Although the US ambassador Susan Rice criticised the tone of Israel's detractors, it's hard to escape the growing realisation that the true leadership of the Free World today, at least in moral terms, lies with America's great neighbour to the north. Stephen Harper's Liberal government in Canada is the nation-state equivalent of the honey-badger, a creature that marches happily to its own tune and hangs the consequences. If every Western nation—and specifically Britain and Germany, which pathetically abstained—had the moral purpose and certainty of present-day Canada, the planet would be a much happier and better place. Just like John Howard's Australian government a decade ago, the Harper ministry is teaching the rest of the English-speaking peoples what a country with backbone can do. The speech from Canada's foreign minister John Baird was a masterpiece of frankness, logic and decency. He looks like an ice-hockey goalie and doesn't mince his words, saying the day after the debate: "The bottom line is we will not let the Jewish people and the State of Israel stand alone when the going gets tough." Yet there were all too few people of his calibre present, and the General Assembly voted by an overwhelming 15-to-1 majority in favour of the resolution. The earth is therefore officially flat, and it was Israel that flattened it.    

Only the Liberian delegation failed to turn up to the debate at all. I'm not sure what Her Excellency Madam Marjon V.   Kamara, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Liberia to the United Nations, was doing on that historic/hysteric day, but she could hardly have been wasting her time in a more unproductive, predictable and depressing way than the rest of her colleagues in the General Assembly.