The UN high commissioner for human rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein of Jordan, is reportedly compiling an official blacklist of companies that do business in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, thus putting a weapon in the hands of the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS). Benjamin Weinthal writes:

BDS . . . seeks to impose conditions on the Jewish state outside of negotiations between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Israeli government. . . . By attempting to blacklist Israel and U.S. companies like Caterpillar, TripAdvisor, Priceline.com, and Airbnb, the UN high commissioner is discouraging bilateral peace talks.

The UN’s unilateral move prompted a sharp rebuke from the U.S. ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley, who said: “Blacklisting companies without even looking at their employment practices or their contributions to local empowerment, but rather based entirely on their location in areas of conflict, is contrary to the laws of international trade and to any reasonable definition of human rights. It is an attempt to provide an international stamp of approval to the anti-Semitic BDS movement. It must be rejected.” . . .

What can the U.S. and Europe do? The U.S. along with many European countries sits on the 47-member Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The UN’s economic warfare targeting Israel and companies that trade with it should prompt a counterattack that includes the U.S. and morally-principled countries resigning from the UNHRC. . . .

[T]he UNHRC should not be in the business of using the tools of economic warfare to bring about precisely the result it claims it wishes to avoid: a [major] setback to the Israel-Palestinian peace process.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.