​The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) has a real, biased treatment of issues relating to Israel. The light it shines on the Jewish state is particularly lopsided in comparison with talk and action on actual pressing international human rights tragedies such as those in Syria, Yemen, Iran and Sudan.
 
The permanent agenda of the HRC includes a specific item targeting Israel—Agenda Item 7—titled: “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.”
 
Israel is the only country on earth that has been singled out and it is the only country to appear on the HRC’s permanent agenda. A number of other countries notorious for their human rights abuses are included as part of the general debate, if they are mentioned at all.
 
The HRC doesn’t even meet its own standards for judging human rights issues. Saudi Arabia, for example, now heads a key HRC panel that selects top officials who shape international human rights standards and report on violations. Additionally the U.N. committee that credentials NGOs and human rights groups includes serial human rights abuser Iran.
 
The HRC also has among its elected members human rights abusers like Qatar and Venezuela, but the singling out is exclusive for Israel.
 
At the end of September the HRC devoted a whole session to Item 7—meaning a meeting was called with the sole purpose of blasting Israel.

The Syrian delegate said that his country “is concerned” about the situation in “Palestine and other occupied territories.” But no country at the HRC stood up to ask Syria if the world should be seriously concerned about the millions of refugees and thousands of killings that have resulted from four years of civil war. In Syria, there isn’t a shred of respect for human rights to be found in any corner of the country. But the HRC is such a sham that it opens the floor for human rights violators, rather than doing something to stop them.
 
In this context of hypocrisy, several South American countries had the floor during the aforementioned Israel bashing session.
 
Perpetual demonizers of Israel like Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba, and democracies like Chile, Brazil and Uruguay, also blasted Israel.
 
Overall the session was, as usual, shameful. There were long hours full of rhetoric mixed with vitriol and incitement against Israel, singled out by the infamous Item 7.
 
What has happened two weeks later when Palestinian terrorists have already killed seven Israeli civilians and wounded about 30, by stabbing and shooting men, women and children?
 
Has the HRC called for an urgent meeting? Of course not.
 
Which country has publicly condemned the wave of terror created by incitement coming from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority? Among South American countries, only one: Uruguay.
 
The Uruguayan government not only condemned the wave of terror against Israeli civilians, but also condemned “those who praise as heroic, murder and killing”
 
Among HRC and the United Nations itself, Uruguay has been a courageous voice in the desert.
 
In the particular situation that Israel is living today, under the terrorist attacks, general silence has been the pattern
 
Democracies should be unified in fighting for freedom and respect for human rights. Unfortunately this is not the rule in most South American countries when it comes to Israel.
 
It is a slap to history and a tradition of friendship between South America and Israel, which started in 1948, and has been sadly reversing in the last decade.