Nikki Haley Blasts UN Body’s ‘Chronic Anti-Israel Bias’ Ahead of Israel Visit

Pictured Above: U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley addresses a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in Syria, April 27. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas.

(JNS.org) A day before embarking on her first trip to Israel as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley demanded that the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) address its bias against the Jewish state. 

“It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility,” Haley said Tuesday at the opening of the UNHRC’s 35th session in Geneva.

Prior to addressing the council, Haley published an op-ed in The Washington Post asserting that the UNHRC must “end its practice of wrongly singling out Israel for criticism.”

“When the council passes more than 70 resolutions against Israel, a country with a strong human rights record, and just seven resolutions against Iran, a country with an abysmal human rights record, you know something is seriously wrong,” Haley wrote.

During Tuesday’s UNHRC session, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said the Palestinians were marking “a half-century of deep suffering under an occupation imposed by [Israel’s] military force.”

Hussein added, “Maintain the occupation and for both peoples there will only be a prolongation of immense pain.”

Haley’s reprimand of the UNHRC followed U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s comments Monday, on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Six-Day War, conveying concern about Israel’s “occupation” in the disputed territories.