Oh great. Syria seems to be headed for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. Could the UN be more in your face? Click here to read the rest.

You know what makes me proud to be Canadian? The Harper government standing alone in the UN Human Rights Council. That body's latest one-sided anti-Semitic resolution passed 33 to one, with 13 abstentions. We were the one, alone, and you couldn't ask for better company.

Of course the usual suspects started squawking about our having "abandoned a more even-handed approach." But what sort of idiot would take an even-handed approach to Hamas? Unless you count pounding it with both fists.

In a column three years ago, I quoted Article 7 of the Hamas Charter: "The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.'"

I think I'll plant me some Gharkad trees. Because the question now is not what sort of compromise one might reach with people who talk like that but why you'd want to. It is a point of pride with radical Islamists that they are in love with death. Hamas certainly is: Other people's if possible, ideally Jews, lots of Jews, but if not, then the deaths of one's neighbours and family and if all else fails one's own. Only on the last point do I sympathize.

Hamas is flat-out loathsome. During the Cold War, I was frustrated by those who drew a spurious moral equivalence between the West and the Soviet Union. Now I miss them. Communism was evil, stupid and dangerous, to be sure. But it didn't say God would one day finish the work Hitler started.

Periodically I encounter people arguing that Israel, though not perfect, should be preferred because it is democratic, has free speech, has a sizable peace movement, and extends to its Muslim citizens an extensive array of rights denied not only to Jews but to Muslims in Israel's neighbours.

Such people note that other democratic governments urging "restraint" on Israel cannot even say what this restraint would be, except it involves Jews submitting to a rain of terrorist rockets these same governments would not tolerate hitting them. They also point out that Israel actively seeks peace with neighbours who run newspaper stories based on the blood libel and TV series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Sometimes they discuss the political usefulness of xenophobia, specifically anti-Semitism, for regimes unable to satisfy their citizens' desire for freedom, prosperity or anything else worth having.

I pay these arguments little heed. Not because they are wrong but because they are so obviously right that they manage to be beside the point. No one of good will and sound mind is unaware that Hamas dreams of exterminating Jews and dancing in the gore. People's position on the Middle East nowadays is based on how they feel about that fact, not whether they know about it.

On that basis I welcomed Michael Ignatieff's lucid statement last Thursday that "Hamas is a terrorist organization and Canada can't touch Hamas with a 10-foot pole. Hamas is to blame for organizing this, for these rocket attacks and then for sheltering among the civilian population. And Israel is justified in continuing military operations." And while I'm giving credit where it's due, in her confirmation hearings as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton bluntly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "We cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognizes Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements." Curiously, the emphasis on past agreements is a nice touch; although Hamas's perfidy is hardly its most atrocious characteristic, this condition makes even a tactical deception harder to perpetrate on the U.S. which, of course, would also have voted no if it were on the UNHRC.

If the situation in Gaza were reversed, with Hamas overrunning Israel, civilian casualties would not number in the hundreds but the hundreds of thousands and the UN would do nothing. If Israel's defences were to crack, its neighbours would conduct the "war of extermination" and "momentous massacre" promised by the Secretary-General of the Arab League in 1948, and the world would not lift a finger even if it could. Or rather, some governments would cheer. Others, like the sanctimonious Scandinavians, would wring their hands and urge mutual restraint.

To be alone in one's position on Israel in the UNHRC is no embarrassment. It is the only place of pride.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

The BBC's story on Gaza today again invites readers to submit tales of suffering but, credit where credit is due, doesn't only ask residents of Gaza as it did on Dec. 27. Instead this time says:

Are you or your friends or family in the region affected by the violence? Tell us your experiences by using the form below.

It doesn't amount to "balanced" coverage of the whole issue let alone reasonable coverage (the latter, for starters, can tell an attack from a counterattack and knows who wants a truce so they can regroup and attack again and who wants one as a prelude to peace). But it's still an improvement.

So now the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee wants to boycott Israel... again. According to CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan, "In response to an appeal from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, we are ready to say Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the university bombing and the assault on Gaza in general." And do they also want to boycott Palestinians unless they explicitly condemn terror attacks? No see when you fire rockets at Jewish kindergartens it um uh that is to say...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who previously blamed Hamas for provoking the Israeli attack on Gaza, has now changed his tune, expressing solidarity with Hamas, calling the Israeli actions "barbaric and criminal"  and threatening to break off peace talks that have so far yielded a second intifada, suicide bombings, rockets and threats of death to Jews. Oooooooooo.

Rumours swirl that Israel was considering a 48-hour humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza strip though in the end the government seems to have rejected it at least for the time being. But does anyone think if the situation were reversed Hamas would consider such a thing? Which does not settle the question whether Israel should, although those who proposed it ought to realize more clearly than they seem to that Hamas would not use a lull in fighting (or anything else) for humanitarian purposes. But Israel's willingness to entertain the notion does underline the stark moral difference between the two sides.

As another Middle Eastern "crisis" unfolds not only participants but commentators seem to be repeating themselves. Which is not really a criticism of the latter because the same old points generally retain their validity when one side (Israel) has limited new options and the other side (the Palestinian leadership and an unknown proportion of the populace) is wedded to a strategy of belligerent rejection that has now failed wretchedly for eight decades and counting. I note however Barry Rubin's point about the Hamas strategy of giving Israel "the choice between rockets and media" because I think most reasonable media, even if they stress the suffering of Palestinian civilians, also reflect an understanding that Israel doesn't really have a lot of options and it is the fault of Hamas that they don't so the suffering, which is deplorable, is also Hamas's fault. OK, so the New York Times sent out a Dec. 29 e-mail teaser (I don't know if it's possible to link to it but if you have the nytdirect@nytimes.com service you will have received it) saying:

"Israeli Troops Mass Along Border; Arab Anger Rises By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY and ISABEL KERSHNER With the death toll in Gaza rising to nearly 300, a furious reaction spread across the Arab world, raising fears of greater instability in the region.”

And on December 27 the BBC invited residents of Gaza, but not Israel, to submit tales and photos of suffering (that story is still online but the submit stories section and links seem to have disappeared). But for the most part my view is that the Western-media component of Hamas's strategy is as miserable in every sense as every other part of Hamas's strategy. Even in the Middle East some things do change.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has effectively endorsed the destruction of Israel. Which tells you all you really need to know. It tells you all you need to know about the UN, that's for sure. From "Zionism is Racism" to the Durban conference in 2001 to the upcoming Durban II, this body is viciously, unalterably hostile to Israel. Any interested person can find countless examples like the UN team investigating the fake massacre in Jenin in 2002, which included a guy who'd compared the Star of David to the Swastika. Or the UN Development Program in 2005 paying for T-shirts saying "Today Gaza and Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem." Or Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other UN officials that same year celebrating the "International Day Of Solidarity With The Palestinian People" by sitting in front of a map from which Israel had been eliminated.

Lots of well-meaning folks keep giving the UN extra chances, figuring it's a wonderful institution dedicated to peace, justice and world government that by some regrettable misunderstanding keeps acting ineptly vicious. Don't. You should have no truck with this body not because it goes out of its way to call for the destruction of Israel but because in its day-to-day actions it takes that goal for granted.

On those grounds this episode also tells you all you need to know about the High Commissioner for Human Rights who kicked away a seat on Canada's Supreme Court to take that job. Namely, "Good riddance." Let there be no misunderstanding here. In a statement on January 24, Ms. Arbour called the new Arab Charter on Human Rights, which comes into effect this March, "an important step forward" toward strengthening "the enjoyment of human rights." Yet that Charter, the Citizen reports, says "all forms of racism, Zionism and foreign occupation and domination" should be "condemned and efforts must be deployed for their elimination."

Taken literally, that statement seems to oblige one to work for the elimination of those Arab governments whose officially sanctioned media treat the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as legitimate, call Jews the sons of pigs and monkeys or peddle the "blood libel." At the very least, they aren't a group whose declarations one would wish to endorse.

In the face of sharp criticism, Ms. Arbour this Wednesday issued a further statement including: "Throughout the development of the Arab Charter, my office shared concerns with the drafters about the incompatibility of some of its provisions with international norms and standards. These concerns included the approach to death penalty for children and the rights of women and non-citizens. Moreover, to the extent that it equates Zionism with racism, we reiterated that the Arab Charter is not in conformity with General Assembly Resolution 46/86 ..."

It sounds reasonable, albeit feebly, until you realize that it evades the key issue, which is not the condemnation but the "elimination" of Zionism. I could also take issue with the dishonest phrase "to the extent that it equates Zionism with racism" as if doubt existed on that score. But the real problem here is not the equation of Zionism with racism, it's that word "elimination".

It will not do to claim that Ms. Arbour is too naive to grasp the context. Especially since the new UN Human Rights Council was created in 2006 largely because the old Human Rights Commission was so anti-Semitic it had become a public relations problem instead of just a moral one. She knows what these governments say at the UN, and what they applaud.

Those who seek "dialogue" with the merchants of hate sometimes claim that if we show reasonableness and flexibility it will start to break down the barriers of misunderstanding and presently they too will show moderation. But the historical record does not confirm this notion. Instead it shows starkly that you may compromise with evil, but evil will not compromise with you. You move toward it but it doesn't budge; you move again, and again; and finally the purely semantic difference between your ultimate position and its initial one serves only to camouflage its real nature.

Most of the governments that surround Israel openly seek to drive the Jews into the sea. Not the Zionists. The Jews. And not because there will be boats waiting for them. I say most such governments, but I wouldn't gamble a second Holocaust on those that don't say it out loud.

There can be no compromise with such a position, and no nuanced, backfilled, endorsement of the "elimination" of Zionism.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]