Following US, Israel says it will halt participation in UN Human Rights Council
FM Gideon Sa’ar accuses UNHRC of ‘protecting human rights abusers’ while ‘demonizing’ Israel and ‘propagating antisemitism’
A day after US President Donald Trump stopped American engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced Wednesday that Israel is following suit.
“Israel joins the United States and will not participate in the UNHRC,” Sa’ar wrote on X.
Neither the US nor Israel are currently members of the UNHRC but, like all United Nations member states, they have informal observer status and a seat in the council meeting chamber.
“The UNHRC has traditionally protected human rights abusers by allowing them to hide from scrutiny, and instead obsessively demonizes the one democracy in the Middle East — Israel,” Sa’ar charged.
“This body has focused on attacking a democratic country and propagating antisemitism, instead of promoting human rights,” he continued.
The minister said that the “discrimination against us is clear” and asserted Israel is the only country “with an agenda item dedicated solely to it.”
He further said that the UNHRC has passed over 100 “condemnatory resolutions” against Israel, a figure amounting to over 20 percent of all the motions ever passed and more than the total combined resolutions against Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.
“Israel will not accept this discrimination any longer!” Sa’ar vowed.
Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the UNHRC and will not resume funding for UNRWA, the agency that provides services to Palestinians across the Middle East. The US already stopped funding UNRWA after it came to light that a handful of the organization’s employees participated in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel that started the war in Gaza.
Further evidence provided by Israel has shown that UNRWA schools glorified terrorism and were in some cases led by terror operatives, and that Hamas and other terror groups have repeatedly used UNRWA infrastructure to plan and carry out attacks against Israel and Israeli troops.
Trump also pulled the US out of the Human Rights Council in June 2018. His then-ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, accused the council of “chronic bias against Israel” and pointed to what she said were human rights abusers among its members.
At the time, Israel said it would also reduce its participation.
After Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, president Joe Biden renewed support for the Human Rights Council and the US won a seat on the 47-nation body in October 2021. However, the Biden administration announced in late September that the United States would not seek a second consecutive term.
Trump’s order on Tuesday has little concrete effect because the United States is already not a council member, said council spokesperson Pascal Sim.
