You just knew that the United Nations World Summit for Sustainable Development would erupt into an exercise against Israel. Who could forget the display just before September 11 at Durban, South Africa, during the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Muslim countries pushed a resolution condemning Zionism as racist, with many delegates comparing Jews to Nazis. Outside the conference, as recounted last year in a letter to the Post paper at Washington by Rep. Thos. Lantos, who served as an American delegate, anti-Semitic rallies were held daily. The congressman tells of one particularly putrid flier that showed a picture of Hitler and read: “What if I had won?”The answer? “The good things — there would be NO Israel and NO Palestinian’s blood shed. The bad things — I wouldn’t have allowed the making of the new Beetle.” And right on cue, similar chicanery has erupted at Johannesburg, where sustainable development turns out to involve isolating Israel alone among the nations of the world.

This has come with the decision of the host government to take up the cause of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian Arab terrorist who is on trial at Israel for masterminding, as the head of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, 37 terror attacks that claimed the lives of 26 Israelis. The Jerusalem Post reports that the deputy foreign minister of South Africa, Aziz Pahad, agreed on Monday to support the “Free Barghouti Campaign.” At the Johannesburg summit the same day, the paper reports, Mr. Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, held a press conference at which she compared her husband to Nelson Mandela and accused Israel of torturing her husband. Mr. Barghouti’s lawyer joined Ms. Barghouti on stage to accuse Israel of torturing 230 Palestinian children in basements. Some 50 Israelis from the World Union of Jewish Students protested, baring shirts that read “Stop Durbanizing the WSSD.” But the U.N. seems beyond repair. Libya is set to attain the chairmanship of its Commission on Human Rights. The Security Council has been recently chaired by Syria, a country on the American list of terror-sponsoring nations. The dream that rose in Turtle Bay has become a mockery.