Israel withdraws from UNHRC, following Washington

Israel’s government has halted its engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council after the visit of country’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Washington.

“Israel welcomes President [Donald] Trump’s decision not to participate in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC),” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on platform X. “Israel joins the United States and will not participate in the UNHRC.”

Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the UNHRC and will not resume funding for UNRWA, the agency that provides services to Palestinians across the Middle East. 

Israel’s foreign minister published a note that was sent to the UNHCR with a caption that his country will no longer participate in it. “The "human rights" council has consistently enabled countries that abuse human rights to evade scrutiny, while obsessively pursuing Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel will no longer tolerate the Council's blatant antisemitism. Enough is enough!”

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories said on Thursday that Israel's decision to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council was "extremely serious".

"It shows the hubris and the lack of realisation of what they [Israel] have done. They insist in self-righteousness, that they have nothing to be held accountable for, and they are proving it to the entire international community," Francesca Albanese told Reuters.

Albanese said she feared Israel's "genocide" against the Palestinians would expand and intensify on the West Bank, which Palestinians want along with Gaza as the core of a future independent state.

Israel denies accusations that it is committing genocide and says it is protecting its legitimate security interests in both the West Bank and in Gaza.

"The north (of the West Bank) is being attacked primarily by soldiers. The south has been attacked primarily by (Israeli) settlers, and you can see this as an assault on the Palestinian people as a whole," Albanese said.

The human rights organization, Amnesty International, in its report entitled ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, claims Israel's actions, such as indiscriminate airstrikes and treating Palestinians as “disposable,” have been conducted with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.

The Amnesty International reported about over 42,000 deaths, including 13,300 children, and widespread destruction.

Responding to the report, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry denied the accusations, with a post on X that describes it as a “fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies." He recalled "The genocidal massacre on October 7, 2023, was carried out by the Hamas terrorist organisation against Israeli citizens."

Copied