CenterFeud

Martin Peretz on Bush, the Middle East and "The Politics of Churlishness"

Roger L. Simon highly recommends New Republic editor Martin Peretz's new essay "The Politics of Churlishness". And after reading it, I have to agree. Here's an excerpt:

If George W. Bush were to discover a cure for cancer, his critics would denounce him for having done it unilaterally, without adequate consultation, with a crude disregard for the sensibilities of others. He pursued his goal obstinately, they would say, without filtering his thoughts through the medical research establishment. And he didn't share his research with competing labs and thus caused resentment among other scientists who didn't have the resources or the bold--perhaps even somewhat reckless--instincts to pursue the task as he did. And he completely ignored the World Health Organization, showing his contempt for international institutions. Anyway, a cure for cancer is all fine and nice, but what about aids?

No, the president has not discovered a cure for cancer. But there is a pathology, a historical pathology, that he has attacked with unprecedented vigor and with unprecedented success. I refer, of course, to the political culture of the Middle East, which the president may actually have changed. And he has accomplished this genuinely momentous transformation in ways that virtually the entire foreign affairs clerisy--the cold-blooded Brent Scowcroft realist Republicans and almost all the Democrats--never thought possible. Or, perhaps, in ways some of them thought positively undesirable. Bush, it now seems safe to say, is one of the great surprises in modern U.S. history. Nothing about his past suggested that he harbored these ideals nor the qualities of character required for their realization. Right up to the moment Bush became president, I was convinced that his mind, at least on matters Levantine, belonged to his father and to James Baker III, whose worldview seemed to be defined by the pecuniary prejudice of oil and Texas: Keep the ruling Arabs happy. But I was wrong, and, in light of what has already been achieved in the Middle East, I am glad to say so. Most American liberals, alas, enjoy no similar gladness. They are not exactly pleased by the positive results of Bush's campaign in the Middle East. They deny and resent and begrudge and snipe. They are trapped in the politics of churlishness.

It's a deeply perceptive essay, in which Peretz gives Bush full credit for the unprecedented changes now overtaking the Middle East, and chides his fellow Democrats for not standing up for democracy:

So the situation is certainly complex. But complexity is not a warrant for despair. The significant fact is that Bush's obsession with the democratization of the region is working. Have Democrats begun to wonder how it came to pass that this noble cause became the work of Republicans? They should wonder if they care to regain power. They should recall that Clinton (and the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter even more so) had absolutely no interest in trying to modify the harsh political character of the Arab world. What they aspired to do was to mollify the dictators--to prefer the furthering of the peace process to the furthering of the conditions that make peace possible. The Democrats were the ones who were always elevating Arafat. He was at the very center of their road map. After he stalked out of a meeting room in Paris during cease-fire talks in late 2000, Albright actually ran in breathless pursuit to lure him back. It was the Democrats who perpetuated Arafat's demonic sway over the Palestinians, and it was the Democrats who sustained him among the other Arabs. And so the cause of Arab democracy was left for the Republicans to pursue. After September 11, the cause became a matter also of U.S. national security.

Read it all.

Swift Boat Vets retrospective

AEI Magazine has a fascinating interview with John O'Neill, who spearheaded Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and authored the best seller Unfit for Command, both of which did considerable damage to John Kerry's presidential aspirations. He provides his perspective of the election, the role he and his group played, and the often-hostile treatment they received at the hands of the mainstream media who at first ignored them and then later attempted to discredit them.

For those of my readers who were Kerry voters and who view O'Neill and the Swift Boat Vets as nothing more than a blatant Karl Rove-backed smear operation, I urge you to take a few moments to at least read through his version of events. Some of it you have to take with a grain of salt - O'Neill portrays himself as something of naive vet, surprised by the controversy he unleashed in the 2004 election, while in fact he is an experienced lawyer who has worked in the past for political organizations. At the same time, his statements about Viet Nam, his role in the war, and the visceral reaction he and other vets had to Kerry's actions and his later portrayal of himself as war hero/war protester ring very true.

(Hat tip: Power Line)

On Europe and appeasement

This essay is particularly worthy of note:

Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements.

Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of Eastern Europe where for decades, inhuman, suppressive, murderous governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities...

Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians.

Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush... Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

The author of this piece is not a member of a US-based conservative think tank or publication, bent on bashing Europe. He is Matthias Dapfner, Chief Executive of the huge German publisher Axel Springer AG, and he wrote this piece for Die Welt, Germany's largest newspaper. He is unsparing in his criticism of Europe's smug superiority in regards to the US, even as the threat of fascism rises in its midst:

What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western Civilization's utter destruction.

It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the great military conflicts of the last century - a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures, which have proven to be, and will always be taken by the Islamists for signs of weakness.

Only two recent American Presidents had the courage needed for anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush.

His American critics may quibble over the details, but we Europeans know the truth. We saw it first hand: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of the German people from nearly 50 years of terror and virtual slavery. And Bush, supported only by the Social Democrat Blair, acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic War against democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed.

It gives me some hope that a major voice in German media is willing to take on the conventional wisdom in such a direct manner. But my sense is that Europe is too invested in blaming all the ills of the world on the US and George W. Bush in particular to recognize and confront the mounting danger it faces. Fascism and fanaticism may stalk the continent in the 21st century, with the Europeans themselves willing accomplices to it, as many were in the 20th.

(Via American Future)

NR lauds PBS Castro bio

No, that's not a misprint. Cathy Seipp of National Review takes a look at PBS' upcoming biography of Fidel Castro and finds lots to like:

The latest sign that PBS may be indeed moving away from reflexive lefty politics is its hardheaded and compelling new documentary Fidel Castro, which premieres Jan. 31 and is the first non-American biography in the network’s American Experience series. (As executive producer Mark Samuels pointed out at the PBS news conference, an argument can be made that Castro, with his half-century-long "impact on American history," is an American experience, besides being "also a tremendous story.")

Veteran documentarian Adriana Bosch clearly shows the appeal of a charismatic revolutionary like Castro to a populace suffering from the oppressive Batista regime, but refuses to sentimentalize the cigar-smoking, iconic leader they got as a replacement. "It is the tragic story of a nation who saw a messiah in just a man," she says of her film, which doesn’t flinch from detailing the brutal reality beneath Castro’s charm: 500 Bastistianos tried and executed in less than three months, 20,000 people arrested after the Bay of Pigs, and so on.

Even after his death, Castro is sure to remain an enduring icon of the 20th century. Charismatic, ruthless, and so ideologically driven that it turns out that during the Cuban Missile Crisis even the Soviets thought he was crazy, as Seipp notes:

Timothy Naftali, a University of Virginia professor and co-author of One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958-1964, describes in the film just why Khrushchev thought Castro, who’d sent him a letter during those tense days in 1962, was crazy.

"Ultimately, what the letter says is, ‘Nikita, if you have to use nuclear weapons against the United States to defend my country, and even if that means the Americans will retaliate by blowing up my country, do it for the sake of international socialism," Naftali said at the news conference. "It's a remarkable document. It scared the hell out of the Soviets...and we only learned this a few years ago."

To many people in the world Castro is a heroic figure, especially in Latin America and Europe where leftist politics are more mainstream than they are in the US (I expect many of these countries would have a somewhat different take had Cuba pointed nukes in their direction). But Cuba under Castro's socialist regime is essentially frozen in a holding pattern, and people who have visited Cuba note that it's like travelling back to the 1950's or early '60s. When Castro finally dies, or is too old to lead, it's widely expected that his brother Raul will assume power, which will not represent any significant ideological change. But as with the passing of Yasser Arafat, the mere departure of Fidel and his associated baggage could provide the impetus to start down a new path to normalized US relations with an emerging 21st century Cuba that may yet find its own way to democracy.

Why liberalism is unable to confront jihad

Earlier this month, in a much-discussed major article for The New Republic titled "A Fighting Faith" editor Peter Beinart pleads with fellow liberals and Democrats to get serious about confronting Islamofascism:

Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not "been fundamentally reshaped" by the experience. On the right, a "historical re-education" has indeed occurred--replacing the isolationism of the Gingrich Congress with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's near-theological faith in the transformative capacity of U.S. military might. But American liberalism, as defined by its activist organizations, remains largely what it was in the 1990s--a collection of domestic interests and concerns. On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda--even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions; and even though, if it gained power, its efforts to force every aspect of life into conformity with a barbaric interpretation of Islam would reign terror upon women, religious minorities, and anyone in the Muslim world with a thirst for modernity or freedom.

Kevin Drum follows up and gets to the core issue:

Bottom line: I think the majority of liberals could probably be persuaded to take a harder line on the war on terror — although it's worth emphasizing that the liberal response is always going to be different from the conservative one, just as containment was a different response to the Cold War than outright war. But first someone has to make a compelling case that the danger is truly overwhelming. So far, no one on the left has really done that.

Once you digest Drum's post, grab a cup of coffee and read the comments thread that follows it (over 400 and counting), which clearly demonstrates why the democratic left in its present state is unable to resolutely confront Islamofascism. Either they simply don't see it as an ideological threat on the scale of Nazism or Communism, or they see Bush and the Republicans as the greater source of evil. And then there are the conspiracy-mongers who believe that Bush is carrying water for Israel.

A few commenters make the reasonable argument that Islamofasiscm does indeed pose a grave threat, but that the Bush/neocon strategy for addressing "root causes" via attempting to democratize the Arab world is pouring gasoline on the fire -- an analysis with which I disagree, but can respect. Unfortunately, this seems to be the minority view. Most accept Drum's argument that Islamic totalitarianism is not fundamentally expansionist: a few visits to Robert Spencer's site Jihad Watch might disabuse them of that notion.

But the bottom line is that even as some in the thread strenuously argue that of course they take the threat seriously, others are arguing equally strenuously that the threat actually doesn't exist, or that it pales in comparison to highway accidents, AIDS, global warming, or of course four more years of George W. Bush. Many of the commenters are comtemptuous of Kevin Drum for even linking to Beinart's article and challenging liberals to make the case. Which in itself speaks volumes about the challenges the Democratic party faces in being credible on national security issues.

Not content to let it rest there, Beinart gave his response the following week in his TRB column at TNR:

If Islamist totalitarianism is less of a threat than Soviet totalitarianism, however, it is far graver than Drum suggests. To say that Al Qaeda's ideology is "not fundamentally expansionist" is wrong. It is true that, unlike communism, which aspired to guide every nation on Earth, totalitarian Islam only recommends itself to the Middle East. But, in Al Qaeda's definition, the Middle East includes every country with a substantial Muslim population or once under Muslim rule. In other words, it extends from Southeast Asia to Europe. In the mid-'90s, Al Qaeda went to war in Bosnia. In February 2003, Osama bin Laden cited Pakistan and Nigeria as ripe for Islamist takeover--although both are far from the Arab world, and Nigeria is only 50 percent Muslim. As University of Michigan professor and Informed Comment blogger Juan Cole has pointed out, bin Laden envisions a unified Muslim state, ruled, as it was in the heyday of Islamic power, by a caliphate. And, as bin Laden pointedly reminded listeners early this year, that caliphate includes "Al Andalus"--Spain.

Is Al Qaeda likely to take power in all the places bin Laden desires? Of course not. But it could do far less and still send the United States into deep crisis. By many accounts, Al Qaeda has long enjoyed substantial support in the Pakistani security services. Were Islamist fanatics to assassinate Pervez Musharraf and ally themselves with the general who succeeded him--in an echo of the military-Islamist alliance that ruled Sudan from 1989 to 1999--Al Qaeda would be within striking distance of a nuclear bomb. Or take Saudi Arabia, where bin Laden is wildly popular. If bin Laden, or his local associates, took control of the Saudi oil supply, the U.S. economy would plunge into depression.

It is indeed a depressing state of affairs that well-informed liberals are debating such a fundamental issue as whether or not religious fascism that seeks to undermine and destroy liberal socities is a threat. It does not seem to be of interest to those in the discussion that the 19 9/11 hijackers, armed only with airliners converted into missiles, managed to inflict hundreds of billions worth of economic damage on the US. Imagine the economic consequences of a nuclear, chemical or biological attack on a major city that would render it uninhabitable - to say nothing of the loss of life and long-term effects on the population. That some of the "liberals" in Drum's discussion thread can be so cavalier in dismissing the effects of "just one bomb" as compared to the formidable Soviet arsenal completely misses the point of how and why an attack would be mounted and what the aims would be.

There is also a persistent and dangerous misreading of the scope of the Islamist threat, assuming it is confined to Muslim countries. But the long-term goal of Islamism is to supplant Western liberal democracies with a worldwide Islamic calpihate. In the US, this would amount to replacing the Constitution with Qur'an. Is this a big enough threat to civil liberties to persuade liberals they need to get serious about this war? Judging from the internecine struggles within the Democratic left and the growing power and arrogance of MoveOn.org, not yet.

A struggle is underway for the soul of the Democratic party, and the difference between the centrists in the Democratic Leadership Council and the more left-leaning activist wing may well boil down to whether liberals are serious about defending and promoting the ideals of liberalism, not just in this country but around the globe.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg and Roger L. Simon both offer interesting comments on the Beinart/Drum interchange and the future of liberalism.

ANOTHER UPDATE: American Future has a roundup and summary of reaction from the left end of the blogosphere, and attempts a synthesis:

I've put the liberal responses to the question posed by the title of this lengthy post into three categories: (1) There's not much of a threat; (2) There's a threat, but it's broader than just Islamic fundamentalism; and (3) Too much Hard Power, not enough Soft Power. Those who fall into the first category are in a state of denial. In the second are those who claim that liberals could support the war on terror if it were properly defined. In the third are those who can't support the war on terror because they think it's being fought the wrong way. This small sample of liberal opinion shows that it will take a long time (if ever) for the liberals to put forth a narrative to which they can all adhere. That they will be arguing among themselves is good news for moderates and conservatives.

Maybe only good news in the narrow political sense. I believe that most conservatives would rather compete in the marketplace of ideas with a "sane" Democratic party that agrees on the nature of the threat (as represented by the New Republic) and differs only on social policy, rather than maintain a long-term majority over a marginalized and resentful party that insists on remaining in denial that there is a real threat. And I certainly believe moderates see it that way as well.

If our media today had been at Iwo Jima

Senator Zell Miller has penned a must-read column: "Iwo Jima, if covered by media today":

At 7 a.m., Cutie's morning show opens with a shot of hundreds of dead bodies bobbing in the water's edge. Others are piled on top of each other on shore. After a few seconds, one can see Marines digging graves to bury the dead.

Cutie: "There is no way the Marines could have expected this. Someone got it all wrong. No one predicted this. This has been a horrible 24 hours for our country. This is a slaughterhouse. After all this fighting, Marines control only about a mile and a half of beach and the casualties are now over 3,500 and rising rapidly. We'd like to know what you think. Call the number on the bottom of the screen. Give us your opinions on these three questions:

1. Were the Marines properly trained?
2. Is this nothing of an island worth all these lives?
3. Has the president once again misled the American people?

"After the break, we'll ask our own Democratic and Republican analysts, both shouting at the same time, of course, what they have to yell about all this. It should make for a very shrill, provocative morning.

"But before we leave this horrible — some will say needless — scene, let us give you one more look at this Godforsaken place where these young Americans are dying. Volcanic ash, cold, wet miserable Marines just thankful to be alive. And still no flag that we had been promised on that mountain. Things have gone from bad to worse in this obviously misguided military operation. One thing is certain, there should be and there will be a high-partisan — make that bi-partisan — congressional inquiry into this."

Owing to his memorable keynote address at the Republican convention, we all know that Miller can give one hell of a fiery speech. But it turns out he's a dead-on satirist as well.

(Hat tip: Power Line)

The Constitutional amendment they're not debating, but perhaps should be

Nova Spivack of Minding the Planet has a thought-provoking essay proposing a new Constitutional amendment: The Separation of Corporation and State.

Before some of on the right you roll your eyes (you know who you are!), I'll cut to the chase and excerpt the heart of his argument, which comes with a disclaimer:

I am a dedicated capitalist; I have benefited from the free market and I believe in self-organization, creative chaos, and bottom-up emergent solutions to complex distributed problems. So I would not advocate restraining capitalism to such an extent that it loses its edge. Capitalism is a reflection of nature, of evolution itself - a basic creative process that leads to innovation, growth, optimization, and development that can benefit individuals and societies in incalculable ways. Without capitalism democracies lack energy and cannot thrive, grow, innovate and reproduce. Yet at the same time, I believe deeply in democracy and the basic principles that America stands for. Without democracy - true democracy - capitalism becomes malignant, destructive, and cannibalistic.

I would not want to live in a non-capitalist society - how boring, how complacent, how uninspiring and uncreative that would be. But neither would I want to live in a world controlled by corporations that are solely conditioned by profit motives - that would be a world raped of every natural resource, polluted to the point of being uninhabitable, commercialized and dumbed-down to the point of total conformity and cultural decay -- a world completely for sale and thus completely sold out.

Because neither of these extreme futures -- democracy without capitalism, or capitalism without democracy, is acceptable, I believe it is time to really address this issue of the Separation of Corporation and State as a society, and as a marketplace. Because if we don't find a new balance between capitalism and democracy we will lose both.

Spivak's proposal is predicated on the separation of Church and State, arguably the most important feature of American democracy:

If there was no separation of Church and State in America, both our government and religious institutions would suffer. Similarly, in the case of the tension between capitalism and democracy, the only viable, sustainable, and effective path is to maintain a very precise balance. If this balance is not maintained, neither democracy nor capitalism can function with full effectiveness and everyone loses in the long-run. Short-term thinkers may gain temporary benefits by taking advantage of imbalances of this nature, but only at the expense of the many, and ultimately even at their own expense.

There's much more and it's reasoned and worth considering. Definitely read the whole thing.

The Internet as a medium for jihad

Hugh Hewitt calls our attention to "The Terror Web", a lengthy and detailed article in the New Yorker that documents the exponential growth and metamorphosis of al-Qaeda, which has now become more of a "brand" than a conventional organization. It details al-Qaeda's strategy for influencing the politics of Western countries, Spain being the most prominent example. And ironically, the jewel of Western technological achievement, the Internet itself, plays a key role in the rapid spread of radical Islam:

To a large extent, Kepel argues, the Internet has replaced the Arabic satellite channels as a conduit of information and communication. “One can say that this war against the West started on television,” he said, “but, for instance, with the decapitation of the poor hostages in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, those images were propagated via Webcams and the Internet. A jihadi subculture has been created that didn’t exist before 9/11.”

Because the Internet is anonymous, Islamist dissidents are less susceptible to government pressure. “There is no signature,” Kepel said. “To some of us who have been trained as classicists, the cyber-world appears very much like the time before Gutenberg. Copyists used to add their own notes into a text, so you never know who was the real author.”

Gabriel Weimann, a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, has been monitoring terrorist Web sites for seven years. “When we started, there were only twelve sites,” he told me. “Now there are more than four thousand.” Every known terrorist group maintains more than one Web site, and often the sites are in different languages. “You can download music, videos, donate money, receive training,” Weimann said. “It’s a virtual training camp.” There are two online magazines associated with Al Qaeda, Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Jihad) and Muaskar al-Battar (Camp al-Battar), which feature how-to articles on kidnapping, poisoning, and murdering hostages. Specific targets, such as the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, or FedWire, the money-clearing system operated by the Federal Reserve Board, are openly discussed. “We do see a rising focus on the U.S.,” Weimann told me. “But some of this talk may be fake—a scare campaign.”

Hewitt points out that had this article been published in a conservative house organ such as National Review or The Weekly Standard, it would hardly be noticed. But appearing in the New Yorker, its message will undoubtedly reach a much wider (and more liberal) audience. Here's hoping.

Blast from the past

I recently caught a revival production of "Hair". Lots of fun, great music, but it's an odd sort of nostalgia. After all, the '60s were hardly an idyllic era: the assasination of JFK, RFK and MLK, Viet Nam and the draft, campus unrest, and a youth culture hell-bent on not getting ground up by the system. But we look back wistfully on the cool stuff: Woodstock, bell bottoms, free love, the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, and drugs that seem positively benign by today's standards.

Those were simpler times and the world's problems seemed solvable so long as you were equipped with the right slogans: "War is not healthy for children and other living things." "Give peace a chance." "Make love, not war". The logic of those statements was self-evident, irrefutable and readily available in day-glo colors.

Viewing the '60s through the lens of post-9/11 society, a rather poignant thought occurred to me: It is all well and good for us to decide that this is the dawining of the "Age of Aquarius", so long as we don't run into other people who have decided that this is the dawning of the "Age of Kill All the Infidels". Then all bets are off.

Telling the truth about the UN and anti-semitism

Anne Bayefsky, a professor at Columbia University, takes on the UN at a UN-sponsored conference on confronting anti-semitism. She expertly diagnoses the deep-seated anti-semitism within the UN:

There has never been a U.N. resolution specifically on anti-Semitism or a single report to a U.N. body dedicated to discrimination against Jews, in contrast to annual resolutions and reports focusing on the defamation of Islam and discrimination against Muslims and Arabs. Instead there was Durban--the 2001 U.N. World Conference "Against Racism," which was a breeding ground and global soapbox for anti-Semites. When it was over U.N. officials and member states turned the Durban Declaration into the centerpiece of the U.N.'s antiracism agenda--allowing Durban follow-up resolutions to become a continuing battlefield over U.N. concern with anti-Semitism.

Not atypical is the public dialogue in the U.N.'s top human rights body--the Commission on Human Rights--where this past April the Pakistani ambassador, speaking on behalf of the 56 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, unashamedly disputed that anti-Semitism was about Jews.

According to the logic of the UN, anti-semitism is not really a problem. The real problem is the state of Israel. Bayefsky methodically exposes the double-standard by which Israel is judged, even as it battles enemies committed to its destruction:

What does discrimination against the Jewish state mean? It means refusing to admit only Israel to the vital negotiating sessions of regional groups held daily during U.N. Commission on Human Rights meetings. It means devoting six of the 10 emergency sessions ever held by the General Assembly to Israel. It means transforming the 10th emergency session into a permanent tribunal--which has now been reconvened 12 times since 1997. By contrast, no emergency session was ever held on the Rwandan genocide, estimated to have killed a million people, or the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands in the former Yugoslavia, or the death of millions over the past two decades of atrocities in Sudan. That's discrimination.

The record of the Secretariat is more of the same. In November 2003, Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a report on Israel's security fence, detailing the purported harm to Palestinians without describing one terrorist act against Israelis which preceded the fence's construction. Recently, the secretary-general strongly condemned Israel for destroying homes in southern Gaza without mentioning the arms-smuggling tunnels operating beneath them. When Israel successfully targeted Hamas terrorist Abdel Aziz Rantissi with no civilian casualties, the secretary-general denounced Israel for an "extrajudicial" killing. But when faced with the 2004 report of the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions detailing the murder of more than 3,000 Brazilian civilians shot at close range by police, Mr. Annan chose silence. That's discrimination.

At the U.N., the language of human rights is hijacked not only to discriminate but to demonize the Jewish target. More than one quarter of the resolutions condemning a state's human rights violations adopted by the commission over 40 years have been directed at Israel. But there has never been a single resolution about the decades-long repression of the civil and political rights of 1.3 billion people in China, or the million female migrant workers in Saudi Arabia kept as virtual slaves, or the virulent racism which has brought 600,000 people to the brink of starvation in Zimbabwe. Every year, U.N. bodies are required to produce at least 25 reports on alleged human rights violations by Israel, but not one on an Iranian criminal justice system which mandates punishments like crucifixion, stoning and cross-amputation of right hand and left foot. This is not legitimate critique of states with equal or worse human rights records. It is demonization of the Jewish state.

I am consistently amazed at the number of people who have no concept of the depths of UN's deplorable history of anti-semitism and its animus against Israel. If you are not familiar with its record on this matter, it is all the more urgent you read all of Bayefsky's remarks. (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch)