Illustration: UNHRC mission
Illustration: UNHRC missionFlash 90

On Sunday an Israeli official told AFP that Israel has been approved to join the UN Human Rights Council's (UNHRC) Western European and Others Group (WEOG), and that a formal invitation is expected to come soon.

UNHRC announced last week it would accept Israel as a member state, an about-face for the organization which in its 5 year history has condemned Israel 46 times, far more than any other nation in the world.

Israel cut ties with UNHRC in March 2012 over the Council's intentions to investigate how "settlements may be infringing on the rights" of Palestinian Authority (PA) Arabs, and in January this year Israel became the first country to boycott a UNHRC periodic review of its rights situation.

Israel changed its position in October and decided to attend the periodic review. The decision came after reports of German threats of a diplomatic backlash if Israel did not attend.

Reportedly Israel will renew cooperation with UNHRC as a condition of its membership to the WEOG.

An unnamed official said of the membership, "our relations with the UN bodies in Geneva will be more or less normalized. The exclusion and marginalization from which Israel suffered will start to be removed."

Disproportional condemnation against Israel at the UN has reached an extreme point. In late November a UN interpreter, unaware that her mic was on, was caught criticizing the excessive attacks on Israel.

The interpreter commented "I mean, I think when you have five statements, not five, like a total of ten resolutions on Israel and Palestine, there's gotta be something, c'est un peu trop, non? [It's a bit much, no?] I mean I know... There's other really bad stuff happening [around the world], but no one says anything, about the other stuff."