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.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].