US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. Photo: UN photo / Rick Bajornas.

JNS.org – A day before embarking on her first trip to Israel as US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley demanded that the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) address its bias against the Jewish state.

“It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility,” Haley said Tuesday at the opening of the UNHRC’s 35th session in Geneva.

Prior to addressing the council, Haley published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which she called on the UNHRC to “end its practice of wrongly singling out Israel for criticism.”

“When the council passes more than 70 resolutions against Israel, a country with a strong human rights record, and just seven resolutions against Iran, a country with an abysmal human rights record, you know something is seriously wrong,” Haley wrote.

During Tuesday’s UNHRC session, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said the Palestinians were marking “a half-century of deep suffering under an occupation imposed by [Israel’s] military force.”

Hussein added, “Maintain the occupation and for both peoples there will only be a prolongation of immense pain.”

Haley’s reprimand of the UNHRC followed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s comments Monday, on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Six-Day War, in which he conveyed concern about Israel’s “occupation” of the disputed territories.