U.S. Jewish Leaders Decry UN Human Rights Chief For 'Grossly Discriminatory' Anti-Israel 'Blacklist'

TEL AVIV – The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations slammed the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, for reportedly “blacklisting” companies with business dealings in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.

“It is damaging enough that the High Commissioner felt he was required to ‘produce’ this database of enterprises doing business in the settlements,” said Chairman Stephen M. Greenberg and Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of the Conference, in a joint statement released on Friday.

“There is no acceptable justification for the High Commissioner to go beyond what is called for in this biased measure,” they said. “Any further action exacerbates the damage already caused by the resolution.”

They added that the “blacklist” is “grossly discriminatory” and was compiled through “an undisclosed process overseen by the High Commissioner.”

“By informing businesses that they are on the ‘blacklist,’ compiled in an opaque process, he will be complicit in furthering the unacceptable aims of the resolution and promoting the economic warfare waged against Israel by the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,” they added.

Hoenlein and Greenberg noted that the blacklist was preceded by the passage of a “blatantly anti-Israel resolution” by the Human Rights Council last year.

At the time, the Conference of Presidents leaders called the resolution “a further stain on the legitimacy of the Human Rights Council and stands as yet another insult to the millions of victims of human rights violations around the world whose desperate plight the Council has neither the inclination nor the time to address because of its lopsided focus on Israel.”