UNHRC accuses Israel of war crimes

Just Journalism
23 September '10

On the June 23 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted Resolution 14/1, calling for an investigation into the events upon the Mavi Marmara, which left 9 Turkish nationals dead. Israel, which had boarded the ship in question, refused to co-operate with the investigation, citing its concerns that the UNHRC was prejudiced against the state, and had already decided that Israeli soldiers had acted unjustly. Today, there was widespread coverage of the UNHRC’s announcement that it had found Israel guilty of war crimes.

In order to evaluate the legitimacy of Israel’s concerns, it is important to note several points about the UNHRC and Resolution 14/1.

1) Despite being adopted several weeks after Israel had released video footage of its soldiers being physically assaulted aboard the Mavi Marmara, Resolution 14/1 stated that Israel was guilty of unjustified violence, before the investigation had begun:

‘The Human Rights Council…[c]ondemns in the strongest terms the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla of ships, which resulted in the killing and injuring of many innocent civilians from different countries’.

Whilst it is true that the UNHRC Report, generated by a fact-finding Mission, states in its Introduction that it 'did not interpret its task as proceeding on any such assumptions' as those cited in the above resolution, it is at least arguable that the report's methodology as well as its conclusions -- which were extremely hostile to Israel -- were conceived in the interest of certifying that original UNHRC resolution. The questionable motives of the UNHRC in commissioning this report and overseeing its production deserved greater scrutiny at least equal to what has been written about Israel's own military and civilian investigations into the flotilla.

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