It has been business as usual at the U.N. Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva this month.

​Here’s why it matters.

Notwithstanding the need for urgent attention to such serial abusers as Syria’s Assad regime, which continues to barrel-bomb its own citizens in the midst of a destructive civil war, and Iran, which most certainly vies for the lead in any number of human rights abuses, including the execution of juvenile offenders, Israel is still singled out for special opprobrium.

If this sounds like a broken record, it is. Each year, all countries up for discussion are lumped together into one agenda item, while Israel is always separated out from the rest for individual scrutiny under Item “7” which applies solely to the Jewish state, the only democracy in the Middle East. Subsumed under that item this year are a basket of separate resolutions, as well as six reports. The resolutions, which make no pretence at being objective, hammer Israel for “the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” settlements, human rights abuses in the Golan Heights and a call for Palestinian self-determination.

The special reports include updates on the infamous Goldstone Commission Report, which was written in the wake of the 2009 Gaza war, and which suggested Israel might be guilty of war crimes. Judge Richard Goldstone, who chaired the group which wrote the report, ultimately backed away from its one-sided findings. In the U.N. system, however, vituperation against Israel has a life of its own, so the report lives on.

What does all of this have to do with the real world in 2016? The Middle East is not only in chaos, it is in meltdown mode in Iraq and Syria. Libya has now become the new ISIS target of opportunity. Iran, soon to be flush with cash from the nuclear deal with the P5+1, sends its Revolutionary Guards to Syria, along with its wholly-owned subsidiary Hezbollah, the terrorist organization that has taken over control of Lebanon, to back the Assad regime. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in this conflict, Christians and Yazidis have been massacred and subject to humiliation, eviction and dispersal, with millions becoming part of the biggest refugee migration in decades.

This situation has received scant attention from a U.N. body “re-formed and reformed” 10 years ago to address real human rights crises. Its 47 members have really done no such thing. It is dominated by countries from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement, and something called the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries, said to represent 50 percent of the world’s population, whose worldview includes protecting many of those countries who are in the first line of human rights abusers.

This session, as a result of membership rotation, the United States is not on the Council. Nevertheless, it has spoken out strongly against the double standard Israel receives at the hands of the members of the body. Neither is Canada, which has been a staunch defender of Israel over the past decade. The EU countries choose not to participate in the debate on Item 7, though several of its member states, critical of Israel, find a way to do so. The EU could act more forcefully against this on-going diplomatic charade, but it refrains from doing that—another example of how its actions often don’t measure up to the values it claims to uphold.

As for the Palestinians it once again proves that, though largely crowded out of the news because of events in the region, their ability to manipulate the U.N. system continues. Whether it was attaining full membership at UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), non-member state status at the General Assembly, or getting its flag flown in front of the U.N. in New York and other U.N. venues (including Geneva), they continue to plug away, not feeling any pressure to return to the negotiating table with Israel. And why should they? The Palestinians feel they have the international community’s blindly supportive wind at their back—even at a time when the Middle East neighborhood in which the Palestinians are based, is imploding.

One European diplomat I met in Geneva, after a spirited discussion about how annual denunciations of Israel only embolden the Palestinians and discourage the Israelis, told me point blank that if they were to say “no’ to Item 7, “the Palestinian door would be closed to us.” My rejoinder was that if the EU—which has often been the Palestinians’ friend in court and which has for years funded the salaries of Palestinian Authority (PA) civil servants—really sought to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue, they would spend their time urging the PA to move to the negotiating table, rather than allow this yearly lacerating of Israel to continue.

So as the Middle East burns, Nero—in this case—the Human Rights Council, fiddles. An aversion to doubling down on real abusers of human rights, and a propensity to let the anti-Israel rhetoric flow in Item 7 and its accompanying reports, speaks to the hypocrisy and emptiness of the Council and the system that has produced it.

Living in a time where, from our smart phone screens we can learn, real time, about the abuses of human rights everywhere, a global conscience is AWOL. Each day it stays that way, real opportunities to help those who suffer, pass. Instead, at the Human Rights Council and elsewhere, there is always time to unfairly castigate Israel.
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What a terrible waste.

The sight of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani now globetrotting his way to world capitals on what he surely sees as a victory lap after signing the nuclear agreement is yet another reminder of how quickly the Tehran regime is being rehabilitated.

He’s not yet made his way to Latin America, but he may yet do so: Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have been staunch friends of Iran over the years. Surely those countries will want to bask in Tehran’s newfound diplomatic luster and supp at the trough of its economic promise, now that most sanctions have been lifted.

Iran’s penetration of Latin America goes back more than 20 years. The bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, and the attack on the AMIA social welfare building in 1994, which killed more than 80 people, can be laid at the doorstep of Iranian operatives and their terrorist proxies, Hezbollah.

With the coming to power of the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Iran ratcheted up its operations in the hemisphere, including the infamous Tehran-Caracas IranAir flight, which symbolized the close ties the two regimes established. Fellow travelers Bolivia and Ecuador — part of the South American anti-West club — soon joined eagerly, surely benefiting from Tehran’s “walking around” largesse, used to expand its influence in the region.

Indeed, Venezuela has fallen further into an economic abyss under Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, making more likely Caracas will become even more indebted (and not just financially) to the Iranians.

The result has been not only an Iranian friendship circle, but a bloc of countries pledged to anti-Israel rhetoric and activity at the United Nations and other multilateral fora.

A recent report in London’s Al-Awsat Arabic newspaper speaks of Hezbollah cells operating in at least five countries in the hemisphere, which comes as no surprise. Similar reports have been cropping up over the now nearly 25 years since the terrorist acts in Buenos Aires.

Against this backdrop of Iranian activity in our backyard, there is some encouraging news. The new government in Argentina, led by Mauricio Macri has rolled back a “memorandum of understanding” between the previous Argentine government and Iran, the purpose of which was to bury the longtime investigation into the AMIA bombing — and with it Tehran’s clear fingerprints — and its terrorist presence in that country. It has also given new impetus to an investigation into the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman, the chief Argentine prosecutor in the case — and who was on the verge of disclosing details that may have incriminated Argentine government operatives, as well as the Iranians.

As a result, Argentine-Israeli relations are expected to vastly improve. That may also be the case in Uruguay, which now holds a UN Security Council seat, and whose previous government was often seen as sympathetic to Palestinian and radical positions on a wide range of issues. Uruguay’s new (and former) President Tabare Vazquez did post-doctoral work at the Weizmann Institute years ago, and takes a much more open-minded view of Middle East issues than his predecessor.

And then there is Paraguay. For years, the locus of one third of the infamous tri-border area (together with Brazil and Argentina), a lawless center for smuggling and hospitable to radical elements, the country is led by a president, Horacio Cartes, who has taken principled stands — at odds with his neighbors — including votes at the United Nations relating to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Our attention is often so riveted on the concentric circles of chaos, terrorism and violence in the Middle East and North Africa, we sometimes lose sight of what transpires south of our border. For more than two decades now, Iran has seen our neighborhood as a target of opportunity, and has cultivated it with impunity: terrorist bombings for which it has never paid a price, flattering the likes of Chavez and his circle for strategic gain and creating cells of agents moving about from here to who-knows-where.
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Now out-and-about that they are free of official international opprobrium, the ties they have created in Latin America bear special scrutiny. Rather than having to work largely out of the public eye, they can do so now to a large extent above board. Look for “official visits” of Rouhani and others to our hemisphere, in short order. Ignoring this threat, like so many others that characterize the regime in Tehran, would be at our peril.

For more than four decades—since the disengagement of forces following the 1973 Yom Kippur War—the Syrian border was unquestionably the quietest of Israel's frontiers. Despite its periodic saber rattling, rejectionism, pan-Arabism and support for Palestinian terrorist organizations, the Assad dynasty—Hafez and then son Bashar—strived to keep Syria out of direct military confrontation with Israel—particularly after the trouncing of the Syrian air force during the 1982 First Lebanon War. Contrasted with the recurring rocket fire, snipings, kidnappings and outright wars that remain the norm along the Israel-Lebanese border—first with Palestinian terrorist organizations and then with Iran-back Hezbollah—the Israeli Golan was the epitome of pastoral tranquility, Israel's veritable Switzerland, with the Israel Defense Forces’s (IDF's) eavesdropping devices on the winter-snowcapped Hermon Mountain keeping watchful eye as far as Damascus and its environs. 
 
As 2016 commences, this long-enduring serenity is being threatened by Iranian intensions to take advantage of the presence of its proxy for foreign adventurism and terrorism—Hezbollah—in Syria to shore up Bashir Assad against Daesh (the Islamic State), to ignite the Israel-Syria border too. 
 
The Iranians are striving to use Hezbollah to bring about the collapse of the two main principals that have guided Israeli policy since the beginning of the civil war in Syria: 1) That it will not allow weapons that could tip the strategic balance in the area to be shipped into its fronts with Syria or Lebanon. To this end, Israel reportedly launched 10 air attacks between January 2013 and October 2015 against convoys in Syria and even as far as Somalia carrying weapons to Hezbollah; and 2) To prevent the Syrian Golan from becoming a zone for launching offensive operations against Israel, as is the Lebanese border already. This, ostensibly, was behind the elimination of the Lebanese Druze Hezbollah terrorist Samir Kuntar, reportedly by Israeli Air Force jets that attacked a building in Damascus from Israeli airspace on Dec. 15, killing Kuntar and eight others including Farhan Essam Shaalan, a senior commander in the Syrian anti-Israel resistance militia.
 
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to avenge Kuntar's death, putting the IDF on high alert along the Lebanese border. Kuntar already had a record of terror, having kidnapped and murdered the policeman Eliyahu Shahar and the Haran family in 1979, which earned him notoriety as one of the most ruthless terrorists in Israel’s history. Since being released from an Israeli prison in 2008 in an exchange with Hezbollah for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Kuntar had been at the forefront of efforts to establish a Hezbollah clone in the Syrian Golan. Iran's attempt to ignite the Syria-Israel border will probably slowdown in Kuntar's absence, but experts expected that it will remain a strategic goal of the Iranian regime.
 
The limited scope of Israel’s offensive posture in Syria to weapons transfers and terror infrastructure directed against Israel, has led it to a hands-off policy regarding the much broader issue of the dissolution of the Syrian state and the ascendance of numerous other players, international, national and local, in the Syrian arena since the start of the civil war in March 2011. 
Speaking recently to Makor Rishon, Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, the long-serving director of Policy and Political-Military at Israel's Ministry of Defense, reiterated this position in referring to the tragedy in Syria and its possible spill-over into the Golan Heights: "There is no such thing today as Syria. A human tragedy of major proportions is taking place there. Hundreds of thousands of dead, millions of refugees, fine cities with tremendous historical significance destroyed. Bashar Assad controls only a quarter of Syria and he is completely dependent on Iran and Hezbollah. At this juncture the only exit from the war is political, as was seen in the talks in Vienna. Some say that if Assad is out an arrangement could be found, but the truth is that there are not a lot of people jumping for the job of President of Syria. There are no quick resolutions, everything is complicated. Syrian is erupting lava, with partition on the horizon."
 
In a new paper entitled “Syria: New Map, New Actors Challenges and Opportunities for Israel” published (in Hebrew) this month by Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Brig. Gen. (res.) Udi Dekel, former head of Strategic Planning in the IDF’s General Staff and researchers Nir Boms and Ofir Winter argue that, considering the multitude of state and non-state actors (estimated at 1,500 groups of widely varying political leanings, according to a February 2014 estimate by James R. Clapper, U.S. director of National Intelligence), now vying for territory and power in what was once Syria, it is time for Israel to abandon this no-interference policy and to actively engage ‘positive’ local and foreign elements with which it has common interests.
 
These players impact on the current reality in Syria and are expected to play a significant role in the stabilization and redesign of the Syrian space if the Assad regime falls or if the current entity still known as Syria breaks up into Alawite, Kurdish, Druse and Sunni enclaves. The writers argue that Israel should consider adopting a more robust policy, in coordination and partnership with positive elements in the Syrian arena that will promote both its long and short term goals.

​As another year’s U.N. General Assembly’s General Debate session has recently wrapped up, B’nai B’rith has concluded our annual round of meetings with presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers at the sidelines of the UNGA session.

This week of meetings gives B’nai B’rith leadership access to world leaders and an opportunity to engage in advocacy on core issues of importance to B’nai B’rith, most critically: the safety and security of Israel and the Jewish people throughout the world, and our concerns about the Iranian nuclear deal and Iran’s continued support for terrorism.

For anyone who has served in the Israeli army or who has children in active service, the viral video from an August 28 altercation between a lone Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and a swarm of Palestinian women and children pummeling, clawing and biting him in an eventually successful effort to free 12-year-old Muhammad Tamimi—who he intended to arrest for throwing stones at troops—was emotionally wrenching.
 
Having just arrived that morning back to a sweltering Israel after a holiday in pleasantly cool Norway and pastoral Scotland, the images of this soldier left on his own for long minutes by his comrades as he tries to shake off the assailants—aided by some foreign instigators—while he is filmed from every possible angle by multiple still and video cameramen—left me with a sinking feeling.
 
This leads one to ask what can be done to better protect soldiers caught in this situation, and what best practices can be employed to counter such Palestinian-initiated, staged clashes, while unfriendly cameras are whirring and snapping away in a game of gotcha employed by much of the media covering the territories.
 
Indeed the staged—and therefore predictable—nature of the incident was recognized even by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, two British newspapers that are quick to tar and feather Israel at every turn, usually without looking back, that were forced to change their initial critical headlines and even to remove the report entirely from their web site when it became clear that the soldiers' assailants are known provocateurs, particularly his teenage sister Ahed and their radical parents.
 
Some Israeli commentators such as Nachum Barnea in Yedioth/YNet used the incident to bemoan again the debilitating impact the "occupation" is having on the State of Israel and its young soldiers; others see an entirely different message in the images—that the fearlessness with which Palestinian women and children accost an Israeli soldier armed with an assault rifle proves that they know full well that even when being hit,  wrestled to the ground and nearly disarmed, he will not use his weapon, debunking claims of widespread brutality.

A look at longer YouTube posts of the incident tells a more nuanced story, still undoubtedly partial and skewered: Nebi Salah, where the encounter took place, has been a focus of violent Palestinian demonstrations for a number of years. Fridays are their favorite days for instigators to drum up a few women and children, perhaps with the promise of monetary remuneration, to march down the short access road out of the village toward a spring over which the village and a nearby Jewish settlement, Halamish, have been feuding for years.
 
The video shows a handful of Palestinian young men using the children and women as cover as they target IDF troops in the distance using potentially injurious high-velocity slings. The troops respond with tear gas as the Palestinians use their slings also to throw the canisters back at the troops.
 
Eventually, the troops advance uphill on the group when the 12-year old is caught by the soldier. These are scenes that have repeated themselves almost every Friday (I was witness to one about three years ago), which have raised renewed calls to train and deploy for just these kinds of situations.

Seemingly lost in the debate over the Iran nuclear deal is any focus at all on that country’s horrendous human rights record. In choosing to negotiate only on the nuclear program, the P5+1 (the United States plus China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and Germany) lost an opportunity to exert leverage on Tehran’s serial human rights abuses, as well as its support for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah.

It was only in 2011 that the UN Human Rights Council approved the appointment of a special rapporteur on Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, a respected diplomat from the Maldives. From the Iranian regime’s takeover in 1979, it has been a serial abuser of human rights: of political opponents, women, the LGBT community, journalists, adherents of the Baha’i religion and others. It has done so with impunity, unmoved by international exposure of its brazen abridgment of basic freedoms.

This month in Geneva, the Human Rights Council will open one of its thrice-yearly six-week sessions. With the signing of the nuclear deal and the UN Security Council’s endorsement of the agreement, the rehabilitation of Iran in international forums has begun. A number of European states have already embarked on a headlong rush to do business there. Notwithstanding remaining sanctions (for five years) on the acquisition of advanced conventional weapons, it is believed Tehran already is anticipating an armaments buying spree. And Iran will surely bolster its backing (and direction) of Hezbollah and other terrorist proxies.

The forthcoming session at the Human Rights Council should give us a good indication of whether or not Iran will get a pass on its human rights record. Already, some diplomats are reported to have urged “giving Iran some space” on the issue, now that it has agreed to the nuclear deal. That would be bad news for Shaheed, whose 2014 report on human rights in Iran runs 81 pages.

His report, which includes a detailed annex of individual cases, makes for a powerful charge sheet. He notes that there were 753 individuals executed in Iran in 2014, the highest number in 12 years. They included 25 women, and there were 53 public executions. This, while the Tehran regime was negotiating the nuclear deal with the P5+1 powers.

Absurdity is the rule: Shaheed cites the case of a death sentence pronounced on Mohamed Ali Yehari, an expert in alternative medical theories, for “corruption on earth.”

He was originally sentenced to five years for “committing blasphemy.”

Under the category "reprisals against individuals for contact with human rights organizations and U.N. human rights mechanisms," 15 persons were prosecuted or “faced intimidation.”

​The report covers countless examples of arbitrary detention of journalists, lawyers and student activists. Four leaders of the failed 2009 Green Revolution remain under house arrest. Shaheed cites the cases of 30 journalists who were detained on charges of “national security crimes” and “propaganda against the system” and “spreading falsehoods.” Five privately-owned religious TV stations were closed down for “working illegally for satellite TV stations in the United States and Great Britain.”

Last November, 24 Kurdish prisoners went on hunger strikes to protest inadequate medical treatment; they had been arrested on “national security” charges for commemorating International Mother Tongue Language Day. From the outset, followers of the Baha’i faith have been a special focus of social stigmatization. The report notes that 135 Baha’i remain jailed for their religious beliefs. Last year, a Baha’i cemetery was desecrated; to date, no perpetrators have been apprehended. Burials of Baha’is have been delayed or proscribed.

Christians have often been a target in Iran. On Christmas Day last year, nine persons were arrested for celebrating the holiday in the town of Rudehen.

In response to complaints of discrimination against the gay community, the Shaheed report notes that “the government responded by stating its total rejection of homosexual behaviors.”

Violence against women and juvenile offenders is a staple of the human rights abuse catalog: Shaheed cites nearly hundreds of acid attacks on women, many of them for wearing “improper clothing.” No arrests in these cases were reported.

Even with this shameless and pervasive record of rights abuse, one would have thought that Tehran would have released the four Americans it is holding (Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian; Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor from Idaho; Amir Hekmati, a dual citizen and Marine Corps veteran; and Robert Levinson, a US government contractor). The temerity of the Iranian rulers seemingly knows no bounds. Not to have made their release a condition for agreeing to the nuclear deal is one of the major criticisms of its opponents.

Addressing Iranian human rights abuses must be made a visible priority by the P5+1 and others in the community of democracies. Placing Ahmed Shaheed’s reports in the circular file and not acting more forcefully to isolate Iran on these issues will only embolden a regime already brimming with hubris over the nuclear deal.

"Giving Iran some space" is surely the wrong approach.

"Let's not mince words,” President Obama told an audience at American University on August 5, in defense of the Iran nuclear agreement.  “The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon."

The following day, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took issue with the dichotomy offered by the president.  “Some say the only answer to this is war.  I don’t believe so,” Schumer said.  “I believe we should go back and try to get a better deal…The nations of the world should join us in that.”

This disagreement between two senior officials of the same party raises two crucial questions for both Democratic and Republican members of Congress to ponder as they decide how to vote on the Joint Plan of Action (JCPOA) when Congress passes judgment next month.  Is there really no alternative to the deal other than war?  And do opponents of the agreement actually advocate war?

The answer to the second question is almost universally no.  Many of the deal’s fiercest critics, such as Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) have called not for war, but for a better agreement.  So why would the JCPOA’s supporters imply that their opponents prefer war as a policy option?

Framing the issue as a diplomacy-vs.-war dilemma helps the deal’s backers channel unhappy memories of the debate that preceded the U.S. operation in Iraq 12 years ago.  We chose to enter a costly war once before, the reasoning goes; let’s not repeat that mistake.  Invoking the specter of war also minimizes the arguments of those who oppose the JCPOA on the merits; it is easier to quell serious debate if critics can simply be dismissed as warmongers.

But regardless of how one felt about the prospect of military conflict in 2003 or 2015, it seems clear that other options remain available with respect to Iran today.   Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey acknowledged as much in his recent testimony before the Senate.  “I can tell you that we have a range of options and I always present them” to the president, he told the Senate panel.

Increased sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and the credible threat of military force could go a long way toward securing a better agreement than the one currently being deliberated over.  With sanctions still in place – or tightened – Iran would have a strong incentive to slow its march toward nuclear weapons if the contracts with multinational energy firms Iran hopes to negotiate are suddenly put at risk.  Also in peril would be Iran’s access to the more than $100 billion in frozen assets it hopes to retrieve.

DIME, the military and government acronym for soft power tools, accounts for the diplomatic, informational, military and economic aspects of American power.  All of these instruments could be applied to maintain pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program while the U.S. and its partners seek a better agreement.

The U.S. has significant leverage against Iran, a fact that was reflected during the negotiations by Iran’s continued insistence on the immediate lifting of sanctions to ease the country’s troubled economic plight.  If, as National Security Advisor Susan Rice said earlier this year, “A bad deal is worse than no deal,” how did we arrive at a stark choice between this flawed agreement and war?

Certainly the debate over the JCPOA needs to be informed by a clear understanding of America’s options and how best to maximize them in order to prevent a nuclear Iran.  In that light, false dichotomies such as diplomacy vs. war are unhelpful distractions.