It is apparent that the U.S. is not playing any constructive role in holding back the tide of international efforts to delegitimize Israel. This report explains:
The United Nations Human Rights Council passed three resolutions on Wednesday condemning Israel over its policies related to what it called Palestinian and Syrian territories, but the United States voted against them all.
A further resolution, calling for a fund to compensate Palestinians who suffered losses during Israel’s offensive in Gaza 14 months ago, is expected to be passed on Thursday. …
The United States, which itself is in a diplomatic row with Israel over settlements which the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing to pursue, told the Council that the three resolutions would do nothing to help peace.
It said the body was too often being used as a platform to single out Israel for condemnation while rights violations by other countries were ignored.
Britain, which expelled an Israeli diplomat on Tuesday in a row over forged U.K. passports, voted for the settlements resolution, against on Palestinian rights, and abstained on the Syrian vote.
The Council is effectively dominated by a developing country bloc in which the Organization of the Islamic Conference has a strong influence and which is routinely supported by China, Russia and Cuba.
A couple of lessons can be drawn from this. First, the decision by the Obami to rejoin the Human Rights Council was disastrous. It has given the group new legitimacy and visibility, and no resolution is too heinous and no hypocrisy too great to impress upon the Obami the importance of leaving this body of thugs. The notion that we are improving the council’s behavior or improving our own standing by sitting by as vote after vote is taken against Israel is farcical.
Second, the U.S.’s “row” with Israel seems to be encouraging not only the thugocracies but also our allies to get into the Israel-bashing act. As Jackson Diehl aptly put it: “Just like the Palestinians, European governments cannot be more friendly to an Israeli leader than the United States. Would Britain have expelled a senior Israeli diplomat Tuesday because of a flap over forged passports if there were no daylight between Obama and Netanyahu? Maybe not.”
Once again, we see the results that flow from the Obami’s fetish with multilateral institutions and from their efforts to prove our bona fides, not to Western democracies, but to the despotic regimes that populate those institutions. Israel’s security and our own credibility are undermined as the world learns there is little downside from taking continual pot shots at the Jewish state.
