who wore a turban. “I was never white enough to be white or black enough to be black,” she said.  In fact, her real name was Nimrata Randhawa and she started doing her parents’ books in their shop when she was just 13. “Only when I got to college did I realise that wasn’t normal, but in our family, we worked,” she said.

She not only didn’t support Trump during his campaign, she was very vocal about her derision of him, publicly calling him a bully and a fraud.

Despite this, she got the ambassadorship. While I may think she is impressive, Forbes magazine said of her appointment that Trump’s choice of Haley is a slap to the United Nations and pandering to the Asian-Americans. Forbes claimed that choosing her was showing “contempt for conducting foreign affairs through the UN in particular and multilateral organisations in general.”

The article continued to slate Haley’s ability. Forbes was not the only medium or organisation to pooh-pooh Haley.

But Haley has been throwing her weight in all the right places, proving her political skill in a quietly spoken, clear, unapologetic way that means business.

And her support for Israel is unwavering, which is pretty unusual in the hallowed halls of the United Nation.

While Trump has in fact reportedly dismissed the UN as useless, calling it “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time”, Haley is taking her role seriously. She had a report on Israel being an apartheid state pulled as being ridiculous and the director who wrote it has since resigned. She also stopped a Palestinian from taking up one of the highest offices in the UN.  She has without doubt won the Jewish American vote.

Now, I may not agree with all her political views, but I love the way she puts them across in such a reasoned way.

She’s no bully, nor is she an apologist. She is a fair and astute politician with what I believe will be a long and fruitful career, if her last few weeks are anything to go by.

Just this week, Haley wowed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee with her achievements in a short space of time. And if there was any doubt, she said: “For anyone who thinks they can’t get anything done in the UN, they need to know there is a new sheriff in town”. I for one will be watching this space with interest.