By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine

Throughout its unglamorous history, the UN issued many scandalous reports and adopted many scandalous resolutions reflecting lack of justice and absence of moral honesty.

This ever-existing symptom also reflected western hegemony over the international organization.

However, none of these reports and resolutions seems more scandalous than this week's report which kept Israel off the List of Shame, which includes states and entities that abuse children.

This particular report is manifestly scandalous precisely because Israel is probably one of the most obscene abusers of children under the sun.

Indeed, there are a few countries in this world that can be compared to Israel in this respect.

At the top of the list of shame sits the Nazi-like Syrian regime of Bashar el-Assad which habitually and routinely murders children (and other civilians) in large numbers, either by dropping crude barrel bombs on residential neighborhoods and crowded streets or using deadly chemical agents against heavily populated areas.

To be sure, Israel uses neither crude barrel bombs nor chemical weapons to annihilate Palestinian children. Instead, the Jewish state achieves the same results by using huge laser guided bombs and missiles to destroy residential multi-story buildings, packed with civilians, including children.

Needless to say, the ultimate result of such barbarity is a little Auschwitz.

Exterminating from high altitudes is, of course, Israel's preferred way of murdering Palestinian children and casting shock and awe in their hearts.

But it is by no means the only way. In its last year's blitzkrieg in Gaza, Israel obliterated entire neighborhoods, such as Shujaiyya, utterly annihilating everything, including human, building and plant.

According to eyewitnesses, the scene at the bombed-out neighborhood very much looked as if borrowed from the German city of Dresden in 1945.

Killing knowingly is killing deliberately

In its last year's aggression on the Gaza Strip, Israel murdered at least 500 Palestinian children, in addition to hundreds of other civilians, including many entire families.

In earlier rounds of aggression, Israel had murdered and maimed hundreds of children.

Israel has a long history of premeditatedly murdering Palestinian children. In light, one would exaggerate little by saying that Israel boasts the highest per capita rate of child-killers in the world.

Israel readily acknowledges that it kills Palestinian children knowingly.

A few years ago, this writer spoke with an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeswoman who said that "Yes, we do know that Palestinian children are being killed as a result of our military activities, but we don't do it deliberately."

But this is a sheer lie, because in the final analysis killing knowingly is killing deliberately.

Indeed, mistakes in wars do occur and innocent civilians get killed. However, mistakes happen a few times not hundreds of times because in this case killing civilians becomes de facto policy.

This has always been and continues to be Israel's policy. They kill the innocent civilians first and then, only then, the Israeli foreign ministry and other mouthpieces of Israeli hasbara (propaganda) get busy justifying the Nazi-like atrocities, mainly by concocting every conceivable lie and inventing fabulous narratives that have absolutely no iota of truth.

This reminds me of routine communiqués issued by the Israeli security forces during the first Palestinian intifada which started in December of 1987. Then the Israeli army spokesman would issue statements like this following the murder of Palestinian boys in the streets of the West Bank.

"IDF soldiers fired into the air to disperse Palestinian rioters. Palestinian sources reported five youths killed." The wording of the Israeli army statements made many foreign observers, utterly affronted by the brutal ugliness of Israeli dishonesty, wonders if Palestinian boys had wings and could fly.

Moral bankruptcy

The clarion failure of the UN to condemn brazen Israeli criminality and brash violation of international law underscores the moral bankruptcy of the world body.

Consequently, more states and peoples will lose confidence in the ability and willingness of the UN to foster peace and justice throughout the world. Unfortunately, this is becoming more evident as time passes.

Eventually, this could transform our world into a real jungle, an unmistakable portent signaling ultimate self-destruction.

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Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and current affairs commentator living in Israeli Occupied Palestine.