Two-Thirds Of Senate Demand US Put An End To UN Probe Into Israel

Over two-thirds of the US Senate, including Democrats and Republicans, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding that the Biden administration end the UN Human Rights Council’s unprecedented commission of inquiry into Israeli “war crimes” during Operation Guardian of the Walls. The initiative for the letter was led by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Sen. Ron Portman (R-OH) and was signed by 31 Democrats and 37 Republicans. “This one-sided approach is consistent with UNHRC’s continuing bias against Israel and the disproportionate use of resources in an ongoing campaign to disparage, discredit and denounce Israel,” the letter stated. Former president Donald Trump had withdrawn from the Council due to its anti-Israel bias but the Biden administration rejoined it earlier this year after promising to “oppose the Council’s disproportionate attention on Israel, which includes the Council’s only standing agenda item targeting a single country.” In October, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan, ripped up the Council’s annual report, saying: “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. The Human Rights Council has attacked Israel with 95 resolutions, compared to 142 against all other countries combined.” Not only is the probe against Israel unprecedented but three members appointed to the commission “have repeatedly taken public and hostile positions against Israel on the very subject matter that they are called upon to ‘independently and impartially’ investigate,” as stated in a letter by by Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, to the commission’s head, Navi Pillay. Pillay herself, a South African judge,  not only has a long background of making rabid anti-Israel statements but has actively lobbied against Israel. UN Watch chief Hillel Neuer wrote about Pillay: “The UNHRC has appointed to lead its controversial investigation on Israel an individual who calls Israel an ‘apartheid state,’ backs the campaign to boycott and sanction Israel, and signs statements lobbying governments to punish the Jewish state.” “She is an active anti-Israel lobbyist who has been made chair of this inquiry. It is astonishing, absurd, and a travesty of justice.” “Never in her U.N. tenure did Pillay use such inflammatory language regarding any other country—not even against serial abusers such as China, Russia, Iran, Syria or North Korea.” “Pillay has also defended the HRC’s ‘agenda item seven’ – under which Israel is the only country, out of 193 U.N. member-states, to be targeted by a permanent agenda item during council sessions.” “The skewed focus on Israel has been slammed by numerous Western governments – several of whom now boycott meetings held under agenda item seven – and also by former U.N. secretary general Ban ki-Moon, who said in 2007 that he was ‘disappointed at the council’s decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world.’” “Navi Pillay, by contrast, justified agenda item seven during a 2010 visit to Kuwait, and in a discussion with Italian lawmakers that same year.” “Israel has been the target of more condemnatory HRC resolutions than any other country, well more than twice as many as those on abuses in Syria, Burma, and North Korea.” Not a single HRC resolution has […]

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