Now that the Bush administration is no longer there to actively lobby for Israel, the situation for the Jewish state at the hands of the assorted Israel bashers and anti-Semites of the world is growing more and more grave.

Currently, the top-of-the-page headline on the home page of the influential left-wing British newspaper The Guardian is “Lawyers seek arrest of Israeli defence minister in UK for alleged war crimes.”

Ehud Barak, who is the leader of Israel’s Labor Party, is due to speak at a meeting at the British Labour party conference in the Southern English town of Brighton today. Barak is also scheduled to meet British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and David Miliband, the foreign secretary, for talks on the Middle East and Iran.

The Guardian notes that “The accusations against Barak are based, in part, on a United Nations investigation conducted by the former South African judge Richard Goldstone. It concluded earlier this month that Israel had committed war crimes.”

And indeed the UN is meeting in Geneva today to discuss Goldstone’s report. Reuters reports from the hearings in Geneva that: “The United States called on its close ally Israel on Tuesday to conduct credible investigations into allegations of war crimes committed by its forces in Gaza, saying it would help the Middle East peace process.”

Is the Obama administration saying that Israel’s very thorough investigations up until now have not been credible? Previous American presidents would not have played the U.N.’s “Let’s beat up on Israel” game, but would have walked out (which is what countries like Canada and Australia have done).

I had been hoping we might be seeing a wiser Obama foreign policy emerge after the president’s fairly tough press conference on Iran last week. But it seems not.

For more background on the U.N. report, please see: “Goldstone’s crime against human rights”.