Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Office issued a list of businesses “involved in certain activities relating to [Jewish] settlements” in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and parts of Jerusalem. Setting aside the office’s dubious assumption that international law forbids Jews from living in the areas in question, and also setting aside its obsessive fixation on Israel, Evelyn Gordon examines the sheer absurdity of the suggestion that the companies on the list somehow violate anyone’s human rights:

[W]hat horrendous activities do these 112 companies engage in? Well, there are several supermarket chains, which sell groceries to both Israelis and Palestinians. . . . There are several fuel companies, which operate gas stations where both Israelis and Palestinians fill up their cars. . . . There are also several food and clothing manufacturers, like General Mills, Angel Bakeries, and Delta Galil, whose crime seems to consist of nothing but the fact that their cereals, bread, and underwear can be found on supermarket shelves in the West Bank, Golan Heights, and eastern Jerusalem.

By contrast, the United Nations couldn’t find a single company engaged in “captivity of the Palestinian financial and economic markets” or “practices that disadvantage Palestinian enterprises, including through restrictions on movement [or] administrative and legal constraints”—something that might actually raise human-rights concerns. And only three were involved in providing “surveillance and identification equipment for settlements, the wall, and checkpoints directly linked with settlements,” which at least sounds sinister if you don’t realize that such equipment is merely intended to prevent terrorists from slaughtering children in their beds.

Human-rights violations used to refer to grave crimes like murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing. But now, along comes the UN Human Rights Council and says that, actually, even [the provision of] the most essential human necessities—food, water, transportation, communication—raise “particular human-rights concerns.” This turns the very idea of “human-rights concerns” into a bad joke: if every human activity is a “human-rights concern,” then nothing is.

And, as always, the biggest losers will be all the people worldwide suffering murder, torture, rape, and other genuine abuses. For their cries will be drowned out by the din of the UN’s lofty crusade against supermarkets and gas stations.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.