01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 23, 2004

While fashionable anti-Israel types in the United States, at the institutionally anti-Semitic United Nations, and in the propaganda-soaked Arab world rave on about the crimes of tiny Israel and our very own evil empire based here in America, genocide unfolds in the western-Sudan province of Darfur with little protest.

Seven Palestinian alleged terrorists might be killed in an Israeli strike, and the rhetorical and physical retaliation would be swift. But many thousands of Africans die in Darfur at the orders of the Arab government, and there's barely a squeak. (But then, when Syria's late dictator Hafez Assad and Iraq's Saddam Hussein killed thousands of their Arab compatriots, the world didn't seem to care much, either.)

In Darfur, government death squads are dispatched to wipe out villages populated by black people. Many of those not immediately killed face starvation. Whatever it takes is used to massacre, or force to flee, people not perceived as friendly to Sudan's Islamist government. The perception comes mostly from skin color.

The United Nations may do little or nothing about this; France and China, both on the Security Council, have big oil contracts with the statesmen in Khartoum -- just as they (along with America) did with the Arab tyrant who used to rule in Baghdad.

The United States is currently busy with Iraq, Americans seem interested only in places with cameras and Americans, and America has few commercial interests in Sudan. Nevertheless, we hope that the Bush administration will use its economic weapons (such as the freezing of Sudanese assets) and otherwise pressure Khartoum to stop the murder.

To do this, the United States must shame fellow U.N. members about their cavalier attitude toward Third World genocide, to obtain a resolution warning Khartoum of economic and other consequences if it fails to stop the murder and open Darfur to international humanitarian aid. The United States should also try to persuade the African Union to send forces to protect Darfur refugees from roving Arab militias.

In dire human-rights situations, the United Nations is often useless. Darfur represents a chance for the U.N. -- and the United States -- to integrate rights rhetoric with reality: to cast off a double standard and raise the quality of international relations. It's even more important, right now, than the Gaza Strip . . .