Sometimes one of the hardest things in life is to stand up to one of your friends and tell him that his attitude or behaviour is unacceptable. I have to admit that there have been times when, to my shame, I have failed to do this. I realise that morality by concensus is totally wrong. Doing something that everyone else and justifying it by saying that others are worse may be convenient, but it doesn't make the actions right. Nonetheless, as bad as my own actions may be, others' are far worse. It is hard up to stand up to people.

However, that's a discussion for another day, and I don't want to expound on moral relitivism any more just now. I'm writing about standing up to your friends as it relates to international diplomacy. From a couple of recent incidents it seems that it is just as hard to stand up to countries.

The US Congress is currently considering a motion to define the killings of several million Armenians by Turkish forces in the early part of the last century as genocide. They have a great deal of support from the Armenian community and, more importantly, a number of impartial academics (the term should be a tautology, but sadly is not).

But they do not have the support of the Turkish government. The latter accept that a huge number of Armenians died, but say that they occurred as a result of civil wars. To be fair to the Turks it was at a very unsettled period of history, in a very unsettled part of the world. A higher death rate than is currently experienced in First World Countries would be expected, and it's quite likely that some deaths would have occurred had a similar situation occurred in any other country. But 15 million deaths are a little hard to explain away with a few skirmishes in a civil war, or even martial law being imposed.

I could go through the available evidence in excruciating detail, but curious readers shouldn't have too much trouble finding evidence of barbaric, inhumane actions by the Turkish army. In terms of both the numbers killed and the callousness of the soldiers' actions, the genocide is much worse than the Holocaust, as I have discussed previously, even if it is less well known.

However, the United States considers Turkey a key ally. A similar motion was scuppered a few years ago when George W Bush put pressure on the committee members, again because of the close alliance between Turkey and the United States. Barack Obama seems to oppose it solely on the grounds that it may damage relations. As much as I am a pragmatist, I am also a moralist, and I cannot understand how the deaths of millions can be less important than international relations.

The second example is a pair of incidents that have occurred recently, involving various Western countries' dealings with Israel, whose intelligence arm, Mossad, is allegedly up to its old tricks and forging other countries passports. This time the passports are not from New Zealand, which is a minor player on the international stage, as they were in 2004, but from Australia, France, the United Kingdom and others.

Whether they will be held to account for doing this is yet to be seen – my guess would be not. Israel is continuing to treat the international community with contempt – and, for reasons that I cannot fathom, getting away with it. Through United States Influence it has made itself the Middle East's darling amongst Western nations, and this is not entirely without reason. Its people are far closer to Westerners in their upbringing than those of any other country in the area. But this alone should not be enough, and I hope that those countries whose passports were used take strong diplomatic action, should the allegations be proved correct.

The second is that Palestinian groups in the UK have used the Goldstone report to allege that certain Israeli leaders involved in the recent conflict with Palestine are potential war criminals, and got a warrant for their arrest, should these leaders set foot in the UK. It was timed to coincide with a conference in England that several of these leaders were due to attend.

The British response was curious. First of all, senior politicians warned the Israeli leaders that this action had been taken, and that they risked arrest if they entered the country. Secondly, in some cases they even telephoned these leaders to apologise personaly.

It is, in my view, very poor form for the Palestinian groups to be using the law in this manner. Their own leaders are hardly free from sin, and they seem to be using the law as a weapon to serve their own ends rather than how it should be used, as something to ensure equity and fairness. However, the political leaders of the two countries seem to be guilty of roughly the same crimes, and I don't imagine that the British would have any qualms about instantly arresting any Palestinian leaders who alit in Britain. And it is inconceivable that they would ring first to warn them off an apologise for it.

However, morality is not relitivistic. Turkey must be held accountable for its actions, as must Israel. And some countries must stand up these two. The United States has shown itself to be unprincipled in the past on a number of issues, and I hope that it does not add another to the list. It may not be popular to do this, but it is right, and that is what must count.