In the aftermath of Benjamin Netanyahu’s inconvenient (to Barack Obama) victory in the Israeli election, it looks like the administration is heading towards exacting revenge. The administration’s threat is that under President Obama the United States will “join the jackals”—the permanent, global, virulently anti-Israel caucus at the United Nations.  The phrase comes from the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who knew a thing or two about Israel-hatred at the U.N. (and famously denounced it in 1975 when he was the U.S. ambassador). 

This gambit has been tried before, disastrously, under President Jimmy Carter. Moynihan’s masterful dissection of Carter’s failed and self-destructive policy, in the February 1981 issue of Commentary—“Joining the Jackals: The U.S. at the U.N.”—is well worth re-reading today. Here are some of the highlights: