Since its inception in 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has become another platform for nations to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel.

Israel is the only country that is on the UNHRC’s standing agenda to be debated at each session - not Syria, not Iran, and not Sudan - but the only democracy in the Middle East. 

In fact, there have been more resolutions aimed against Israel than all 191 countries in the world, combined. By persistently focusing its criticism on the democratic State of Israel rather than the world’s real human rights abusers, the Council has eroded its credibility.

Mr. Chairman,

In a special session held on July 23rd 2014, the Council had the audacity to allow the world’s worst human rights abusers to denounce the Middle East’s only real democracy. The most vocal of these critics – Cuba, Venezuela, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia - are the same nations that routinely marginalize women, abuse minorities, execute political opponents, and torture human rights defenders.

The exploitation of the Council by the world’s most brutal regimes is a grave misfortune for the millions of oppressed people around the world.  While the Council is singularly focused on its anti-Israeli agenda, the world’s most murderous tyrants continue oppressing their people. 

Mr. Chairman,

Since 2006, the Human Rights Council has held a total of 22 special sessions to address dire humanitarian crises throughout the world. Instead of focusing global attention on the world’s worst human rights abusers, 7 of the special sessions have irrationally targeted Israel - a nation that has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect and preserve the lives of civilians.

In the most recent special session, the Council went so far as to pass a resolution establishing a Commission of Inquiry.  The Head of this Commission is a man who has repeatedly called for the prosecution of Israeli leaders.

This same resolution condemned Israel for so-called “human rights violations” in Gaza.  There were 1,725 words in this resolution, but nowhere among those 1,725 words will you find the name of the terror organization that is truly responsible for every civilian death and every human rights violation in both Israel and Gaza: Hamas.

Somehow the Council missed the fact that Israel acted to defend its citizens from thousands of rockets fired by Hamas; the fact that Hamas used tens of thousands of tons of concrete to build a vast underground maze of terror tunnels to kidnap and murder Israelis; and the fact that Hamas is abused its own people by using them as human shields. 

Mr. Chairman,

For all of these reasons, Israel is calling for a vote this morning.

It is time for the UNHRC to set aside its prejudice and finally do something constructive to achieve peace – beginning by abandoning its politically motivated and cynical agenda to target Israel.