A general view of participants at the 16th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland in 2011. Credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré via Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Israel slammed the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for its adoption of a measure that calls for the creation of a database of businesses “involved in activities” in Judea and Samaria.

The 47-member U.N. forum adopted the measure with 32 nations voting in favor, none against, and 15 abstaining. The council asked that the list of businesses be updated annually, and that the council be informed of the “human rights and international law violations involved in the production of settlement goods.”

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., called the database a “blacklist” and said the UNHRC is acting “obsessively” on the issue of Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UNHRC an “anti-Israel circus,” echoing longstanding Israeli criticism of U.N. bias.

Netanyahu added that the UNHRC “attacks the only democracy in the Middle East and ignores the gross violations of Iran, Syria, and North Korea….Israel calls on responsible governments not to honor the decisions of the council that discriminate against Israel.”

The measure’s passage comes in the wake of the UNHRC’s decision to appoint Canadian legal expert Michael Lynk, who has expressed anti-Israel views in the past, as special rapporteur on human rights issues affecting the Palestinians.