U.S. Threatens to Replace UN Human Rights Body Over Anti-Israel Stance, But When Will U.S. Act?

"The United States has threatened to replace the United Nations Human Rights Council with an alternative group of nations, unless the 47-member body halted its anti-Israel bias and underwent a series of reforms.

'We are either going to reform this thing and make it reflect what it should be reflecting or we will withdraw our support for it,' US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday in Washington.

Should the US pull out of the UNHRC it would 'find other means that we can approach human rights issues on a multi-lateral basis with partners who see it the same way we do,' Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL) asked Tillerson about US funding for international organizations in the fiscal 2018 budget, including the Geneva based UNHRC.

'I wish you would reconsider the $10 million you have in there for the UNHRC. That is on top of the $17.5 million that we have spent in the last few years to try to buy friendship with Israel. I will bet you a steak dinner that it is not going to work,' he said.

Tillerson assured that Rooney that his office was examining its engagement with some of those insinuations, specifically the UNHRC, as he issued a number of strong statements about the organization.

'We are looking at those one by one by one and really asking ourselves what is the cost benefit here. In some areas we are either going to reform those or we are going to withdraw from them,' Tillerson said.

'We are taking a very close look at what do we, the American people, get in return for this investment or this funding that we provide,' Tillerson said..."