Of the many fundamental flaws that characterize the United Nations, one is that, on the 47-member Human Rights Council (UNHRC), China, Cuba, and Qatar have the same vote as the U.S., UK, or Finland. Another is that an entire UN agency is dedicated to perpetuating the Israel-Palestinian conflict, running schools that indoctrinate pupils into hating Jews while using them as human shields for Hamas rocket batteries. Another is that the UN’s permanent, professional staff is rife with anti-Semites. Take the all-too-typical case of Craig Mokhiber. David May and Richard Goldberg write:

Craig Mokhiber heads the New York section of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which oversees the UNHRC. On Twitter, Mokhiber has falsely accused the Jewish state of “genocidal cruelty” and of committing “ongoing genocide,” “race-based slaughter,” “apartheid,” and “ethnic cleansing.” But that’s just par for the course. Mokhiber is currently in the spotlight because UN Watch—an NGO dedicated to accountability at Turtle Bay—issued a report showing that Mokhiber wants to block the UN from endorsing a widely-used definition of anti-Semitism, a key step in the process of rooting out anti-Semitism at the UN.

The Biden administration is a bit player in this drama, which is part of the problem. It promised that deeper and more consistent engagement with UN bodies would promote reform, but that hasn’t happened. The Mokhiber affair suggests it is past time for the Biden administration and Congress to threaten to withhold U.S. funding from any UN body found to be engaging in anti-Semitism.

Every year, the president requests and Congress appropriates upwards of a billion dollars to the United Nations and its various agencies and operations. That money should not be handed over as a blank check. Instead, conditions should be added to tie U.S. funding to any UN organization on whether that organization or its officials engage in anti-Semitism. American taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the world’s oldest hatred.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.