7 Fall 2026 The second example of anti-Jewishness marching under the banner of human rights has taken place throughout the life of the United Nations Human Rights Commission and continuing thereafter with its successor, the UN Human Rights Council. The UN Human Rights Council not only has emerged as a centerpiece of international human rights expression today, but, in all its configurations — it exerts an enormous influence on all those engaging with it: the large class of UN civil servants; member governments; member delegations; and members of parliaments around the world, for whom the UN is an organizing idiom of their foreign policy. There is also the critical mass of people who are exposed to and influenced by UN human rights decision-making internationally. Students and scholars who learn the “jurisprudence” of the UN Human Rights Commission as part of their studies and their intellectual experience; and the media who report it, are also influenced by it. At the UN Human Rights Council, the annual Session begins with Israel being the only country that is singled out for a country-specific indictment even before the deliberations begin — in breach of the UN’s own procedures and principles — an “Alice in Wonderland” situation where the conviction and sentence are pronounced even before the hearing begins. Moreover, some 30% of all the resolutions passed at the UN Human Rights Commission and its successor, the UN Human Rights Council over the past 50 years have been indictments of Israel. Among the resolutions adopted — as, for example, at the 2002 Session which convened amidst the zenith of anti-Jewish terror —were resolutions that indicted Israel for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide — language right out of the Nuremberg indictments for the very victims of Nuremberg. And while Israel has annually been the target of some five indictments, no other state has been the object of more than one resolution or indictment, while the major human rights violators – Iran, China, Sudan – enjoy exculpatory immunity. Indeed, in the antiterrorism debate that took place at the UN in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Arab states and their supporters opposed any attempt to classify “resistance” as terrorism, thereby appropriating the Durban rhetoric of the de-legitimization of Israel, on the one hand, and the legitimization of terrorism as “resistance” against Israel, on the other. Yet, in a not-so-subtle reference to Israel, the UN Human Rights Commission astonishingly passed a resolution in 2002 justifying the use of “resistance by all available means” in instances of colonialism, foreign occupation, and the like, which has been taken to validate, then and since, anti-Jewish terror against Israeli civilians. Accordingly, it was a hopeful sign when a reform panel of eminent persons appointed by the Secretary-General referred to the Commission’s eroding credibility and professionalism. The Commission was replaced in June 2006 by the newly renewed UN Human Rights Council and heralded as “the dawn of a new era.” But as UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer put it, “The Council […] devoted one hundred percent of its country-specific resolutions, two special sessions, one factfinding mission, and a ‘high level commission of inquiry’ to one single purpose: the demonization of Israel.” These two case studies are not the only examples of the international “legal” character of the new antisemitism. An entire book can be devoted to the systematic, if not systemic, denial to Israel and the Jewish People of equality before the law, and international due process, in the international arena, including the following additional case studies, herewith abbreviated for space considerations: n The annual ritual of some twenty resolutions — indictments — of Israel at the UN General Assembly. Indeed, there are more indictments against one state than all the resolutions passed against the other 190 members of the United Nations combined — an appalling example of the singling-out of Israel for differential and discriminatory treatment in the international arena. n The annual obsessive preoccupation with Israel by the UN Security Council – the authoritative UN standardsetting body on international law. A case study is the UN Security Council meeting continuously for three months, from April to June 2002, to discuss what turned out to be a false libel accusing Israel of a “massacre” in Jenin, while the major human rights violations of that period — the killing fields in the Congo, Darfur, and elsewhere — went unaddressed, let alone unacknowledged. n The conversion of refugee camps under UNRWA’s management of refugee camps into bases and sanctuaries of incitement and terror in breach of fundamental principles of international humanitarian and refugee law. n Procedural anti-Jewishness, as in the denial of international due process to Israel and the Jewish People in the international arena. I am referring to the disenfranchisement of Israel — where, for example, Israel emerges as the only country that is denied “standing” because it is not a full-fledged member of the five regional grouping
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