Congressional Resolution Demands US Boycott and Defund Anti-Israel UN Body
A South Carolina congressman is spearheading an effort to defund the United Nation’s Human Rights Council due to its virulent anti-Israel bias.
Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, who is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is circulating a resolution among lawmakers calling on the UNHRC to adopt significant reforms or face loss of funding from the United States, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The resolution stipulates if the UNHRC continues to target Israel, the United States could remove itself from the council and cut off its $23 million contributions.
“My view is it is so off base that we should make every effort to reform it or withdraw” from the organization, Wilson told the Free Beacon.
Last year, the UNHRC declared the Jewish State the top human rights violator in the world, according to Fox News.
During the 2016-2017 session, the body issued 78 resolutions and decisions against Israel versus 29 against Syria, nine against North Korea, and six against Iran.
“The American people need to know this particular council has incredibly condemned Israel 78 times and North Korea nine times and has never condemned the authoritarian conduct of China or Russia,” Wilson said. “It has targeted Israel more than any other country.”
Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, offered, “Think of it this way: 500,000 dead in Syria, forced starvation and mass torture in North Korea, systematic and lethal oppression in Iran, gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia, and an elementary lack of basic freedoms affecting over a billion in Russia and China, but at the U.N. Human Rights Council, little democratic Israel is the problem.”
The Bush administration declined to join UNHRC when it was formed in 2006, but two months after Barack Obama took office in 2009, he directed the United State to become part of the body.
In January of this year, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley took the council to task for seeking to create a blacklist database of companies that do business in Israeli settlements, calling the initiative a “waste of time and resources.”
She charged that the UNHRC has an “anti-Israel obsession.”
“The more the Human Rights Council does this, the less effective it becomes as an advocate against the world’s human rights abusers,” Haley said. “The United States will continue to aggressively push back against the anti-Israel bias, and advance badly needed reforms of the Council.”
The U.N. Dispatch reported the newly released Trump budget calls for cuts in U.S. funding to the United Nations.
The budget zeroes out funding to UNICEF, flatlines payment for U.N. peacekeeping operations, and lowers the amount of increase for in general budget for the upcoming fiscal year and signals a reduction overall in coming years.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
