FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MONDAY, 18 MARCH 2019

The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem on Monday (18/03) denounced the United Nations Human Rights Council for its deplorable fixation on Israel as evidenced in today’s special session solely dedicated to unfairly condemning the Jewish state for acting to defend its citizens from constant threats of terror and violence.

“The UN Human Rights Council has undermined the cause of peace and brought discredit upon itself by once again yielding to the relentless campaign to delegitimize Israel,” said ICEJ President Dr. Jürgen Bühler. “It is blatantly discriminatory to permanently single out one nation and subject it to the hounding which Israel faced today in the Agenda Item 7 deliberations. We join with those moral and sane voices calling for this obsessive targeting of Israel to stop.”

Dr. Bühler also sent a letter today to Coly Seck, President of the UN Human Rights Council, and to Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, urging them to halt the compiling and publication of a UN ‘database’ clearly intended to serve as a blacklist of companies doing business in the Israeli settlements. [See attached copies]

In the letter, Dr. Bühler decried the UN blacklist initiative as an “unprecedented” action by the UNHRC “to encourage and facilitate boycotts and economic sanctions” against private companies. He added that the UNHRC decision to focus only on the Israeli settlements while ignoring other clear cases of illegal occupation was a “gross violation of its mandate to preserve on a universal basis human rights ‘for all people.’”

Dr. Bühler concluded his letter: “In essence, the UN Human Rights Council has allowed itself to be exploited by anti-Israel governments and NGOs to circumvent the UN Security Council and to assist them in accomplishing the delegitimization and eventual eradication of the Jewish State via other channels. We call upon you to reverse course and abandon this spiteful and misguided initiative.”

The Christian Embassy also has activated a number of its branches located in key nations which are members of the UNHRC to press their governments to halt this UN blacklisting effort. This includes Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Fiji, Hungary, Italy, Philippines Slovakia, South Africa and Ukraine.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact:

David Parsons
Vice President & Senior International Spokesman
International Christian Embassy Jerusalem
P.O. Box 1192 | Jerusalem, Israel 9101002
M: +972 52 381 6214 | E: david.parsons@icej.org
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