US Seeks To Join UN Human Rights Council

All should express outrage at news reports that the United States will seek to join the United Nations Human Rights Council. Obama has decided to change the Bush administration's policy of boycotting the U. N. Human Rights Council. The Director of the Republican Jewish coalition had this to say in explaining why this is deserving of outrage:

The Human Rights Council is an arena in which undemocratic regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Angola, have equal standing with truly free countries such as Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. The Council's record of upholding human rights is abysmal. The Council has failed to address some of the most serious human rights abuses of our time, including those taking place in Darfur. It is especially blind to human rights abuses by its own member countries. On the other hand, the Council is a central venue for the most virulent Israel-bashing. Anne Bayefsky has reported that the Council, "has adopted more condemnations of Israel than all the other 191 U.N. states combined, while terminating human rights investigations on the likes of Iran, Cuba and Belarus. Much of the Council's agenda is at the behest of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the resolutions it submits to the General Assembly are unremittingly anti-Israel and anti-Western. The Bush administration, and other Western governments, have strongly opposed attempts in the Human Council to pass resolutions that would limit the right of free speech in democracies. President Bush understood that there could be no positive result from American participation in an international body so inherently hostile to Israel and so fundamentally incapable of acting in defense of human rights. That President Obama has chosen to reverse American policy on this question is a blow to the U.S.-Israel relationship and a cause for deep concern among American Jews.
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