After some deliberation, the UN Human Rights Council has chosen as its new “special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” a dedicated Israel-hater named Michael Lynk, who has declared his objections to the Jewish state’s existence and, on September 14, 2001, blamed the U.S. for provoking the attacks on its soil. The U.S., Elliott Abrams notes, has declined to object:

[The appointment of Lynk is] a travesty of justice, a breach of the UN’s own rules—and absolutely par for the course when it comes to the UN and Israel. In his press conference on the Human Rights Council’s session, which thank God is now over, the U.S ambassador to the UN, Keith Harper, did not even mention this despicable appointment. He did however, denounce the “especially disturbing” resolution to set up a database of businesses operating in settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights. The resolution “only serves to reinforce the council’s one-sided actions against Israel” and exceeded the council’s authority, he said. Better than nothing, I guess.

Lynk will never set foot in Israel or the Palestinian territories, because the Israeli reaction to this nonsense is to deny these “special rapporteurs” a visa. He can write his report in Ontario, [where he now resides], and there will be no surprises in it: another in the long line of UN assaults on the Jewish state.

On March 5, Riyadh appointed Salman al-Dosari—a prominent journalist and vocal supporter of the Abraham Accords—as its new minister of information. Hussain Abdul-Hussain takes this choice as one of several signals that Saudi Arabia is inching closer to normalization with Israel:

Saudi Arabia has been the biggest supporter of Palestinians since before the establishment of Israel in 1948. When the kingdom’s founder Abdulaziz Ibn Saud met with the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in the Red Sea in 1945, the Saudi king demanded that Jews in Palestine be settled elsewhere. But unlimited Saudi support has only bought Palestinian ungratefulness and at times, downright hate. After the Abraham Accords were announced in August 2020, Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah burned pictures not only of the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain but also of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Since then, many Palestinian pundits and activists have been accusing Saudi Arabia of betraying the cause, even though the Saudis have said repeatedly, and as late as January, that their peace with Israel is incumbent on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While the Saudi Arabian government has practiced self-restraint by not reciprocating Palestinian hate, Saudi Arabian columnists, cartoonists, and social-media activists have been punching back. After the burning of the pictures of Saudi Arabian leaders, al-Dosari wrote that with their aggression against Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians “have liberated the kingdom from any ethical or political commitment to these parties in the future.”