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A Democratic political advisor in Atlanta named by President Biden as ambassador to the controversial United Nations Human Rights Council was confirmed by the U.S. Senate this week.
Michèle Taylor has served on the board of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta and has worked on the political campaigns of Georgia Democrats like Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and CARE CEO Michelle Nunn, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2014.
Ms. Taylor, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, was appointed in 2014 by then-president Obama as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, where she served on committees on State Sponsored Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, according to the Atlanta Jewish Times. The newspaper also reported that she is an “observant Jew” and a founding board member of Congregation Or Hadash in Sandy Springs.
That background could be helpful given the geopolitical backdrop of the U.S.’s return to the Council, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. over what his administration felt were biases toward Israel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken in October announced the U.S.’s return to a council that he said suffers from “serious flaws” and “disproportionate attention on Israel” even as it continues to admit human-rights abusers as members. In essence, the Biden administration seems bent on redeeming the organization from within rather than criticizing it from outside.
In her testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December, Ms. Taylor noted that she would fight against what she said is the commission’s undue focus on Israel.
“As long as it persists, I will take every opportunity to demand an end to this bias, to insist on the fair treatment of Israel like any other country, and the elevation of genuine human rights challenges on the Council’s agenda. This includes tirelessly underscoring our objection to the open-ended Commission of Inquiry targeting Israel,” she said.
On Thursday, the same day Ms. Taylor was confirmed, Israel said it would not cooperate with the latest commission formed by the council to investigate alleged abuses against Palestinians during the 11-day war in Gaza last May in which 260 Palestinians died.
In addition to her roles in Atlanta and Washington, Ms. Taylor has served in various roles at the North Carolina Outward Bound School. She earns a bachelor’s degree from Mills College and a master’s from Boston University, according to the White House.
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