Where has the United Nations been during the cascading revolutions throughout the Middle East and North Africa? What has the U.N. Security Council busied itself with as Human Rights Watch has said that at least 233 protesters have been massacred by forces loyal to terrorist-sponsoring dictator Muammar Qaddafi of Libya?

You guessed it – considering yet another resolution condemning Israel for building housing units in the West Bank as an “obstacle to peace.” To its great credit, the Obama administration’s permanent representative at the U.N., Ambassador Susan Rice, cast a U.S. veto to block the resolution from passage. This was especially welcome since there had been strong indications that the administration would abstain and let the resolution pass, which would have been a major rebuke to Israel at a time when its security is in increasingly grave jeopardy.

There is no cookie cutter “one size fits all” among the nations in the Middle East and North Africa that are being convulsed by largely youthful citizen-led protesters.

In Egypt, there was the conflict directed toward President Hosni Mubarak, a long-time ally of the United States and the West, a steadfast observer of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty signed by his predecessor Anwar Sadat in 1979, and an autocrat who smothered any and all political opposition and most recently retained his office by elections that seemed obviously rigged. The brave protesters in Tahrir, or Liberation Square, ultimately resolved the issue, forcing Mubarak to resign, just as the initial protests in Tunisia had forced the ouster and exile of its autocratic President Zine el-Abidine Ben-Ali.

Since those initial rounds of protests in Tunisia and Egypt, people’s revolutions have enveloped the entire region, with major and often violent clashes in Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, Iran and Libya. Each of these regimes was caught completely off-guard by the civilian-led protests, which were inspired by social media communications among the citizens of the affected states.

Most recently, the entrenched dictator Muammar Qaddafi is facing the most serious threat ever to his dictatorship since he seized power in a military coup in 1969.

As the Jewish Light goes to press, there are major and violent protests in the capital city of Tripoli and the second largest city of Bengazi. Fed up with years of Qaddafi’s mercurial, brutal and seemingly demented “leadership,” the people of Libya are doing what the so-called “international community” or “family of nations” has failed to do. Let us remember that it was Qaddafi who was directly responsible as absolute dictator of Libya for the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in which over 200 passengers and crew perished, many of them American citizens. Qaddafi had previously bombed a Berlin disco frequented by U.S. soldiers which prompted President Reagan to strike back in a failed attempt to take Qaddafi down.

After the conflagration and bloody crackdown continued in Libya, with hired mercenaries slaughtering civilians in order to keep Qaddafi in power, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon finally broke his official silence when his office issued a press release that he had held a telephone conversation with Qaddafi in which he told the dictator that the violence against civilians should stop. This was hardly a bold statement and was too little, too late, since by that time nearly 300 people had been killed by Qaddafi’s thugs.

There are fragmentary, unconfirmed but credible reports on Qaddafi ordering his own troops to bomb his own civilians, and some of the pilots bravely refusing to kill their own fellow citizens. Some of the pilots have flown to Malta and defected, the Libyan Interior Minister has resigned, and the Libyan Mission to the United Nations has said that it has disassociated itself from the Qaddafi dictatorship. It is possible that by the time this week’s print edition is in your hands, the odious Qaddafi regime, perhaps the worst in the Arab world since that of Saddam Hussein will be over. That would be a sweet moment, the downfall of a modern Haman in our time!

Qaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, in a speech almost as rambling and incoherent as those of his goofy but still dangerous father, warned that Libya could face “civil war” if the protests continue. The young Qaddafi, like Gamal Mubarak, had hoped to follow the dynastic example of Bashir Assad and Kim Jong Il and succeed his father.

If citizen revolts can withstand the brutal attempts by Libyan and Iranian authorities to crush them, and succeed in causing the collapse of the dictatorships in those nations, that would be in Shakespearian terms “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” And just as Brutus is quoted as saying when he felled Caesar, if Qaddafi is indeed overthrown: “Sic semper tyrannus!”-Be it ever thus to tyrants! We will not hold our breath waiting for the “guardians of peace” at the United Nations Security Council to wake up and introduce meaningful-or any-resolutions condemning either Iran or Libya for their brutality against their own citizens. No doubt they will again busy themselves coming up with yet another resolution condemning – you guessed it -Israel!

Robert A. Cohn is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the St. Louis Jewish Light.