Obama Backs Israel-Bashing at the UN

Anne Bayefsky of National Review notes that the Obama administration has effectively backed an extraordinary session at the UN Security Council today, in which the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, the notoriously anti-Israel Navi Pillay, will brief the Council on the subject of Israel–and Israel alone. The U.S. failed to veto the session, which was scheduled in order to give the Council cover to deal with the atrocities being committed by Syria at this very moment–a crisis that has nothing to do with Israel whatsoever. 

From Bayefsky:

Though the U.S. is a veto-holding power, the extraordinary move has full American approval, despite the fact that the global soapbox will be handed to Navi Pillay, a notorious anti-Israel partisan.

Moreover, the American-backed action exposes President Obama’s profound weakness on the international stage. It turns out that the deal to sponsor an Israel-bashing session at the highest levels was a trade-off for having the high commissioner brief the Council on the subject of Syria…

Team Obama’s only caveat? The Syrian briefing should be in the morning and the Israel briefing should be in the afternoon so that the briefings — by the same person — can be labeled “two” meetings and the trade-off will be less visible. Obama’s U.N. ambassador Susan Rice can then run to the cameras before the afternoon session and claim the Council’s consideration of Syria was a “success.”

Bayefsky goes on to note that Pillay questioned the killing of Osama bin Laden last year. She adds that our UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, who was an Obama surrogate in 2008 and is hitting the stump for him unofficially in 2012, lied through her teeth when she told a Jewish audience in Florida recently: 

Not a day goes by–not one–when my colleagues and I don’t work hard to defend Israel’s security and legitimacy at the United Nations. . . . President Obama has insisted that the United States be clear: The treatment Israel receives across the U.N. system is unacceptable. Efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy have been met with the unflinching opposition of the United States.