HRC keeps clause dedicated to Israel

YNet News (Link) - Yitzhak Benhorin (June 17, 2011)

Israel demanded Friday a UN vote and called on members to vote against a Human Rights Council agenda for the next five years, which will keep Israel as the only permanent state to be targeted out of 192 member-states.

The agenda in its current form ensures a continuing and skewed focus on Israel while ignoring other dictatorships and blatant human rights violations.

Israel requested a vote in order to prevent the automatic approval by the UN General Assembly, and in order to allow the state to express its objections.

The US, Canada, and Palau are the only countries that joined Israel in objecting to the agenda, which passed with an automatic approval of 154 states.

Ron Prosor, who just days ago officially assumed the position of Israel�s UN ambassador, told Ynet the agenda was absurd.

�These days, as Assad slaughters his citizens, Gaddafi murders his countrymen, and in Yemen people are being gunned down in the street, The Human Rights Council is dedicating a special clause to the issue of human rights in Israel,� he said.

�It is utter insolence that tyrannical regimes are judging Israel, the only democratic country in the Middle East, with a dignified court system.�

Prosor added, �The Human Rights Council has missed a golden opportunity to become an international body that the global community can treat with respect and seriousness.�

The five-year agenda dedicates a clause number seven to Israel while all other countries in the world � including Yemen, Syria, and Libya � are united under clause four, which describes human rights violations in the entire world.

The Human Rights Council was established in 2006 and replaced the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), which lost its reliability, partly due to its disproportionate treatment towards Israel.

Israel was hoping the HRC would make more objective decisions and the US negotiated extensively to this end, but apparently to no avail. Since its establishment, the HRC has met 17 times, 14 of which meetings concluded in anti-Israel resolutions.

Israel has also made numerous attempts to change the HRC�s agenda over the past five years, but the council is within complete control of a number of nations which are themselves human rights violators. Libya was, until March, also a member. �