The World Jewish Congress maintains its vehement opposition to the publication of a contentious United Nations Human Right Council database naming 112 entities believed to have business activities in Israeli settlements. Ninety-four of these companies are based in Israel, with the remaining 18 in six other countries.
In publishing this tendentious blacklist, the UN Human Rights Council has made it clear to the world that its priorities are indeed driven by political, rather than humane, motivations. There should be no doubt that the primary aim of this list is to condemn Israel, point blank, at the expense of the many countries and territories across the world in which the Council allows gross violations of human rights to continue without significant penalty or censure.
The publication of this database is unquestionably beyond the mandate of this Council and its mission of protecting and promoting human rights for all citizens of this world and will only serve to crystalize tensions on all sides in its unwelcome interference in efforts to advance peace and coexistence. This database also adds to a very real and dangerous risk of Jewish communities around the world being targeted for violence amid fueled antisemitic incitement, granting legitimacy and support to a broken process that promotes a double standard of boycott, divestment, isolation, and exclusion. Moreover, this list directly infringes on the privacy of these companies, their clients and their partners, forcing an unsolicited political hand against those merely trying to run a business.
It is devastating, yet wholly unsurprising, that the UNHRC has succumbed again to political manipulation and pushed the Office of the High Commissioner to allow a blatant and prevailing anti-Israel bias to determine its strategic process. This discriminatory trend at the UN must stop now. Over the last seven years alone, the UN General Assembly has adopted 202 resolutions condemning countries around the world. Of those, Israel was condemned 163 times, and the rest of the world, only 39. The absurdity of these figures should speak for themselves and ring the alarm for anybody who believes that the resolutions are based on fair and objective criteria. It is open season again at the UN for unwarranted scrutiny and defamation.
The WJC urges all members of the international community who are committed to human rights to stand with us in opposing this list and call on the companies that have been named and shamed by this Council, and the states specifically concerned, to publicly condemn the publication and disassociate themselves from this outrageous database.
