Two-thirds of Senate pen letter to Blinken demanding US quash UN probe into Israel

Over two-thirds of the US Senate, including lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, have signed a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling on the Biden administration to quash a UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

“This one-sided approach is consistent with UNHRC’s continuing bias against Israel and the disproportionate use of resources in an ongoing campaign to disparage, discredit and denounce Israel,” the lawmakers write in the letter led by Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin and Republican Sen. Rob Portman. The initiative is backed by 31 Democrats and 37 Republicans.

The Biden administration rejoined the UNHCR earlier this year, after former president Donald Trump had withdrawn US membership over what he said was the council’s anti-Israel bias. The current White House has justified the reversal, saying it is unable to influence the international dialogue on human rights when it does not have a seat at the table. Biden officials have insisted that they will use their membership to oppose one-sided measures targeting Israel and spoke out against the 125-8-34 vote to launch the open-ended probe into Israel following last May’s Gaza war.

The only way to quashing the probe after the UNHCR voted to establish the COI and the UN General assembly voted to approve an annual budget of over $4 million would be for the council to adopt a resolution reversing the previous one — a rather unlikely possibility given the overwhelming support for the initiative.

Today’s letter follows a similar one penned in the House that was signed by a more modest 42 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.

AIPAC hails the letter, calling the probe “part of the UN’s broad, decades-long campaign to criminalize and delegitimize the world’s only Jewish state.”