World

Report: Trump Walking Out On UN’s Human Rights Council

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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President Donald Trump’s administration is walking out of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) — whose membership includes many states notorious for routinely violating human rights.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, citing senior administration officials, the new administration isn’t prepared to play along with the council’s chronic efforts to undermine Israel and will be bolting on Monday.

UNHRC is expected to pass five more anti-Israel resolutions on Monday, an action that apparently precipitated the Trump administration’s determination to boycott today’s meeting, say the sources attributed by the Free Beacon.

Anti-Israel motions are common at the UN and a representative from Jordan just resigned after his efforts to promote an anti-Israeli platform were blocked by the United States and others.

The Trump officials called the boycott just part of an overall strategy by U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley to try and change the UN to make it less of an enclave for dictators and a mouthpiece for anti-Zionist propaganda.

Monday’s agenda for UNHRC includes an investigation into the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” A host of anti-Israel motions are expected to accompany that exercise — all of which the Trump administration opposes. Israel is the nation that is the target of specific agenda items.

According to the sources, Haley and other senior administration officials are committed to boycotting the human rights council until it ceases to be an organ to attack Israel, at which point the U.S. might rejoin the group.

“The argument that the U.S. has to participate in bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council or risk losing our influence over it is ridiculous,” one senior administration official told the Free Beacon. “The UNHRC is, like its predecessor, morally bankrupt and the only good news is that its actions have little practical effect in the real world. We’ve wasted enough time and money on it.”

The resolve of the new administration to strike a chord of loyalty to Israel, is in direct opposition to the signals sent by the previous Obama administration in its dying weeks as it actively worked towards the promulgation and acceptance of an anti-Israel resolution, actions that both shocked and outraged Israel — and then Trump, who indicated on social media that it wouldn’t happen again after his inauguration.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has also reiterated the administration’s loss of patience with UNHCR and its desire to disengage from the organization until it no longer serves as a vehicle of anti-Israeli rhetoric.

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