RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mr. Coons, a Delaware Democrat, and Mr. Rubio, a Florida Republican, are U.S. senators.

It’s rare, especially these days, for all 100 U.S. Senators—from Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz, from Elizabeth Warren to Mitch McConnell —to agree on something. But the scourge of anti-Israel bias at the United Nations is such an issue. Last week, every senator signed our letter to Secretary-General António Guterres, urging him to improve the U.N.’s treatment of Israel and eliminate anti-Semitism in all its forms.

While the U.N. has achieved some important successes since its founding 70 years ago, too many of its member states and agencies use the world body as a vehicle for targeting Israel rather than as a forum committed to advancing peace and human rights. This encourages and supports the broader scourge of anti-Semitism, and distracts key U.N. entities from their original missions.

As both the U.N.’s principal founding member and its largest financial contributor, the U.S. must insist on real reforms. We in Congress have a responsibility to conduct rigorous oversight of U.S. engagement at the U.N. and its use of our citizens’ tax dollars. We commend Ambassador Nikki Haley for stating that “the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias . . . is long overdue for change.” In another hopeful sign, Mr. Guterres recently disavowed an anti-Israel report by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and demanded that it be withdrawn.

Still, the U.N. continues to fund and maintain many standing committees that serve no purpose other than to attack Israel and inspire the anti-Israel boycott, sanctions and divestment movement. These committees must be eliminated or reformed.

While the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization does important work on Holocaust education and preserving world heritage sites, some member states persist in pushing measures to target Israel and deny Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem. Unesco member states must understand that these actions only undermine the credibility of their organization.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East has faced troubling allegations of inciting violence against Israelis and aiding Hamas. If it does not cease these activities, it risks losing support of U.S. lawmakers.

Perhaps most troubling is the Human Rights Council. Charged with drawing the world’s attention to gross human-rights violations, its members include some of the world’s worst human-rights violators, who devote far too much time to baseless attacks against the Jewish state. The HRC even maintains a permanent item on its agenda targeting Israel—Agenda Item 7. No actual human-rights violator is targeted in this way.

Speaking recently before the HRC in Geneva, Erin Barclay, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, criticized the council’s anti-Israel focus as “unfair and unbalanced,” noting that its “obsession with Israel . . . is the largest threat to the council’s credibility” and “limits the good we can accomplish by making a mockery of this council.”

The HRC should be the premier international body addressing the many pressing human-rights challenges of our time in countries such as China, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Russia, South Sudan and Venezuela. We therefore urge specific reforms to end the HRC’s imbalanced focus on Israel, including the elimination of Agenda Item 7 and a competitive admission process in order to broaden and better balance membership on the council.

In his April 25, 1945, address to the United Nations, President Harry S. Truman challenged the authors of the U.N. Charter to create an organization rooted in lofty humanitarian principles, dedicated to the benefit of all mankind, and capable of achieving “a just and lasting peace.”

For too long the world body has fallen far short of those ideals. In order for it to be more effective in advancing peace and human rights around the world, America must remain vigilant. We stand ready to lead sustained bipartisan efforts in Congress and with our international partners to eliminate the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias, and to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms.

Despite the fact that North Korea proclaimed that war with the United States is “imminent,” the world probably won’t explode next week. Then again, it might.

By all reports, Pacific Command commander Admiral Harry Harris is a cool-headed warrior, not someone given to shouting that the sky is falling. (A Japanese-American, his appointment as PACOM boss unsettled the Chinese.) A friend of mine who knew Harris very well during their days at the Naval Academy said he’s “as straight a shooter as you can get.”)

Testifying to Congress last week about North Korea’s ability to strike the United States with a nuclear-armed ballistic missile, Harris said, “The crisis on the Korean peninsula is real — the worst I’ve seen.… There is some doubt within the intelligence community whether Kim Jong Un has that capability today or whether he will soon, but I have to assume he has it, the capability is real, and that he’s moving towards it.” When a gent such as Harris says that it’s something we have to take seriously.

Harris went on to say that “Kim Jong Un is making progress and all nations need to take this seriously because their missiles point in all directions,” Harris said. “If left unchecked, they will match the capability of his hostile rhetoric.”

Military leaders have to measure an enemy by its intentions and capabilities. North Korea’s capabilities are being developed as fast as its scientists — and those from other nations — can propel it.

Remember A.Q. Khan? He is the Pakistani scientist who may be the world’s worst proliferator. He helped start the North Korean nuclear weapons program that has now come to fruition. The Norks’ sixth nuclear weapons test is expected any day. They may or may not be close to miniaturizing their warheads to fit in a missile’s fairings. They also may or may not be at the point where one of their warhead designs can survive the stresses of launch.

Whether they have reached those points or not, Adm. Harris assures us they probably will soon. That determines capability. What about intentions?

Anti-West, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish diatribes were delivered to enthusiastic crowds of bearded men and veiled women. One hundred and fifty thousand people attended.

Emmanuel Macron promised to facilitate the construction of mosques in France. He declared that “French culture does not exist” and that he has “never seen” French art. The risk is high that Macron will disappoint the French even faster than Hollande did.

On the evening of the second round of elections, people will party in the chic neighborhoods of Paris and in ministries. In districts where poor people live, cars will be set on fire. For more than a decade, whenever there is a festive evening in France, cars are set on fire in districts where poor people live. Unassimilated migrants have their own traditions.

Paris, Champs Elysees, April 20, 8:50 pm. An Islamic terrorist shoots at a police van. One policeman is killed, another is seriously wounded.

The terrorist tries to escape and shoots again. The policemen kill him. One hour later, the French Ministry of Interior reveals his name and his past. His name is Karim Cheurfi. He is a French Muslim born in an Islamized suburb of France. In 2003, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison for the attempted murder of two policemen. He was released before the end of his sentence. In 2014, he targeted a policeman and was sentenced again. And released again. In March, the police were informed that he was trying to buy military-grade weapons and that he contacted a member of the Islamic State in Syria. An inspector discovered that he had posted messages on jihadist social media networks expressing his willingness to murder policemen. The police searched his home and found several weapons and a GoPro video camera similar to the one terrorists use to film their crimes. The police and members of the French justice system did not think they had sufficient evidence place him under surveillance.

The Champs Elysées attack clearly shows that the French justice system is lax regarding dangerous people and that the French police pay only limited attention to suspects who are communicate with terrorist organizations and who seem to be hatching terrorist projects.

This terrorist attack summarizes everything that is broken in terms of security in France today.

Men with a profile similar to that of Karim Cheurfi have, in recent years, been responsible for most of the terrorist attacks in France and Belgium: Mohamed Merah, who killed three Jewish children and the father of two of them in Toulouse in 2012; Mehdi Nemmouche, who attacked the Brussels Jewish Museum in 2014 ; the Kouachi brothers, who committed the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015; Amedy Coulibaly, who murdered four Jews in the Saint Mandé grocery Kosher store Hypercacher; Samy Amimour and others who maimed and murdered 130 innocent people in the Bataclan theater in November 2015; Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who drove a truck into the crowd in Nice in July 2016, killed 86 people and wounded many others, and, among others, those who beheaded a priest in Normandy a few weeks after the attack in Nice.

The successive French governments under the presidency of François Hollande showed themselves to be appallingly weak and impotent.