On Thursday, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) overwhelmingly voted to set up a permanent commission of inquiry to probe alleged “war crimes” committed during the recently-ended Gaza conflict.
The 47-member UN body voted 27-9 to open a probe demanded by Muslim countries and will likely target Israel primarily. The UN member states that voted against Israel included dictatorships, human rights abusers, and failed states. These countries include China, Cuba, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.
“Muslim countries are calling on the United Nations to investigate possible crimes committed during the 11-day conflict,” Reuters reported ahead of the vote. Pakistan and the Palestinian delegation at the UN initiated the push to open a probe against Israel. Palestinians and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), representing 57 Muslim states, tabled the UNHRC resolution.
The Gaza-based Islamic terrorist group Hamas, which fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians during the latest round of hostilities, welcomed the investigation. They called upon the UN member states to take “immediate steps to punish” Israel.
Several European and African countries voted against the resolution. The United States, which does not have a seat in the UN rights’ council, had opposed the special session mainly called to slam Israel.
The Associated Press reported the outcome of the UN vote:
The top U.N. human rights body on Thursday passed a resolution aimed to intensify scrutiny of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, after the U.N. rights chief said Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and faulted the militant group Hamas for violations of international law in their 11-day war this month.The 24-9 vote, with 14 abstentions, capped a special Human Rights Council session on the rights situation faced by Palestinians. The session and the resolution were arranged by Organization of Islamic Cooperation countries, which have strongly supported Palestinians in their struggles with Israel.The resolution, which was denounced by Israel, calls for the creation of a permanent “Commission of Inquiry” — the most potent tool at the council’s disposal — to monitor and report on rights violations in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. It would be the first such COI with an “ongoing” mandate.The commission is also to investigate “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict” including discrimination and repression, according to the text. Amid signs that the resolution would pass, its authors added more teeth to its language with a late revision on Wednesday. (…)Israel had called on “friendly” countries to oppose the meeting, and the United States — while not a member of the 47-member state body — did not take part, even in its status as an observer state. An array of countries denounced the latest violence and urged efforts to address the roots of the Mideast conflict.After the vote, the U.S. mission in Geneva said the United States “deeply regrets” the move to create an “open-ended” Commission of Inquiry. It said some unspecified member states of the council “have chosen to engage in a distraction that adds nothing to ongoing diplomatic and humanitarian efforts” in the region.
The UNHRC, dominated by leftist dictatorships, Third-World failed states, and Islamic countries is a forum for bashing the U.S. and its allies. Last November, some 120 UN member states ganged up to “scrutinize” the U.S. human rights record.
In that bizarre show, the Chinese delegate asked, “[w]hat measures has [the] U.S. taken to eliminate systematic racism, racial discrimination, white supremacy, religious intolerance and xenophobia?” The genocidal regimes of Iran and Syria were among those who rose at the session to condemn the U.S. record on human rights.
After the U.S., the Jewish State is the favorite target for the UNHRC.
Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin called the UNHRC vote an “inexplicable decision against Israeli citizens who faced the criminal fire of thousands of missiles against innocent civilians.”
The Jerusalem Post reported the official Israeli response:
Israel’s Foreign Ministry immediately stated that it had no intention of cooperating with the probe.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated: “Today’s shameful decision is yet another example of the UN Human Rights Council’s blatant anti-Israel obsession.“Once again, an immoral automatic majority at the Council whitewashes a genocidal terrorist organization that deliberately targets Israeli civilians while turning Gaza’s civilians into human shields.“This while depicting as the ‘guilty party’ a democracy acting legitimately to protect its citizens from thousands of indiscriminate rocket attacks. This travesty makes a mockery of international law and encourages terrorists worldwide,” he said.
Ahead of the session, Geneva-based watchdog UN Watch noted the anti-Israel bias at the UN rights body:
This will be be the ninth special session targeting Israel since the UNHRC was founded in 2006.Of the other special sessions that condemned countries, there have been 5 on Syria, 3 on Myanmar, and 1 each on Central African Republic, Libya, Cote d’Ivoire, DR Congo, Sudan, Burundi and South Sudan.The UNHRC has never held a special session on China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, Egypt, Venezuela, Turkey, Belarus or Pakistan, for example.
Nikki Haley, who, as UN ambassador during President Donald Trump’s watch, oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from the UNHRC three years ago, tweeted in support of Israel.
In June 2017, Haley called out the UNHRC’s obsession with Israel. “[T]he Council has passed more than 70 resolutions targeting Israel. It has passed just seven on Iran. This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the Council itself,” she said.
The biggest losers of the UN probe will be the Palestinians, particularly the residents of Gaza, who are used as human shields by the jihadi terrorist groups. Palestinian terrorists fired rockets from residential neighborhoods and hid weaponry in populated areas. Hamas and its terrorist allies fired over 4500 missiles aimed at Israeli towns and cities, out of which 610 landed inside Gaza, causing significant civilian deaths.
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