Jed Babbin: The UN House of Lies

Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including Inside the Asylum and In the Words of Our Enemies.

Listening to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas address the UN General Assembly last week, I thought I heard a faint echo in the chamber. I heard it again when President Obama argued that he was for establishing a Palestinian state before he was against it.

I thought for a moment that it was the shade of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the liberal Democrat who in 1975 stood up in the General Assembly to pronounce its "Zionism is racism" resolution an obscenity.

But when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke, I recognized the voice I heard in the background. Netanyahu chose to stand on the shoulders of a diminutive woman: the late, great, Jeane Kirkpatrick.

In tones that ranged from combative to conciliatory to exasperated, the Israeli leader challenged the members of the UN to, for once, impose the same standards by which they judge Israel on the Palestinians. Why not, he argued, hold the Palestinians and Israelis to the same standards of conduct, and morality?..