"Weeks ahead of the expected completion of a U.N. database of companies that operate in Israel's West Bank settlements, Israel and the Trump Administration are working feverishly to prevent its publication.
While Israel is usually quick to brush off U.N. criticism, officials say they are taking the so-called 'blacklist' seriously, fearing its publication could have devastating consequences by driving companies away, deterring others from coming and prompting investors to dump shares of Israeli firms. Dozens of major Israeli companies, as well as multinationals that do business in Israel, are expected to appear on the list.
'We will do everything we can to ensure that this list does not see the light of day,' Israel's U.N. ambassador, Danny Danon, told The Associated Press.
The U.N.'s top human rights body, the Human Rights Council, ordered the compilation of the database in March 2016, calling on U.N. rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein to 'investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on Palestinians.'...
Israel has long accused the United Nations, and particularly the rights council, of being biased against it.
Israel is the only country that faces an examination of its rights record at each of the council's three sessions each year. Some 70 resolutions, or about quarter of the council's country-specific resolutions, have been aimed at Israel. That is nearly triple the number for the second-place country: Syria, where hundreds of thousands have been killed in a devastating six-year civil war.
Israeli leaders and many non-governmental groups also complain that some of the world's worst violators of human rights, including Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Congo and Cuba, sit on the council.
Some Western diplomats have said the database could set a harmful precedent by blurring the line between business and human rights on issues that are better left to trade policy than the Geneva council..."