"The UN Human Rights Council is well-known for its hostility toward Israel, but a project it's about to complete puts it into truly bizzaro territory.
UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein (who last year compared then-candidate Donald Trump to ISIS) is set to release a blacklist of companies that operate in Israel's West Bank settlements, as part of an HRC-ordered 'investigation' of their impact on Palestinians.
That's right: The council believes companies doing business in the settlements somehow constitutes a human-rights violation. Never mind that many of these firms provide jobs for Palestinians in the area and that the blacklist could cost many of them meaningful work.
Or that the companies provide needed goods and services to anyone, no matter their background or where they live.
Ignore, too, the fact that the panel, as the Israeli-based Kohelet Policy Forum notes, has never voiced any human-rights concerns about firms in 'occupied territory' settlements elsewhere in the world, even where ethnic cleansing has taken place. And that numerous legal opinions and rulings OK such practices, with some citing language in the Fourth Geneva Convention...
US and Israeli officials fear a UN blacklist could deter businesses that are based in their countries and hurt the companies' shares. They're racing to contain the damage. Yet other nations with companies in the settlements could also be hurt.
Meanwhile, the council and Hussein's office get hundreds of million of dollars every year, much of it from the United States. Surely there are better uses for that money."