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http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=131... :
Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch said this: “Imagine a jury that includes murderers and rapists, or a police force run in large part by suspected murderers and rapists who are determined to stymie investigation of their crimes.” That was said in 2001 about the old commission, but it applies even more today.
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Apart from a handful of exceptions, such as resolutions on Burma and North Korea that were inherited from the old commission, the council has systematically turned a blind eye to the world’s worst human rights violations. The council has failed the victims who are most in need of international attention.
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The council has utterly failed to respect its promise of objectivity, non-selectivity and impartiality. Nowhere is this more blatant than in the council’s pathological obsession with Israel. Examples abound.
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Resolutions: In the five years of its existence, the council has adopted 35 condemnatory resolutions on Israel, and little over a dozen for the rest of the world combined. That translates into roughly 70 percent of the council’s moral outrage being deployed to demonize and delegitimize the only democracy in the Middle East. All of these resolutions on Israel have been one-sided condemnations that grant impunity to Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, and to their state sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Special Sessions: A feature of the new council is that emergency sessions can be triggered by only 16 members. Proponents said that this would allow the council to respond in real time to grave violations. Instead, out of the ten special sessions that criticized countries, six were on Israel, with four for the rest of the world combined.
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Fact Finding Missions: There have been five fact-finding missions or inquiries—all of them on Israel.[2] The most notorious example is the Goldstone Report, a travesty of justice that excoriated Israel and exonerated Hamas. This was not surprising given that the mission had a mandate with a predetermined verdict, and members who declared Israel guilty in advance. We congratulate you, Chairman Ros-Lehtinen and Ranking Member Berman, for leading the House in censuring this distorted report.
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On several occasions, the council has appointed experts who distort human rights. One example is the council’s Advisory Committee. Members include Halima Warzazi, who in 1988 shielded Saddam Hussein from being censured after he gassed Kurds in Halabja; Jean Ziegler, who co-founded the “Muammar Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights”; and Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, who has embraced the murderous rulers of Iran and Sudan.One of the council’s most quoted experts is Richard Falk, whose permanent, one-sided mandate is to report on “Israel’s violation of the principles and bases of international law.” As he did again this month, Mr. Falk has repeatedly called into question the fact that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were indeed terrorist attacks. Instead he calls for exploring the possibility that 9/11 was an “inside job” carried out by the U.S. government. Mr. Falk wrote the forward for, and strongly endorses, The New Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 conspiracy tract by David Ray Griffin. UN Watch has called on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn Mr. Falk’s comments, and to remove him from his post.
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The council has often undermined basic principles of human rights. For example, under the sponsorship of the Islamic states, annual resolutions restrict freedom of speech in the name of prohibiting “defamation of religion.” One effect is to legitimize anti-blasphemy laws in countries like Pakistan, under which a Christian woman was recently condemned to death for allegedly insulting the prophet Mohammed.
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Another issue that has been distorted by the council is racism. Contrary to all logic and morality, it elected Libya—a murderous regime that, as documented by the New York Times, systematically persecutes two million black African migrants—to head both the planning and main committees of the “Durban II” world conference on racism in 2009.
In this regard, we deeply regret that the U.N. recently decided to hold a summit this September in New York, to commemorate the tenth anniversary the 2001 Durban conference, already known as “Durban III.” In explaining the U.S. decision to oppose this resolution, Ambassador Susan Rice said, “the Durban Declaration process has included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and we do not want to see that commemorated.” We agree.
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In conclusion, it is clear that, according to the U.N.’s own standards, the promises of the council’s founding resolution—improved membership, action for victims, an end to politicization and selectivity—have not been kept. Sadly, every one of Kofi Annan’s criticisms of the old commission apply equally to the new council.
I encourage everyone to read the full text of this address by Hillel Neuer, a real defender of Human Rights.