"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world."
And so begins the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, celebrated every year on Dec. 10, as the International Human Rights Day.
The Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, in the aftermath of World War II and in the wake of the Holocaust.
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Yet, 71 years later, only one member of this human family of nations is systematically denied their inalienable rights and equality before the United Nations. That member, of course, happens to be also the sole Jewish state, Israel.
This institutionalized, disproportionate and systematic bias is evident no more so than at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
The UNHRC was formed in 2006 specifically in order to create a new body to tackle human rights abuses in light of the failures of its discredited predecessor, the UN Human Rights Commission.
The Commission was largely criticized for its one-sided obsession with Israel and the makeup of its members, which included some of the most abusive regimes like, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Cuba. Libya even chaired the Commission during 2003, when it was ruled by Muammar Gaddafi.
Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who passed away recently, said in 2005 that, this contributed to the Commission's "declining credibility," which had "cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole."
Recognizing this grave danger to the very foundation of the United Nations and those most oppressed, Annan was instrumental in establishing the new, reformed UNHRC in 2006.
Hopes were high that this would usher in the dawn of a new era, when the persecuted would finally have a voice and the persecutors shunned, denied their impunity and finally held accountable for their crimes.
It was envisaged that this new reformed Council would finally cast aside its pathological obsession with the State of Israel and focus its attention on the real perpetrators of human rights crimes around the world.
However, thirteen years later, those once-high hopes have been mercilessly dashed.
Not only has the UNHRC failed to improve the UN's reputation or ceased its Israel derangement syndrome, it has entrenched both, continuing to make a complete mockery of its mission, by shielding the world's worst human abusers and denying justice to their victims.
At the outset, one need look no further than the make up of the current UNHRC.
Only this past October, Venezuela, yes Venezuela, one of the most repressive regimes in the world, was elected to the UNHRC. Not even Orwell in his worst nightmare could have envisaged that!
In addition to Venezuela, Libya, Sudan, and Mauritania, which still engage in widespread slave practice, were also elected. In the meantime, current members of the UNHRC, such as Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Qatar, are not exactly great exemplars of freedom and democracy that inspire confidence in their ability to objectively stand up for human rights.
Instead, in this 47-member theatre of absurd, made up largely of a gang of terrorists, tyrants and dictators sit in judgment of Western democracies, their places on the Council guaranteed in back-door deals and secret ballots, with their impunity sealed by membership to this supposedly august body.
As Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, the leading independent organization devoted to monitoring the United Nations has observed, the UNHRC is "where the worst criminals are often the prosecutors and judges."
Then there is the ongoing pathological obsession and relentless hostility against Israel, a beacon of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Israel is of course not above the law, however, the issue is that it has systematically been denied equality before the law, none more so than before the UNHRC.
It is simply an injustice of unfathomable proportion that since the UNHRC was founded in 2006, the Council has adopted 82 one-sided resolutions condemning Israel, while only 136 for the rest of the world combined.
In 2019 alone, Israel was condemned five times, which represents 25% of all resolutions condemning states this year. These same resolutions are routinely and reflexively passed each year, with only the date and resolution number changed. With the exception of a few honorable democratic voices left on the UNHRC, this process goes largely unchallenged.
This egregious bias against Israel is perhaps most enshrined in the nefarious Agenda Item Seven, where Israel is the only country singled out for opprobrium over alleged human rights violations against the Palestinians, whereas the remainder of the world is combined and shoved into solitary other items.
Similarly, the UNHRC also established a "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967." Although the use of Special Rapporteurs is not unique, the mandate of this particular one, "to investigate Israel's violations", and only Israel's is, with the Jewish state already found guilty at the outset. Furthermore, this is the only such mandate not limited in duration, scope or review.
It was only in June last year, that the United States announced it was withdrawing from the UNHRC, citing its "unconscionable" and "chronic" bias against Israel, with Ambassador Nikki Haley saying the Council had become "a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias."
In the past month alone, it is estimated that over 1,000 people have been killed by Iranian regime security forces, while thousands more have been injured and over 7,000 have been detained. Yet how many resolutions, emergency sessions or fact-finding missions have there been into this massacre? Zero. Absolutely nothing.
With the Middle East and so much of the world in flames, the UNHRC insists on singling out the sole Jewish state for opprobrium and turning its back on the world's most egregious human rights abusers. In the meantime, it continues to consistently overlook, excuse, and worse yet, condone Palestinian terror against Israel.
As former Ambassador Nikki Haley noted, "this disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel is clear proof that the council is motivated by political bias, not by human rights."
There is no doubt that the vision of this Council was truly noble. But equally clear, it has become self-evident that it has utterly failed to live up to its own Declaration of Human Rights, in its selective interpretation of the charter and denial to Israel of the inalienable rights afforded to all other nations.
Enough is enough. It is time to create a truly new human rights system, giving a voice to the voiceless and holding the real abusers to account.
