Israel and the United Nations Human Rights Council - the BBC's reporting vs the truth

The BBC report this morning that:

'Israel has cut working relations with the UN Human Rights Council, officials say, after it decided to investigate Jewish settlements in the West Bank.'

I think that some background to the United Nations Human Rights Council and Israel is required.

'As of 2010, Israel had been condemned in 32 resolutions by the Council since its creation in 2006. The 32 resolutions comprised 48.1% of all resolutions passed by the Council. By April 2007, the Council had passed nine resolutions condemning Israel, the only country which it had specifically condemned. Toward Sudan, a country with human rights abuses as documented by the Council's working groups, it has expressed "deep concern.".

The council voted on 30 June 2006 to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every council session. The Council's special rapporteur on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is its only expert mandate with no year of expiry. The resolution, which was sponsored by Organisation of the Islamic Conference, passed by a vote of 29 to 12 with five abstentions. Human Rights Watch urged it to look at international human rights and humanitarian law violations committed by Palestinian armed groups as well. Human Rights Watch called on the Council to avoid the selectivity that discredited its predecessor and urged it to hold special sessions on other urgent situations, such as that in Darfur.

The Special Rapporteur on the question of Palestine to the previous UNCHR, the current UNHRC and the General Assembly was, between 2001 and 2008, John Dugard. Bayefski quotes him as saying that his mandate is to "investigate human rights violations by Israel only, not by Palestinians". Dugard was replaced in 2008 with Richard Falk, who has compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians with the Nazis' treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Like his predecessor, Falk's mandate only covers Israel’s human rights record.'

So the UNHRC is hardly an unbiased organisation is it? And why should any country take lessons on Human Rights from an organisation whose members at the moment include such supporters of human rights as Saudi Arabia who the BBC report elsewhere today thus:

'In Saudi Arabia, there were at least 82 executions compared to at least 27 the previous year, while Iraq executed at least 68 people, compared to at least one in 2010, according to Amnesty.'

Other members of the UNHRC include other beacons for human rights as Libya (elected when under the Gaddaffi regime), Cuba and heaven help us China. China being a country which the same Amnesty International report as quoted by the BBC says:

'it also noted that China executed more people than the rest of the world put together.

...

Amnesty no longer publishes figures for China, where the data is considered a state secret. The rights group believes the figure to be in its thousands.'