Israel: UN Council on Settlements Is Biased
A U.N. Human Rights Council mission on West Bank settlements is “flawed and biased,” Israel said Friday, accusing the rights body of corruption for again singling out the Jewish state while “systematically ignoring massive human rights violations” elsewhere.
The U.N.’s top human rights body appointed three officials Friday afternoon to conduct a fact-finding mission on how Israel’s West Bank settlements affect the lives of Palestinians. The Council president, Uruguay Ambassador Laura Dupuy Lasserre, named three women to the panel: Christine Chanet of France, Unity Dow of Botswana and Asma Jahangir of Pakistan. Dupuy Lasserre said their mission will be to look how the Israeli settlements impact “the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people.”
Israel called the action “flawed and biased” and said it will not cooperate with the mission.
“The mission’s existence embodies the inherent distortion that typifies the UNHRC treatment of Israel and the hijacking of the important human rights agenda by non-democratic countries,” Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.
The UN Human Rights Council, that has a large representation of Arab and Muslim regimes, has long been criticized for heavily focusing on Israel while doing little regarding places where people suffer from serious state violations of their human rights.