Singling out Israel
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So, too, apparently, is the road to Geneva, where the newly formed United Nations Human Rights Council is meeting.
The council was put in place to replace the discredited UN Human Rights Commission by making it harder for countries that are in violation of its standards to become members. And those standards? The council made them clear on Friday when 29 countries helped pass a resolution by the Islamic bloc that mandated the discussion, in all of the council’s meetings, of human rights violations committed by Israel. This continues a discredited practice of the old commission, which also singled out Israel for a special place on the agenda, grouping other countries under a single agenda item. The bloc also mustered enough votes for a special session on the territories, possibly next week. (The U.S. delegation had non-voting observer status at the forum.)
This discriminatory and maddening focus on Israel is an unhealthy sign of the future direction of the new council, which is already being derailed by its obeisance to such human rights paragons as Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and China. The council is already living up to suspicions that it would be yet another forum for anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism — in other words, for attacks by the world’s despots on two countries with robust democracies and a free and probing press.
“Unfortunately it appears that the UN Human Rights Council is no improvement over its predecessor,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, in a statement. “Rather than taking a step forward and establishing a more efficient and effective human rights body that would respond to and monitor serious situations around the world, the council is taking two steps back to restore the old institutionalized myopic focus on Israel.”
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