Nikki Haley Slams Human Rights Council as ‘Greatest Failure’ of the UN
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday the United Nations' Human Rights Council is the "greatest failure" of the international organization given its continued support to dictatorial regimes and entrenched bias against Israel.
"The Human Rights Council has provided cover, not condemnation, for the world's most inhumane regimes," Haley said in remarks at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
"It has been a bully pulpit for human rights violators. The Human Rights Council has been not a place of conscious, but a place of politics. It has focused its attention unfairly and relentlessly on Israel. Meanwhile, it has ignored the misery inflicted by regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and China."
Haley doubled down on the Trump administration's decision last month to withdraw the United States from the council amid what she viewed as a "chronic" anti-Israel bias that led to over 68 condemnations of the Jewish state over a 10-year period versus just six for Iran. She also accused the council of allowing notorious human rights abusers as members.
She cited the council's acceptance of the Democratic Republic of Congo as a member in October even as mass graves were being uncovered there, and its unwillingness to confront habitual human rights abuses in Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela.
She said American participation was the "last shred of credibility" the council had.
"It has taken the idea of human dignity—the idea that's at the center of our national creed and the birthright of every human being—and it has reduced it to just another instrument of international politics and that is a great tragedy," Haley said.
.@NikkiHaley rips @Amnesty & @KenRoth's Human Rights Watch for siding with #Russia & #China in opposing reform of corrupt #UNHRC. Opposition "comes from their institutional comforts. They have big staffs & lots of relationships with UN bureaucracy. Change is threatening to them." pic.twitter.com/gHUo2TsS3q
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) July 18, 2018
Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Iran Supports Palestinian Terror Groups
The Iranian general did not offer to build the Palestinians a hospital or a school. Nor did he offer to provide financial aid to create projects that would give jobs to unemployed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. His message to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: Iran will give you as much money and weapons as you need as long as you are committed to the jihad (holy war) against Israel and the "big Satan," the US.Employee of European NGO caught puncturing Israeli’s tire in Hebron
The same Hamas that is telling UN representatives that it wants to improve the living conditions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is the one that is reaching out its hand to Iran to receive funds and weapons.
Now, someone needs to step in and stop Iran from setting foot in the Gaza Strip and using the Palestinians as cannon fodder in Tehran's campaign against the US and Israel. How might someone do that? It is not so complicated. Any international aid to the Gaza Strip must be conditioned on ending Iran's destructive effort to recruit Palestinians groups as its soldiers. It is that simple.
An employee of a European pro-Palestinian NGO called Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was filmed puncturing the tire of a vehicle that belongs to a Jewish resident of Hebron, according to a police report.
A nearby security camera in the area captured the incident last year. The footage was subsequently turned over to the district police, which determined that a TIPH activist in uniform emerged from a vehicle emblazoned with the organization’s markings and proceeded to puncture one of the vehicle’s tires.
According to Haaretz, the police report described the entire incident, which included two accomplices standing watch as the suspect damaged the vehicle, which belonged to a Jewish resident of Hebron named Nili Dvorah.
Dvorah explained to the police that the incident represented the third time her car’s tires had been punctured in a one week period.
TIPH operates in the Hebron area and is staffed by individuals from Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey who “enjoy diplomatic immunity” and “cannot be detained or arrested,” according to the organization’s website.
Last Friday, a TIPH “observer” was caught on video slapping a 10-year-old Jewish resident of Hebron so hard that he knocked the boy’s skullcap off of his head.