AJC Ad in Wall Street Journal on Unjust UN Human Rights Council Treatment of Israel

NEW YORK, Sept. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- In a full-page ad in today's Wall Street Journal, AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization, calls on world leaders to end the structural bias against Israel at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

"The singular and decades-long focus on Israel has undermined the noble UN mission," said AJC CEO David Harris. "In the case of human rights, this obsession with Israel has tragically served to ignore or sideline the plight of countless genuine victims of abuse by governments rarely, if ever, condemned, by the Human Rights Council."

The AJC ad, "How the UN Human Rights Council Divides the World," appears as presidents, prime ministers, and other top leaders from around the world have gathered for the first day of the UN General Assembly general debate.

The ad graphically lines up 192 UN member states on the left-hand side of the page and Israel alone on the right-hand side. This stark division is exactly how Israel is treated in the UN system, especially at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.

Astonishingly, and defying all logic and truth, the Council has issued far more condemnations of Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, than of any of the other 192 UN member states.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, quoted in the AJC ad, has emphasized this discrimination at the Human Rights Council. "No other country – not Iran, not Syria, not North Korea – has an agenda item devoted solely to it. Agenda Item 7 is not directed at anything Israel does. It is directed at the very existence of Israel," Ambassador Haley has declared.

"The UN has defaulted on its founding commitment to the 'sovereign equality' of all member states," states the AJC ad, which provides a link to www.UNjustUN.org, detailing how Israel is shamefully treated differently than all other UN member states and to take action.

AJC has been involved with the UN since the founding conference, in San Francisco, in 1945. Historians credit AJC leaders with having successfully advocated for the inclusion of human rights protections in the UN Charter.

In a unique annual tradition since 1991, AJC is meeting privately with more than 70 presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers currently attending the opening of this year's UN General Assembly.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org