By Anne Bayefsky, Human Rights Voices, FOX NEWS
Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu and any other “suspected” Israeli war criminals wherever and whenever you can get your hands on them. That is the shocking bottom line of a scandalous report released today from the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The report emanates from a board of inquiry the Council created in the midst of the 2014 Gaza war. In legalese, the call to arrest Israelis either for trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC), or before any court in any country that the U.N. labels “fair,” reads like this:
The board “calls upon the international community … to support actively the work of the International Criminal Court in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory; to exercise universal jurisdiction to try international crimes in national courts; and to comply with extradition requests pertaining to suspects of such crimes to countries where they would face a fair trial.”
To be fair, the U.N. report says this could apply to both parties. In other words, the democratic state of Israel, with a moral and legal obligation to defend its citizens, and the Palestinian attackers bent on genocide are moral equals. Throughout the 183-page tome, the U.N. council “experts” play the old “cycle of violence” trick, otherwise known as “it all started when you hit me back.”
An infamous photo from the Third Reich shows eminent Jewish lawyer Michael Siegel, beaten and bloodied after going to police headquarters on behalf of a Jewish client who had been sent to Dachau, forced to walk through the streets of Munich with a sign around his neck saying: “I am a Jew, but I will never again complain to the police.”
The similarity with today’s U.N. authorities is painfully clear. When Israel responds to Palestinian rocket fire – 750 rockets in 2014 alone prior to the war’s start – or Palestinian terrorists emerging from tunnels into Israel bent on carnage, it is Israel who is accused of war crimes. The only acceptable response, apparently, is to hang their heads or make a U.N. speech.
In part, the war criminal charge is just one more U.N. slander. U.N. meetings routinely consist of wild allegations of Israel committing genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and crimes against humanity, and frequently analogizing Israelis to Nazis. The anti-Semitic dimension of these attacks is palpable, with constant references to the offense of “Judaization” – the criminalization of the presence of Jews in what is supposed to be Judenrein Arab territory, or what is in practice apartheid Palestine.
While the point of all this hate speech is to demonize and delegitimize Israel, the war crimes label takes the campaign one step further. It deliberately ravages Israel’s right of self-defense.
Self-defense is the essence of sovereignty. In the words of the U.N. Charter: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of … self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations …” The United Nations was not intended to be a suicide pact.
But incredibly, the U.N. council report purports to address legal responsibility for casualties in Gaza without once mentioning “self-defense.”
It was exactly the outcome that the council had planned. The Council gave the board of inquiry its marching orders on July 23, 2014, just 16 days into the war. It named June 13, 2014, as the starting line because Palestinian terrorists kidnapped three Israeli teenagers on June 12. It said the Council “condemns … the violations … arising from the Israeli military operations.” Guilty before proven innocent is how it all began.
The board’s first chair, William Schabas, was forced to resign after it was revealed he had been a paid legal adviser to the Palestinian Authority. On his way out the door in February, Schabas admitted the “fact-gathering” was “largely completed,” and yet the U.N. denied the obvious conclusion that the result was irrevocably tainted. Consequently, a Palestinian legal adviser chaired the inquiry for more than half of its 10-month existence.
Impartiality was equally alien to American Mary McGowan Davis, who took over from Schabas. She had already chaired a Council committee about the 2008/09 Gaza war, and she declared in a March 2011 report that Israel’s legal system did not meet standards of independence or impartiality, or make “accountability” possible. Those criteria are both the pre-conditions for the ICC’s ability to throw Israelis in prison and the subject matter of her 2014 job.
In short, the Council gave the same person the same assignment on almost the same fact situation … and surprise! Israel is guilty as charged.
In 2011, McGowan Davis described the misogynist, homophobic, anti-free speech, “de facto authorities in Gaza” (i.e. Hamas) – infamous for throwing political opponents off tall buildings – as “generally tolerant of local human rights organizations.”
A U.N. “human rights” expert par excellence.
Little wonder that the report is riddled with lies and libels. It claims Israel was “directing attacks against civilians,” and acted “in utter disregard of…the civilian population…” It omits that Hamas rejected or violated a total of 11 cease-fires that would have reduced Palestinian casualties by 90 percent. It says the intent of “Palestinian armed groups” in constructing and using tunnels cannot be “conclusively determined” – photographic evidence of weapons caches and terrorists emerging from openings terrifyingly close to Israeli villages to the contrary.
It even goes so far as to lament that Palestinian “armed groups” don’t have more room for their criminal enterprise: “…the obligation to avoid locating military objectives within densely populated areas is not absolute. The small size of Gaza and its population density make it difficult for armed groups to always comply with this requirement.”
The U.N. has reached a new low. The United States should start by resigning from the Human Rights Council effective immediately.
@ bernard ross:
We allowed the ghastly garbage to feel safe doing what they did.
Meek, palabra and no actions, irresolute, meandering posturings, stupid cardboard props and red lines do not do it.
Israeli Courts MUST be called to issue orders to detain all “un” operatives in Israel and that as a start. Should the self elected items refuse. Summarily remove them and call for free election of Judges.
Dismantle all of the “un” bases and destroy all of their tools, Jeeps, etc.
Remove all Israel reps at the “un”.
and yet Jews the world over still proceed in delusion and denial. the Jews of Germany pre shoah did the same, everything was incredible, even after kristalnacht, it makes no sense and therefore it isnt really happening. the stage has advanced beyond the efficacy of hasbara. the only verbal tactic is warfare in order not to convince but to damage and weaken enemies.
One does not seek to convince hitlers, one seeks to destroy or to weaken them.
Either the jews are wrong and the world is right which means the jews should pick up their designated bar of soap and proceed obediently to the showers OR the world is libelers are wrong and they are intentionally seeking to kill the jews in the traditional way it was always done in europe:
first the lies and libels intended to incite mob violence and pogroms…….
the government and authorities non obstruction of the process and then the govs open participation………….
a creeping crescendo of irrationality that demands the attack of the enemy as the only solution.
but first the jews must realize there really is a conspiracy to kill the Jews……………..
then they must realize that it originates with the same enemies working covertly from the bowels of europe……
they hire the proxies, the arabs, the corrupt african judges, the bought NGO whores…..
but ultimately they are the puppet masters and all strings lead back to them……
the solution to destroy such incitement geared to slaughtering jewish children is found in the laboratory, a place where Jews excel…
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
The UN is and has been for the last two decades a corrupt
socialist (red) institution whose members are enemies of freedom and justice.
They believe in old fashion communism even after its ideology has been bankrupt since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Remember the doctrine of “the ends justifies the means” they stop at nothing to realize their goals. Primary objective is the obliteration of the State of Israel and the death of all Jews.
Seeing Israel’s economy rising. Progress in science, technology and living standards continues while Europe has been stagnating for years.
Trying to solve their social issues resulting from their liberal policies in emigration, the march backwards continues.
Looking at Israel’s pulling ahead of everyone creates envy . Dependency on the Jewish innovation for many of their useful technology is an affront to their pride. Destroy the Jews, the cause of their problems.
The UN is full of incompetent, arrogant ignoramuses whose Third World members are more interested in their benefits and compensation than doing their job or providing solutions based on truth and justice.
Our money pays for their insane behaviour towards Israel. The Europeans at the helm leading the idiots in their biased voting against Israel.
Solution: Israel as well as the US ought to consider pulling out of the UN. If they want to continue their kangaroo court style to condemn Israel, let them sink in their own fecal dregs. The UN should use their money to keep the voting morons. Not our money.
GET RID OF THE UN.
@ woolymammoth:
Well, yes.
And I do not see what do you have against Uganda…
I would not send such pestilence to Uganda. The Ugandans are OK most of the times.
Enemies not destroyed as we are mandated in the Bible and historically to do, are only delayed on their plans.
I do not ever cow in front of enemies, I fought in war and gained a decoration. Not precisely for using rubber bullets.
Trust me wooly, I do not post myself as a PM, just as fighting Jew ready to our job.
The “un” scum roam around all over Israel on “un” vehicles and are constantly taking pictures that surely they provide to others. The arrogant trash must be set out away from here and from strutting about.
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2: Well, no, it is up to Israelis, where is the outrage. I will tell you where it is, it is not. Israelis do not care, obviously, so how can you expect the PM, who is on the top of your UN list, to do what, go on a witch hunt, ok sure oh ah Mr. PM SHmuel is calling for us to round up all of the combina Jews, you know of course precisely which ones he means and which ones are merely peripheral combina or semi UN…and exile them to Uganda…oh and don’t forget former President Peres and Daniel Barenboim, we can have Mossad nap him directly from the podium…..ridiculous.
Mr. Netanyahu must cease and desists his sing song about “the world” being…. whatever and get the “un” filth out of Eretz Israel, remove all Israeli representatives at that cesspool and warn that “un” operatives will b considered hereafter enemy combatants and will be dealt with accordingly.
All ranking “un” elements here may be immediately detained as well.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/shame-on-you-mary-mcgowan-davis/
Prior to reading this paragraph, I failed to appreciate just how humane Hamas really is.
This latest UN display of substandard mental health simply reinforces that Israel should stop yearning for the acceptance of the “international community” because the international community is beneath contempt.