Israel on Thursday formally announced it would not cooperate with a special commission formed by the United Nations’ top human rights body to investigate Israeli “war crimes” it allegedly committed while defending itself against missiles launched by terror groups in Gaza that killed 14 people in Israel.
The decision, delivered in a scathing letter to the commission’s head, Navi Pillay, a former South African judge who not only has a long background of making rabid anti-Israel statements but has actively lobbied against Israel, further strained what already is a tense relationship between Israel and the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“It is obvious to my country, as it should be to any fair-minded observer, that there is simply no reason to believe that Israel will receive reasonable, equitable and non-discriminatory treatment from the Council, or from this Commission of Inquiry,” said the letter, signed by Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. and international organizations in Geneva.
“The probe both reflects and compounds the moral bankruptcy of the Human Rights Council’s obsessive bias against Israel, causing lasting harm to the very values of human rights and respect for the rule of law that it was intended to uphold.”
The letter continued to say that three members of the commission, including Pillay, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “have repeatedly taken public and hostile positions against Israel on the very subject matter that they are called upon to ‘independently and impartially’ investigate.”
“We expect such bodies to act in good faith, without bias, and not in the service of a pre-determined political agenda. Regrettably, none of this can be expected from this COI.”
The letter emphasized that Pillay herself is “well known for personally championing an anti-Israel agenda and for numerous anti-Israel pronouncements, including the shameful libel comparing Israel to apartheid-era South Africa, as well as advocating for the radical BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanction) campaign against Israel.”
“It should be of no wonder that Israel, and anyone who actually cares about human rights and the rule of law, will treat the establishment of the COI, its functioning and its findings accordingly.”
Show trials were used by Stalin to crush suspected dissidents. Guilt was determined in advance.
Today the UNHRC has its own show trial, an inquiry into Israel's “systematic discrimination.”
The chair is Navi Pillay, who lobbies to “sanction apartheid Israel.” It's all fixed. pic.twitter.com/KyMPywd17y
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) February 18, 2022
UN Watch chief Hillel Neuer wrote about Pillay: “The UNHRC has appointed to lead its controversial investigation on Israel an individual who calls Israel an ‘apartheid state,’ backs the campaign to boycott and sanction Israel, and signs statements lobbying governments to punish the Jewish state.”
“She is an active anti-Israel lobbyist who has been made chair of this inquiry. It is astonishing, absurd, and a travesty of justice.”
“Never in her U.N. tenure did Pillay use such inflammatory language regarding any other country—not even against serial abusers such as China, Russia, Iran, Syria or North Korea.”
“Pillay has also defended the HRC’s ‘agenda item seven’ – under which Israel is the only country, out of 193 U.N. member-states, to be targeted by a permanent agenda item during council sessions.”
“The skewed focus on Israel has been slammed by numerous Western governments – several of whom now boycott meetings held under agenda item seven – and also by former U.N. secretary general Ban ki-Moon, who said in 2007 that he was ‘disappointed at the council’s decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world.'”
“Navi Pillay, by contrast, justified agenda item seven during a 2010 visit to Kuwait, and in a discussion with Italian lawmakers that same year.”
“Israel has been the target of more condemnatory HRC resolutions than any other country, well more than twice as many as those on abuses in Syria, Burma, and North Korea.”
Not a single HRC resolution has criticized the human rights records of China, Russia, Cuba, or many others.”
Navi Pillay campaigned with the boycott movement and lobbied governments to “Sanction Apartheid Israel.”⬇️
So the U.N. Human Rights Council appointed her head of its inquiry into alleged Israeli discrimination.
Retweet if you agree: Pillay must go.
✒️ https://t.co/oiT93w1xnP pic.twitter.com/30sY6F0GMS
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) February 17, 2022
The council established the three-person investigative commission last May, days after the Hamas terror group incited an 11-day war with Israel.
At the time, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said that Israeli actions, including airstrikes in civilian areas, might have constituted war crimes.
Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties, saying the group uses residential areas for cover while carrying out military activities. Many rockets were fired from neighborhoods.
But the commission’s responsibilities go well beyond the Gaza war. A “Commission of Inquiry” is the most potent tool of scrutiny of rights violations and abuse at the council’s disposal. The assigned mandate of this one is to monitor alleged rights violations in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. It is the first such commission to have an “ongoing” mandate.
Israel has long accused the United Nations, and particularly the Human Rights Council, of bias.
Israel is the only country in the world whose rights record comes up for discussion at every council session. Israel has also raised concerns about the council’s makeup, saying it includes countries with poor humans rights records or open hostility toward Israel. China, Cuba, Eritrea, Pakistan, Venezuela and a number of Arab countries sit on the 47-member council.
The ambassador was responding to a Dec. 29 letter from Pillay to Israel’s government, obtained by The Associated Press, asking Israel to “reconsider its position of non-cooperation” expressed after the commission was created. Pillay wrote that the commission would “need” to visit Israel and Palestinian areas and requested a visit in the last week of March. She said the commission sought to travel along with six to eight staffers.
The ambassador’s letter all but ensures the commission will not obtain such access or Israeli government cooperation.
Opponents of Pillay have highlighted what they allege is an anti-Israel bias shown by her. That included, for example, comments she made in 2017 to an interviewer about the definition of “apartheid” as a crime against humanity under the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute. She said that “it means the enforced segregation of people on racial lines, and that is happening in Israel.”
Pillay also had said: “The government of Israel really resents a comparison between apartheid South Africa and Israel.”
She has not responded publicly to allegations of anti-Israel bias that emerged since her appointment. The commission said in an e-mail to the AP on Thursday that its members “do not intend to make public statements nor publicize their communications between the concerned parties so as to preserve the integrity of the work they are carrying out.”
The council president, Ambassador Federico Villegas of Argentina, defended the selection of the commission members — which also include Chris Sidoti of Australia and Miloon Kothari of India — saying the president “places the utmost importance on examining the independence and impartiality of each member in order to ensure the objectivity of the body” and considers their skills and experience in appointing its members.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
And the only US ambassador to oppose this broad anti-Israel bias in the UN was Nikki Haley. One must shudder when thinking how the Biden administration, that openly embraces the supporters of anti-Israel terror and anti-Jewish terror such as the Squad, BLM, ajnd some of the niminees they seek to give positions of authority.