Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan ripped up the annual report of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) from the podium on Friday.
Speaking to the General Assembly, Erdan excoriated the council for its “obsessive anti-Israel bias.”
“Since the establishment of the council 15 years ago, it has decided to blame and condemn Israel not 10 times like Iran or 35 times like Syria,” Erdan said. “The Human Rights Council has attacked Israel with 95 resolutions, compared to 142 against all other countries combined.”
“It was on this stage at this very body that the very right of the Jewish people to have a national home was itself declared to be racist. A decision that was justly overturned. A decision that Israel’s ambassador at the time, Chaim Herzog, tore up before the United Nations. And this is exactly what should be done to this antisemitic distorted one-sided report.”
“For that 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism was itself a gross form of anti-Jewish racism, which has no place in this international body. So too the Human Rights Council’s obsessive anti-Israel bias embodied once again by this report should have no place in any body concerned with human rights, security or peace. Its only place is in the dustbin of anti-Semitism. And that is exactly how we should treat it.”
Earlier this month, the Biden administration returned to the UNHRC over three years after the Trump administration quit the organization for its obsessive anti-Israel bias. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield promised to “oppose the Council’s disproportionate attention on Israel, which includes the Council’s only standing agenda item targeting a single country.”
Today, I addressed the @UN General Assembly and spoke out against the baseless, one-sided, and outright false accusations from the Human Rights Council's annual report. 1/8 pic.twitter.com/b4YIv2jGaK
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) October 29, 2021
Three days later, Thomas-Greenfield lashed out at the Security Council for its disproportionate focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“This Council spends a great deal of time on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is both understandable and consistent with the agenda,” she said. “But far too often, the substance of these discussions is centered almost entirely around criticism of Israel and counterattacks.”
In May, the council launched an unprecedented probe into alleged Israeli “war crimes” during the 11-day conflict between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip and “systematic discrimination and repression” in Israel, the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria via a permanent Commission of Inquiry (COI), the council’s most powerful tool.
It was the first time the UNHRC approved a permanent “ongoing” commission regarding a U.N. member state.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
Of course, there’s no human rights abuses in Iran. Nothing in Syria. Not in Sudan. Nor in Saudi Arabia. Not in Yemen. Nor in North Korea. Not in China. Not in Russia.
The greatest world problem is Israel! Mind boggling.