In the case of Palestine, the UN’s role, contrary to what many believe, has been catastrophic. While it is globally viewed as a victim of Israeli restrictions, particularly with the severe funding cuts to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, it has in fact historically operated as a tool for the imperial and colonial ambitions of the global powers that invented it.

Perhaps the most chilling example of this came on November 29, 1947, when the UN formally approved a plan to partition Palestine, thus giving Zionist militias the green light to tear the state apart against the will of its people and the Arab world.

While it should not be considered the starting point for Zionist colonialism, the UN’s partition plan—referred to as Resolution 181—remains central to the map and reality of Palestine today. It served as the catalyst that set in motion the organized and systematic violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine between 1947 and 1949, and set the stage for the next seven decades of the same policies.

In the six months between the passing of the partition plan on November 29, 1947, and May 15, 1948, Zionist militias had already committed some of their most horrific massacres and expelled half of the total number of Palestinians that would eventually be displaced during the Nakba.

And while Palestinian and international objections to the plan were loud and clear, the world’s powers enforced it anyway.