Annual U.S. State Department human rights reports are politicized. The content is accurate and done by genuine scholars in the field. But the focus, or lack thereof, is often motivated by political factors. Politics, of course, set by the elected officials and their political appointees, and not career service men and women.

What I mean by focus is that a nation with a bad human rights record that is at odds with the United States will often face lengthier reports and even more reports than another nation with an even worse human rights record but is a client of the United States.

This can best be illustrated by the way the U.S. State Department treated Syria vs. Saudi Arabia in the Bush years. During the reign of the neo-conservatives, Syria was demonized as a rogue state and had the Iraqi insurgency not preoccupied the U.S., the Bush administration - egged on by a stupid, uncritical and hawkish media - would have certainly invaded Syria and toppled Assad.

Syria’s offenses are dubious and the nation is not a rogue state. But not that such arguments matter for Bush & Company. During this period, the State Department made a frequent habit of highlighting admittedly abuses of power by the Syrian government (for the record, the U.S. was engaging in similar abuses of torture and rendition, and denial of due process). Syria is tyrannical, but it pales in comparison to Saudi Arabia. Syria punishes only political dissent, while Saudi Arabia punished nearly everything. In the cruel Kingdom, a 70 year old was recently sentenced to dozens of lashed and months in prison for the offense of being in the presence of her nephew and his friend whom stopped by to deliver bread. Sexual intermixing is strictly prohibited. This is a mere single example of how tyrannical Saudi state is.

But Saudi Arabia is a willingly client of the U.S. - and thus it escaped harsh criticism and the U.S. media - which takes its dictates from the U.S. government when it comes to foreign policy writing - refers to Saudi Arabia as “moderate” while joining in the denunciation of a culturally and sexually free Syria.

The U.S. often only notices and highlights human rights abuses when the oppressing government is at odds. But the more subservient a authoritarian state is, the more indifferent the U.S. is about human rights abuses. A hollow platform.

Having said all that, the State Department - to restate - does issue excellent reports by professionals. And they have recently notices that Israel - ostensibly “the only democracy in the Middle East” - is actually quite the discriminating, racist bastard:

“Israel dismally fails the requirements of a tolerant pluralistic society, according to a new report from the U.S. State Department. Despite boasting religious freedom and protection of all holy sites, Israel falls short in tolerance toward minorities, equal treatment of ethnic groups, openness toward various streams within society, and respect for holy and other sites. The comprehensive report, written by the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, says Israel discriminates against groups including Muslims, Jehova’s Witnesses, Reform Jews, Christians, women and Bedouin. The report says that the 1967 law on the protection of holy places refers to all religious groups in the country, including in Jerusalem, but “the government implements regulations only for Jewish sites. Non-Jewish holy sites do not enjoy legal protection under it because the government does not recognize them as official holy sites.” At the end of 2008, for example, all of the 137 officially recognized holy sites were Jewish. Moreover, Israel issued regulations for the identification, preservation and guarding of Jewish sites only.”