COALITION FOR JEWISH VALUES CALLS FOR THE US TO QUIT UNHRC
Calls the UN Human Rights Council “a mask for abuse and repression.”

Baltimore, MD, February 27, 2017 — Calling the United Nations Human Rights Council “a mask for abuse and repression,” the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) today called upon the Trump Administration to withdraw the United States from the UNHRC. Media outlets reported over the weekend that the Administration is considering dropping out of and halting funding to the Council.

“The participation of civilized countries in the UNHRC grants international cover to repressive and bigoted regimes,” said Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Director of the CJV. “UNHRC member states claim to be judge and jury of global human rights, while many are among the worst of rights abusers.”

The UNHRC was created in 2006 as a replacement for the UN Commission on Human Rights, which had failed to live up to its mission. Countries with abhorrent human rights records were frequently selected as members and even to chair the Commission, and that body demonstrated an ongoing bias against Israel, even passing a resolution later used by the permanent observer for Palestine to justify terrorism against Israeli civilians.

“The Bush Administration clearly understood how the UN would conduct itself far better than that of Barack Obama,” said Rabbi Aryeh Spero, Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the CJV. “It remains the prime example of why [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu called the UN a ‘moral farce.'”

Correctly predicting that the UNHRC would serve as merely a new façade for another collection of bigotry and disdain for human rights, the Bush administration refused to join the Council or participate financially. Under President Obama, on the other hand, the United States joined the Council immediately.

This change in US policy brought about no substantive reform. The UNHRC pursues an annual agenda item devoted solely to what it cynically terms “Israeli human rights abuses,” while ignoring bloody human rights crises around the world. Most recently, it began to assemble a blacklist of companies — not for companies complicit in human rights abuses, or even the systematic genocide by ISIS against Yazidis, Christians or Shia Muslims in Syria, but against Jewish-owned companies operating in parts of historic Judea once occupied by Jordan.

“The UNHRC has little to do with human rights,” commented Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, also a CJV Senior Rabbinic Fellow, “and everything to do with the pursuit of a prejudiced political agenda. The Council scapegoats the State of Israel in order to divert attention from the glaring atrocities committed routinely by dictatorial regimes — many of which are represented on the UNHRC.” At present, Burundi, China, Cuba, Ghana, Qatar, Rwanda, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia all sit on the Council, arbiters of human rights violations around the globe.

The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), a national organization directed by prominent rabbinic leaders, articulates an authentic Jewish perspective on current events. The CJV begins with the premise that something can legitimately be called a Jewish value only if it comes from the Torah and millennia of Jewish teaching. The CJV promotes traditional Jewish values through writing and teaching derived from authentic Jewish thought.