Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sarr said his country had decided to boycott the United Nations Human Rights Council, which he accused of “spreading anti-Semitism.”
“The organization has focused on attacking a democratic country and spreading anti-Semitism, rather than promoting human rights,” Sarr wrote on the X platform.
US President Donald Trump made a similar statement on Tuesday, deciding that the United States would no longer participate in Council meetings.
The Council has “traditionally protected human rights violators by allowing them to escape scrutiny, and instead obsessively marginalized the only democracy in the Middle East – Israel,” the Israeli foreign minister added.
UN Human Rights Council spokesman Pascal Sim said Israel has “observer status” and is “not one of the 47 member states,” adding that it therefore cannot “withdraw from the Council.”
Israel has participated in all of its periodic reviews, which UN member states are required to undergo. However, Israel has been boycotting debates on the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories” for several years.
