Wednesday in Geneva during the current session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Obama administration became a willing participant in the U.N.'s imposition of an apartheid-style ban on representatives of the state of Israel. Despite the promises made by the administration that by joining the Council the United States would not become part of the problem, U.S. Ambassador to the Council Eileen Donahoe chose to attend and fully participate in a meeting that deliberately excluded anyone representing the Jewish state.
Israel is the only U.N. state not permitted to be a full member of any of the U.N.'s five regional groups. Throughout the Human Rights Council sessions, these groups hold key planning meetings in which countries negotiate and share important information behind closed doors. Even the Palestinian Authority, though not a state, is permitted into the Asian regional group. Israelis are allowed into the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) in some parts of the U.N. But WEOG members have chosen to exclude them totally in all of their meetings associated with the Human Rights Council.
Rather than refusing to participate until such outrageous discrimination comes to an end, Obama administration representatives walked through the door slammed in the face of Israelis and made themselves comfortable.
While Israelis are left standing in the hall during the Council's regional group meetings, this week for the first time Libya took its seat as a full-fledged Council member. Other full voting members of the U.N.'s lead human rights body include such model citizens as Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, Russia and Kyrgyzstan.
Joining the Human Rights Council was one of President Obama's first foreign policy decisions. He knew then – what is still true today – that the Council has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning the state of Israel than all other 191 U.N. members combined....
But rather than refusing to lend legitimacy to a body with a deeply entrenched bias, the president chose to join and direct U.S. taxpayer dollars its way, claiming that he would be the Council's great reformer.
On Monday, writing in The New York Times, Ambassador Donahoe repeated the claim that U.S. engagement filled “a vacuum of leadership” and alleged that “the council is engaged in a serious self-reflection exercise...”
On the very same day as Donahoe's op-ed appeared, the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) put the president in his place....
