USA TO BOYCOTT DEBATES, CONDUCTED AS PART OF PERMANENT UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL AGENDA, ITEM THAT SINGLES OUT ISRAEL:

The USA will boycott deliberations conducted within the framework of a permanent UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) agenda item that singles out Israel, the Trump administration announced on 20 March, 2017. The news came as the UNHRC was set to weigh a slew of anti-Israel resolutions this week at its Geneva, Switzerland headquarters. "While we are making some progress on reversing the anti-Israel bias at the UN in New York, regrettably, today in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council begins debate on the only country permanently on the body’s calendar,” American UN envoy Nikki Haley said on Monday 20 March. "It is not Syria, where the regime has systematically slaughtered and tortured its own people. It is not Iran, where public hangings are a regular occurrence. It is not North Korea, where the regime uses forced labor camps to crush its people into submission. It is Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. The so-called ‘Agenda Item 7’ discredits the standing of the only UN body specifically designed to address the state of global human rights by allowing nations to distract from their own abuses back home by churning out anti-Israel propaganda,”

Haley further noted. "As a result, the United States will not participate in discussions under Agenda Item 7 at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, other than to vote against the outrageous, one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions that so diminish what the Human Rights Council should be, and we encourage other council members who purport to be defenders of human rights to do the same.” State Department spokesman Mark Toner earlier on Monday said, "The United States strongly and unequivocally opposes the existence of the UN Human Rights Council’s Agenda Item Seven: ‘Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.’ Today’s actions in the council are yet another reminder of that body’s long-standing bias against Israel. No other nation has an entire agenda item dedicated to it at the council. The continued existence of this agenda item is among the largest threats to the credibility of the council.” Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely tweeted at Haley on Monday, "I welcome USA determined position against UNHRC’s bias towards Israel. Today’s decision is an important step to change this bias.” (Algemeiner) Pray the UNHRC will be broken of its obsessive anti-Israel bias and pattern of targeting the Jewish state with its bigoted charges and resolutions. Pray that the focus will be turned to the true violators of human rights such as Syria, Iran and N. Korea. "Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." Isa 1:17