The United Nations Human Rights Council has a permanent agenda item to discuss and criticize Israel, making the Jewish state the only U.N. member marked in that way. The body has found time in recent months to distribute anti-Semitic images and to defend the anti-Semitic rhetoric of employees.

What it has not found time to do – per new criticism from watchdog groups – is condemn the use of chemical weapons by the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria:

The world deserves to know: Are innocent civilians attacked by their own government with chemical weapons not human rights victims? Is the most horrific crime of the 21st century not an urgent situation? Yes, the council will discuss Syria next week, but that was scheduled months ago. And yes, High Commissioner Pillay mentioned Syria, yet she avoided any condemnation of its murderous regime. Madam President, why is this monstrous crime being treated here with such apathy, banality and triteness? Where is this council’s moral outrage? Where is its sense of urgency?

The council has not completely neglected the more than two-year-old conflict in Syria, however. It has produced multiple reports – and even appointed a commission – to explore the dynamics of the fighting and even of chemical weapons use.

One of the commissioners, Carla del Ponte, recently made a point of asserting that the Syrian opposition was responsible for deploying sarin gas.

[Photo: UNHumanRights / YouTube]