The “World Conference Against Racism,” better known as Durban III, took place in New York last week at the United Nations. It received less publicity than its predecessors, two conferences that achieved infamy less for their assaults on the State of Israel than for their displays of anti-Semitism. Read more »

Bill Clinton made some intemperate and inaccurate remarks about Israel last week, and I discussed them in an article in The Weekly Standard.  It begins this way:

Bill Clinton today blasted Benjamin Netanyahu, blaming the Israeli prime minister for the lack of progress toward peace with the Palestinians. The errors and misstatements in Clinton’s interview with bloggers are sufficient to change his reputation from that of a firm supporter of Israel into that of a firm supporter of Israelis who agree with his twisted version of the facts. Clinton simply blames the Israeli right for killing peace efforts. He appears entirely—in fact, embarrassingly— unaware of what has actually happened to the Israeli right over the last ten years, where the change has been extraordinary. Read more »

Now in its third year in office, the Obama Administration has never championed the cause of human rights. Its slow reaction in June 2009 to the stealing of the election in Iran and the birth of the “Green Movement” there, and its delay in backing the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, are evidence of this problem. But two recent news items show just how bad the situation has become. Read more »

In this year of the Arab Spring, the views of Arab citizens are supposed to be taken into account instead of the desires of their autocratic rulers. A curious exception is Palestinians, who have no formal way to express their views; their rulers in Hamas and Fatah keep canceling or delaying elections. Read more »

While I’ve been out of the country a small tempest has, I see, developed about former Secretary of Defense Gates’s views of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Jeffrey Goldberg reported this: Read more »