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The US and 21 different international locations issued a harsh rebuke on Monday to the United Nations Human Rights Council after a Fee of Inquiry shaped to probe Israel launched a report final week condemning the Jewish state.
The report — the primary submitted to the Fee of Inquiry (COI) established final yr by the Human Rights Council — blamed Israel’s “persistent discrimination towards Palestinians” for violence between the 2 sides.
“We imagine the character of the COI established final Might is additional demonstration of long-standing, disproportionate consideration given to Israel within the Council and should cease,” US Ambassador Michèle Taylor learn out on the fiftieth session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the place the report was being debated.
“We proceed to imagine that this long-standing disproportionate scrutiny ought to finish, and that the Council ought to deal with all human rights issues, no matter nation, in an even-handed method,” she stated.
“Regrettably, we’re involved that the Fee of Inquiry will additional contribute to the polarization of a scenario about which so many people are involved,” Taylor stated.
Along with the US and Israel, the assertion was signed by Austria, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, Cameroon, Colombia, Croatia, Eswatini, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Liberia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, North Macedonia, Holland, Palau, Togo and the UK.
International Minister Yair Lapid thanked his US counterpart Antony Blinken and all of the international locations that signed on.
“As we speak is a day of change on the Human Rights Council,” Lapid stated. “A day on which morality is overcoming hypocrisy.”
In an 18-page report launched final week centered on root causes of the battle, the COI blamed Israeli “discrimination towards Palestinians” for violence between the 2 sides. The fee took two journeys to analysis the report, one to Geneva and the opposite to Jordan.
Israel has refused to cooperate with the fee and has not granted it entry into Israel or entry to Palestinian-controlled areas within the West Financial institution and Gaza.
Hours after its launch, US State Division spokesman Ned Worth issued an announcement saying that “whereas the US believes the Human Rights Council (HRC) performs an important function in selling respect for human rights and elementary freedoms globally, this COI and report don’t advance this purpose.”
The Biden administration introduced the US again into the HRC final yr after former president Donald Trump withdrew its membership in 2018. Whereas the US has acknowledged the council’s earlier bias towards Israel, Washington argues it’s higher for it to have a seat on the desk the place it may affect HRC selections.
The council voted to ascertain the COI shortly after the Might 2021 Gaza battle. The US condemned the transfer as effectively, saying its “open-ended and vaguely outlined nature… represents a one-sided, biased method that does nothing to advance the prospects for peace.”
The International Ministry dismissed the report as “nothing greater than a waste of cash and energy of the United Nations’ programs, half and parcel of the witch hunt being carried out by the Human Rights Council towards Israel.”
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