It is easy to pour well-merited scorn on the nations of Europe, and on France in particular, for their timidity in implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 — a resolution that they, and France again in particular, pushed for and voted for. But why bother? The hypocrisy of Europe in refusing to put, as they say, its money where its mouth is, is notorious. So now it’s happened once more.

And indeed if the point were merely once more to excoriate the Europeans, the exercise could be skipped as unnecessary. Unfortunately, however, there’s more to it than that. For the real point is not Europe, it’s Israel. Or rather, it’s Israel’s ability to trust international agreements in which it, its security, and its future are involved.

Take 1701. In Paragraph 8, it calls explicitly for “full implementation of … the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006 there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.” And in Paragraph 11 it calls upon a reinforced UNIFIL with 15,000 troops to “Assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps toward the establishment of the area as referred to in Paragraph 8.”

In plain language this means that the Lebanese government, with the full support of UNIFIL, will disarm Hezbollah everywhere in Lebanon — a commitment crucial to Israel and to its decision to accept the U.N.-brokered ceasefire.Yet hardly had the ink time to dry on 1701 when the Lebanese government announced that it had not the slightest intention of disarming Hezbollah anywhere, not even in the Lebanese south close to the Israeli border, and the countries of the European Community chimed in by letting everyone know that they had no intention of doing this, either. In short, Paragraph 8 was a deliberate hoax.

But 1701 is hardly a unique case in Israel’s dealings with the United Nations or the world. Although it is commonly held today that it is Israel that has regularly flouted U.N.resolutions (as in fact it sometimes has), what is ignored in making this accusation is that — and generally on far more fateful occasions — it is the United Nations that has regularly flouted its commitments to Israel. Here, for those with short memories, are a few examples:

* Security Council Resolution 181, passed in November 1947, which called for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab Palestinian state. When the Jews accepted this resolution and the Arabs rejected it and invaded the newly declared state of Israel, neither the United Nations nor any of its members lifted a finger by calling for sanctions or punitive measures against the Arabs invaders, let alone for military measures in defense of the attacked party.

* General Assembly Resolution 1000, passed in November 1956, which called for a United Nations Emergency Force to be stationed in Sinai as part of the Israeli withdrawal from the area following its military conquest of it from Egypt. One of the functions of this force was to ensure that the pre-1956 Egyptian blockade of the Israeli port of Eilat was not re-imposed, and as U.N. secretary general, Dag Hammerskjold, later stated, it was clear to all that “by endorsing that resolution [Egypt] had consented to the presence of the U.N.E.F. for certain tasks [and the Egyptians] could thus not ask the U.N.E.F. to withdraw before the completion of the tasks without running up against their own acceptance of the resolution.” Yet when Egypt sent troops into Sinai in June 1967, announced the re-imposition of the blockade, and demanded that the United Nations force leave, the U.N. folded its tents and departed without a peep.

* Security Council Resolution 242, passed in November 1967. (What is it about November that attracts so many resolutions?) This resolution, after lengthy negotiation among its framers, called for the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, the British ambassador to the United Nations, Lord Caradon, and still others observed, the phrasing “from territories” rather than “from the territories” was explicitly meant to indicate that a total Israeli withdrawal was not demanded and that new frontiers would have to be negotiated. Two years later, however, U.S. secretary of state, William Rogers, reneged on this wording by announcing a plan that would require Israel to withdraw, apart from “insubstantial alterations,” all the way to its pre-1967 borders. The European countries unanimously backed the Rogers Plan.

One could bring still other examples (the 1993 Oslo Declaration of Principles, for one) in which major international agreements that Israel was a party to, or that were drawn up in consultation with Israel by its friends, were afterwards disregarded by the world with no one but Israel to protest. But that’s not what the agreement said? So it’s not what the agreement said. So what?

Resolution 1701 is the same story all over again, even if it does set some sort of record for the lightning speed with which a United Nations decision has been rendered meaningless. The world may shrug its shoulders and say, “That’s life.” But life can be a double-edged sword. The next time the world asks Israel to put its trust in international agreements and gamble its future on the assumption that they will be carried out, it shouldn’t be surprised if it’s told to get lost.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.