As an advocate of a strong United Nations, Myron Kronisch acknowledges that his “toughest audiences” are his fellow Jews.

And the retired attorney agrees that much Jewish opposition to the UN is justified.

“The General Assembly has had nothing to do for the last 60 years, and most often they would be bashing Israel and the United States,” he told NJ Jewish News.

But he insisted that “a better UN is the answer” to relieving Israel’s tensions with its neighbors and solving myriad other world problems.

“We have to win back a lot of friends we’ve lost, and the way we are going to do it is by giving back the nations in the General Assembly something to do,” says Kronisch. “The General Assembly would have some real power. But neither the little nations nor the big nations are going to be able to do anything unless they are working together.”

It is this faith in the international rule of law that brought Kronisch, who grew up in Maplewood and now lives in Mount Arlington, into a leading role in Citizens for Global Solutions. Kronisch, who serves as counsel to the organization’s board, was the chair of its earlier incarnation, the World Federalist Association, and has embraced its vision of “one world” and the “unity of humankind” since his army service in the late 1940s.

On Dec. 18, Kronisch joined the organization’s current CEO, Charles Brown, at the Livingston home of Carol Windfield, where Brown presented an overview of CGS to an audience of 20 people.

There, the conversation turned quickly to America’s outgoing UN ambassador, John Bolton, whose tenure was marked by strong support for Israel and even stronger criticism of some of the very UN functions that CGS supports.

“John Bolton may have been good on Israel, but he was bad on the UN,” said Brown. “He did a lot of things that were very destructive. People who think that John Bolton was effective should keep this in mind. The nations that perennially attacked Israel…have historically been badly disorganized, incompetent, and terrible at getting together to talk. Then John Bolton came along, and now they are talking with one voice and acting together. He has basically united them against both Israel and the United States. So, when people say John Bolton is a defender of Israel, they need to look at the other side.”

Kronisch, who agrees that Bolton was “like a bull in a china shop,” acknowledged that many supporters of Israel who are constantly distrustful of the UN praise Bolton. The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee were among the Jewish organizations that offered unqualified praise for Bolton in response to news that he was stepping down.

Nevertheless, Kronisch said, he believes Bolton “came in there with a long-range plan to wreck the UN” and that it may take years to repair the damage he did.

The mainstream Jewish organizations “have valid reason for their concern” about the workings of the UN, he said. “The new Human Rights Council has had five sessions so far, and four of them have been on Israel. That’s ridiculous. What we need to do is fix the UN so that politicized behavior doesn’t happen. But in fixing the UN, what we need is constructive solutions.”

Kronisch’s blueprint for reform is a complicated revision of the UN power structure. The result, he said, would be “192 sovereign states coming together only for the purpose of solving global problems.”

His plan would turn the General Assembly’s one-country, one-vote structure into a weighted voting system that he calls a “binding triad,” which would bring about “binding world law.”

It would essentially require three ballots on each measure — one to determine whether two-thirds of the member nations were present and voting, a second to test whether at least 50 percent of the world population is represented, and a third on whether the nations in favor contribute a majority of the UN budget.

“But no matter what your population or your contribution,” he said, “you don’t get more than 15 percent of the vote.” The plan would override powerful nations’ arbitrary vetoes.

His plan would also revamp the Security Council by removing its permanent members, and have all seats up for reelection every three years.

“We think it is the best thing since sliced bread,” he said, “but it could take 15 years to achieve.”

Jewish groups tend to be wary of Security Council reforms that might limit America’s oft-used power to veto resolutions that they consider anti-Israel. At the same time, groups like UN Watch, affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, say they are committed to the UN’s mission to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” UN Watch supports a UN Democracy Caucus to pass resolutions supporting human rights and democracy.

Funded by foundation grants, endowments, and private gifts, the Washington-based CGS lobbies Congress and the administration, reports on candidates from both parties, and forms coalitions with groups ranging from oil companies to environmentalists.

But beyond working intently with an older generation of people in power, Brown said CGS has already reached some 40,000 younger people by using the Internet — sponsoring multimedia presentations and using poetry slams and hip-hop culture — in order to encourage production of on-line messages about such issues as global warming and Third World poverty.

“We focus on broad issues, not country-specific issues, with two exceptions: the genocide in Darfur and the war in Iraq,” he said. “We need to acknowledge that the United States made a mistake in going in there. But those who criticize the near-unilateral invasion of Iraq need to acknowledge that the near-unilateral withdrawal would be almost as disastrous as the invasion. The international community can no longer pretend it is not their problem.”