It appears increasingly likely the U.S. will withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council, though as of Friday, the State Department had not issued a decision.
Reuters quoted an unnamed diplomatic source saying the decision to withdraw is “not a question of if but of when.”
The 47-member body, which meets three times a year, opens the second of its three-week annual sessions Monday.
The council’s latest proposal calls for an investigation of Israel’s alleged use of excessive force during demonstrations along the border with the Gaza Strip. More than 100 Gazans died during several weeks of protests this spring after Hamas and other radical groups orchestrated attempts to charge the border with Israel despite repeated warnings by Israeli security officials.
Since March 30 when Hamas began its “Great March of Return,” demonstrators have set fire to more than 6,000 acres (25,000 dunams) of wheatfields, orchards and national parks using “incendiary kites.”
Israeli soldiers have thwarted most attempts to cut the fence and infiltrate Israel though not all. The IDF has also destroyed several cross-border tunnels, even an underwater tunnel that wound through Egypt to Israel’s coast.
The United States and Australia were the only two council members voting against the proposal.
More than a year ago, U.S. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley spoke of that eventuality at the Israeli American Council’s annual conference in Washington, D.C.
She also traveled to Geneva last year to address the Human Rights Council. She called the 47-member body a “forum for politics, hypocrisy and evasion,” which denounces Israel at every opportunity while ignoring human rights abuses in other countries.
While in Switzerland, Haley also addressed the Graduate Institute of Geneva, noting that since its inception in 2006, the UNHRC had passed 70 resolutions against Israel, compared with seven against Iran.
“This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the council itself,” she said.
Haley also admonished the UNHRC “to keep the worst human rights abusers from obtaining seats on the council.” {eoa}
Reprinted with permission from CBN.com. Copyright The Christian Broadcasting Network, all rights reserved.
See an error in this article?
To contact us or to submit an article
