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That it is Donald Trump who has pulled the US out of the UN Human Rights Commission does not make it wrong.
Indeed, far from being a mistake, this is a sensible and important move because the UNHRC has long debased the very notion of human rights.
It exculpates dictatorships and tyrannies while condemning — almost to the exclusion of everywhere else — democratic Israel. Over the past decade, the UNHRC has not issued a single condemnation of China, Cuba, Russia, Somalia, Turkey, Venezuela, Yemen or Zimbabwe. But it has issued 68 condemnations of Israel.
Let’s not beat around the bush here: the UNHRC is an institutionally antisemitic body. The behaviour of its members, including such luminaries of human rights as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, DR Congo and Venezuela, shows that the UNHRC has only two purposes: to attack the world’s only Jewish state and to stop any criticism of their own human rights abuses.
As Ken Roth — no friend of Israel — of Human Rights Watch has put it: “Imagine a jury that includes murderers and rapists, or a police force run by murderers and rapists, who are determined to stymie investigation of their crimes.”
The US has been criticised on the grounds that it is better to stay in and fight for sanity rather than walk away. But this — which is the British position — is a ridiculous argument. The US has been a member of the UNHRC throughout the past decade, and its membership has made not the least difference to the organisation’s behaviour.
The UNHRC is a foul, bigoted and illegitimate body and the US should be commended for leaving it.