The Weekly Standard
29 September '10
A mere two days after May’s deadly flotilla raid off the coast of Gaza, the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in a special “emergency session,” passed a resolution by a 32 to 3 count that “condemn[ed] in the strongest terms the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla of ships.” Despite already forming its consensus view of the flotilla raid, it nonetheless ordered a “fact-finding Mission,” which went ahead despite the support of Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for a wider and more legally consequential UN inquiry, which Israel later agreed to cooperate with.
In addition to agreeing to work with the general UN inquiry, Israel has conducted an internal military review which acquitted the IDF commandos of any professional misconduct, faulting them only for not anticipating the violence they were met with onboard the Mavi Marmara. Furthermore, Israel is also now engaged in a domestic civil review headed by retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel and observed by Northern Irish First Minister Lord David Trimble and former Canadian military judge Ken Watkin.
The results of the UNHRC flotilla investigation were published last week in an “Advance Unedited Version” of its official report and the verdict is as predictable as it is one-sided. As with the Goldstone Report, Israel is once again accused of war crimes. And once again, the UNHRC’s Mission sacrifices methodological rigor and dispassion for a politicized and prefabricated ruling.
It claims to have interviewed “more than 100 witnesses in Geneva, London, Istanbul and Amman” but in perhaps the most naked acknowledgement of its own distorted approach to fact-finding, the report states the following in its Methodology section:
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