If we’re becoming an activist community, then let’s campaign against “Human Rights anti-Semitism,” the use of phony “human rights” claims to defame Israel.

Recently, at the annual session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, a body charged with observing the status of all the world’s women, Israel, and only Israel, was accused of violating the rights of women.

This comes, as the invaluable U.N. watchdog Anne Bayefsky points out, in a world where women are raped and murdered in untold numbers in Sudan, imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, stoned in Iran and forcibly undergo abortions in China.

All of which went un-remarked by the august body.

The vote was 40-2, with the U.S. and Canada voting “no.” Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Korea and the BBC-poisoned England voted “yes.”

The U.N. demonizes Israel and ignores the real evil in its midst in part because of oil and money. The world needs Arab oil. And Arabian petro-dollars buy consumer goods and weapons systems that keep world export industries humming. But even more sinister, I believe, is the Arab Lobby, which makes the “Israel Lobby” look like amateurs.

Saudi and the Gulf states spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying influence. In the U.S., they pay lobbyists, run full-page ads, support think tanks that produce reams of studies and hold news conferences – all condemning Israel. They create centers and departments for Middle East and Islamic studies and stock them with scholars, who teach that Israel is the root of all evil. And they also, by the way – Ahem! – fund mosques that, according to Freedom House, spread crude anti-Semitic propaganda.

Arab Lobby achievements at the U.N. are clear: Every single U.N. organization and committee dutifully condemns Israel for something.

So we can’t expect the oil-bought U.N. to act differently. But could the Jewish community and other honest actors convince the real human rights community – Amnesty and Human Rights Watch for example – to protest Arab hijacking of the human rights cause?

Perhaps. Principled rights advocates might be embarrassed by the use of human rights abuse claims as propaganda weapons. On the more practical level, they won’t want Jewish and pro-Israel members and donors to drop out of the human rights community.

Further, rights activists might be brought to see that “human rights anti-Semitism,” in addition to being an Israel- bash, functions as an effective cover-up of horrific abuse of women, gays, lesbians, dissidents, apostates, atheists, racial and religious minorities and labor leaders in the Arab/Muslim realm and beyond. These are precisely the people who look to Western rights groups for help. They are the classical clients of human rights advocacy, pushed aside to smack Israel. All these things ought to be laid at the feet of Amnesty and HRW. They should be challenged to protest human rights anti-Semitism.

This challenge will also enable us to see whether these organizations have a conscience, or whether we should abandon them in the same way we should give up on the U.N.