Holland on Wednesday slammed the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) “unacceptable and disproportionate singling out of Israel” and it’s notorious the permanent Agenda Item 7.
Agenda Item 7 requires the body to discuss alleged Israeli human rights violations at every UNHRC session and it is utilized to condemn the Jewish state regularly.
Speaking at the 42nd Session of the UNHRC in Geneva, Dutch representative Bahia Tahzib-Lie stated that “we must apply objective criteria when assessing country situations.”
Holland considers Agenda Item 7 “a historic anomaly, resulting in an unacceptable and disproportionate singling out of Israel. This has been the position of the Netherlands for years,” she stated.
Assailing the body’s general conduct, she said that “there is also room to improve the quality and universality of the Council’s membership. HRC members ought to live up to the highest human rights standards.”
Holland’s Foreign Minister Stef Blok stated that Israel is “treated by the Human Rights Council in an unacceptable and disproportionate way. The Netherlands has been saying this for years.”
He demanded that all countries be measured by the same “yardstick.”
Responding to the Dutch statements, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said that the Jewish state “value[s] the Netherlands’ rejection of the disproportionate singling out of Israel at the UNHRC.”
“Agenda item 7 is indeed a historic mistake, reflecting the UNHRC’s structural bias against Israel,” he added.
Israel has long complained about the UNHRC’s bias against the country. Israeli leaders and officials have cited the UNHRC for its “obsessive hostility” toward Israel and “one-sided mandate.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2018 suggested that it was time for the UNHRC “to change the name to ‘The Council for resolutions against the only democracy in the Middle East.’”
Remarking on the infamous Agenda Item 7 in July 2018, then US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley noted that “this is the permanent part of the Human Rights Council agenda that is devoted exclusively to Israel. No other country – not Iran, not Syria, not North Korea – has an agenda item devoted solely to it.”
“Agenda Item 7 is not directed at anything Israel does. It is directed at the very existence of Israel,” she charged. “It is a blazing red siren signaling the Human Rights Council’s political corruption and moral bankruptcy.”
The US subsequently withdrew from the UNHRC.
Over the past decade, the UNHRC has passed dozens of resolutions condemning Israel. The world’s worst human rights abusers in Syria, Iran, and North Korea received far fewer condemnations collectively.