Kerry Says UN Obsession against Israel Affects Its Credibility
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gestures during a news conference after he delivered remarks to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva March 2, 2015. | Photo: Reuters
The United Nations Human Rights Council has been strongly critical of Israel’s actions against Palestinians.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday criticized the U.N. Human Rights Council in Generva Monday for being allegedly unfair toward Israel, saying that this “obsession” against the Jewish state will undermine the credibility of the international organization.
“It must be said that the UNHRC’s obsession with Israel actually risks undermining the credibility of the entire organization,” said Kerry. “It has the potential to limit the good that we have to do.”
Kerry spent several minutes speaking on the UNHRC's “deeply concerning record on Israel.”
This is the first of several speeches scheduled for Monday that will deal with the U.S. relationship with Israel.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are set to speak in Washington, D.C., to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel lobby organization in the U.S.
At the opening of the 28th session of the UNHRC, Kerry said, “We will oppose any effort by any group or participant in the U.N. system to arbitrarily and regularly delegitimize or isolate Israel, not just at the U.N. Human Rights Council but wherever it occurs.”
He added that, “No one in this room can deny that there is an unbalanced focus on one democratic country … Year after year there are five or six separate resolutions on Israel.”
The UNHRC has been very critical of Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Last summer, the Israeli 50-day bombing campaign killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, of which more than 500 were children. A majority of the dead were civilians.
The disproportionate Israeli attacks on Gaza also left hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced and damaged close to 10,000 buildings. International experts have estimated that the damages were close to US$5 billion.
Tel Aviv has often accused the UNHRC of bias against Israel. Last fall when William Schabas was chosen to chair a commission of inquiry on Gaza, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor said that his appointment was equivalent to inviting the Islamic State group “to chair the U.N.'s World Interfaith Harmony Week.”
Kerry pointed out that the UNHRC in 2015 would consider a Syrian resolution denouncing Israel's actions in the Golan Heights.
“This year there was a resolution sponsored by President [Bashar] Assad concerning the Golan. How? I ask, is that a sensible priority at the very moment when refugees from Syria are flooding into the Golan to escape Assad’s murderous rule and receive treatment from Israeli physicians in Israeli hospitals,” said Kerry.
However, Kerry made no mention of Washington’s intervention in Syria and the fact that the U.S. and its allies are responsible for the creation of various extremist groups in the Middle East that are carrying out serious terrorist attacks and killing thousands of innocent people in Iraq and Syria.
