U.S. threatens abandonment of U.N. rights council

The United States is turning up the heat on the United Nations over its longstanding and well-known bias against Israel with confirmation from Ambassador Nikki Haley that a review is underway of America's participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The U.N. has been under pressure from the U.S. to reform itself since President Trump's election, after years of concerted bias against Israel, the leading advocate for democracy in the Middle East and a key U.S. partner with.

WND reported in April a letter to the U.N., signed by all 100 U.S. senators in rare unanimity, demanded the global body change its behavior toward Israel.

"Too often, the U.N. is exploited as a vehicle for targeting Israel rather than as a forum committed to advancing the lofty goals of its founders," the senators stated. "These actions have at times reinforced the broader scourge of anti-Semitism, and distracted certain U.N. entities from their original missions.

"As both the U.N.'s principal founding member and its largest contributor, the United States should insist on reform. As duly elected representatives of the American people, we take seriously our responsibility to conduct rigorous oversight of U.S. engagement at the United Nations. We are deeply committed to international leadership and to advancing respect for human rights."

A growing movement urging the United States to stop funding the United Nations and even exit the global body includes a petition drive.

Sign the petition to encourage President-elect Donald J. Trump and the Republican Congress to use all available means to encourage allies of the United States and Israel to withdraw from the United Nations and withhold all funding and official recognition from that organization.

Now the London Daily Mail is reporting Haley's comments at the opening of the UNHRC summer session.

She explained the council and its actions are under review.

"The United States is looking carefully at this council and our participation in it," she said. "We see some areas for significant strengthening."

She cited recent resolutions that the U.N. has used to target Israel, pointing out none have been issued against Venezuela, which is sinking deeper into poverty under the dictatorial rule of Nicolas Maduro.

Something should be done right away, she said: Venezuela should forfeit its seat on the council until it gets its "house in order."

Haley, the Daily Mail said, called on the council to adopt "the strongest possible resolutions on the critical human rights situations in Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Belarus and Ukraine."

The leave-the-U.N. campaign includes a call to evict the U.N. from its headquarters in New York City.

The senators' letter, directed to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, followed a statement from Haley declaring, "It is the U.N.'s anti-Israel bias that is long overdue for change."

The letter cited the U.N.'s "standing committees," which sometimes "serve no purpose other than to attack Israel and inspire the anti-Israel boycott."

They must be eliminated or reformed, the senators said.

Then there's UNESCO, which denies "Jewish and Christian connections to Jerusalem."

The senators also criticized the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which perpetuates "troubling anti-Israel bias and activities."

"Most troubling is the United Nations Human Rights Council. Charged with shining a light on gross human rights violations, the UNHRC – whose membership currently includes some of the world's worst human rights violator – instead devotes time to unwarranted attacks against Israel."

The letter explained, "The UNHRC even maintains a permanent time on its agenda ' 'Agenda Item VII' – to assess Israel even as numerous other countries, including some represented on the council, commit egregious human rights abuses."

Check out the plans for this year's WND Israel Tour. There's never been a better year to travel to the homeland of Judaism and Christianity.

The U.S. pays about $3 billion a year to the general fund and more to specific U.N. projects.

It's more than what 185 other countries pay combined.

The petition states, the U.N. "is a clear and present danger to the sovereignty and survival of the United States of America and its close ally, the Jewish state of Israel, despite being all but entirely dependent on American aid."

The United Nations has voted more times to condemn Israel than all the other nations of the world combined. It also adopts procedures and policies to override national law and advocate for abortion. It routinely appoints nations with poor records on human rights, such as Angola and Senegal, to its Security Council. And it threatens Americans' constitutional rights through its Arms Trade Treaty and even parental rights through its Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A petition issued by WND urging the U.S. to cut off funds to the U.N states: "It is outrageous an organization hosted on American soil, protected by American arms, funded by American tax dollars and built upon a global order sustained by the United States seemingly spends all its time attacking America and its ally Israel. It an insult to global decency that Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is continuously targeted with the most outrageous slander and vitriolic attack as the United Nations allows some of the worst tyrannies on the planet to sit in judgment. Finally, as an independent republic, the United States of America has a responsibility to itself and to the world to cease subsidizing an institution which has not only proven hostile to the sovereignty of the United States and the security of Israel, but which has also shown itself to be a breeding ground of anti-Semitism and support for Islamic extremism."

The movement also has caught the attention of the U.N.

WND reported when United Nations officials conceded there has been an atmosphere of "uncertainty" about their future since the global body's latest attack on the sovereignty of Israel.

That's at least partly because Congress has proposed a bill to remove the United States from the U.N. and eliminate the diplomatic immunity its officials now are granted on U.S. shores.

The move to exit the U.N. got some heavyweight support on the "Lou Dobbs Tonight" program on the Fox Business Network. Dobbs was interviewing David Horowitz, author of "Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America," as well as former Trump campaign economic adviser Stephen Moore.

Horowitz said, "I actually hope he [Trump] eventually pulls out of the U.N. and forms an organization that's a true democratic alliance.

"Amen. I love that idea, by the way," Moore added. "And I think we should withdraw from a lot of these international organizations – the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, the World Bank. All of these institutions have been highly anti-American over the years. And I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump didn't do that! He's contemptuous of things like the Paris climate change treaty, and so on. And look, who says we have to live by these rules that these politicians have established for years and years? There's a new sheriff."

Dobbs said: "Good for you, Steve Moore! You're a bomb-thrower, I mean, you have shed the shackles of orthodoxy! I'm so proud of you!"