The UN Gaza Travesty That Can't be Salvaged by a New Chair

...Despite efforts to reform it, this agency remains one of the worst examples of UN bias against Israel and the Jews. Rather than helping to stem the rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world, the UNHRC is aiding and abetting it. Rather than wring its hands about the likelihood of an unfair attack on Israel about the Gaza war, the United States ought to be pulling out of the UNHRC and leading efforts to isolate it so as to prevent the world body from doing even more damage.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
02 January '15..

When the United Nations Human Rights Council announced its plan to convene a commission to investigate last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas, it didn’t even bother pretending to be fair to the Jewish state. The UNHRC spends most of its time ignoring all of the most egregious violations of human rights and atrocities around the world and, instead, concentrates almost all of its energies on demonizing Israel and its efforts to defend its citizens against terrorist attacks. The commission it impaneled reflected that same bias. At its head was William Schabas, a Canadian law professor who had already denounced Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as a war criminal and stated his belief that Hamas was not a terrorist group. Schabas bitterly resented the criticism that rained down on his head from those who considered the commission to be a kangaroo court. But rather than continue, he has now resigned, still insisting on his fitness to lead the effort. That is to be commended, but Israel ought not to be suckered into taking the UNHRC’s bait. Though it is possible that his successor might be a less egregious pick, Israel should stick to its decision not to cooperate with this travesty.

Israel was criticized for deciding not to play along with the UNHRC. It was asserted that by boycotting the panel, it was losing an opportunity to make its case to the world about its side of the story. The decision would, it was asserted, leave the field open for the Palestinians to paint the war as a tale of Jewish aggression against helpless Gaza civilians and completely ignoring the fact that Hamas not only used those people as human shields but also started the war by raining missiles down on Israeli cities and using tunnels to funnel terrorists across the border to kidnap and murder Israelis.

But anyone who has followed the UNHRC knows that no matter how much effort Israel puts into its defense the result won’t change. Schabas was an outrageous choice but he was merely the figurehead at the top of a UN structure that dictates an indictment of Israel, not its principle author.

It should be recalled that the UNHRC’s investigation of the 2008 war in Gaza—the Goldstone Commission—was a travesty that was focused almost entirely on delegitimizing Israeli self-defense while largely downplaying the actual war crimes committed by the Hamas rulers of Gaza. Ultimately Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African Jew who had been appointed to chair that commission, repudiated its findings. But that recantation came too late. The damage was already done. Whereas the UNHRC thought to put a more acceptable face on its Star Chamber investigation of Israel with Goldstone, naming Schabas showed it no longer thought it worth the bother to even put up a pretense of objectivity.

That’s why Schabas’s withdrawal changes nothing about the UNHRC’s prejudice or its methods. No one who is likely to be named to this post would be objective and anyone who was would quickly discover, as Goldstone eventually did, that the UNHRC’s staff has one objective with respect to Israel and it is not fairness or the truth.

More Than Appropriate to Ignore the UN Human Rights Farce

...Rather than questioning Israel’s refusal to play along with its enemies, a better topic of discussion would be why the United States continues to legitimize the UNHRC with its membership. Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s infatuation with the world body causes it to continue to treat the Human Rights Council as a legitimate institution. That should end. But even more important, the international press and decent people everywhere should refuse to treat the UNHRC or its probes as anything but a sick joke.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
12 November '14..

There will be those who will argue that Israel is once again shooting itself in the foot by announcing that it will not cooperate with the investigation being conducted into this past summer’s war with Hamas by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Critics of the decision by Prime Minister Netanyahu will say that by snubbing the inquiry, Israel is losing its chance to give input to the proceedings and ensuring that only its enemies will play a role in the final outcome. But the claim that Israel will have a fair chance to defend itself before the UNHRC is a joke. The UN agency has a long record of bias against Israel but by choosing a chairman of the panel that had already put himself down on record as a virulent opponent of Israel, it should have forfeited the respect of even those few who take the group seriously.

It should be remembered that the last time the UNHRC appointed a commission to investigate an Israeli campaign in Gaza, it produced the Goldstone Commission, a compendium of one-sided libels aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right of self-defense so egregious that even its chairman, South African jurist Richard Goldstone (who was chosen largely out of a desire to put a Jewish label on an anti-Israel product) eventually repudiated it.

This time the UNHRC hasn’t even bothered to pretend that it wanted fairness as it did with the appointment of Goldstone, and chose instead a Canadian law professor who has made a name for himself as an enemy of Israel. William Schabas has already gone on record saying that Hamas was not a terrorist organization and that Netanyahu should be indicted for war crimes. Yet he claims that he could still be impartial. As the Times of Israel reported, even Schabas admitted that his record indicates his bias:

“I do not hate Israel and do not want to engage in a debate regarding my previous positions on Israel,” Schabas told Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat in an interview. “I have had positions in the past concerning Palestine and Israel and they have nothing to do with my mission now. I will put my opinions aside during the investigation and they will have no bearing on it.”

But whether or not Schabas conquers his prejudices during the course of his work probing Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, there is no reason for anyone, in Israel or anywhere else, to take anything the UNHRC says seriously. Its membership is composed of countries that are themselves some of the worst human-rights violators in the world. In appropriating the banner of human rights, these tyrannies have long made a mockery of the concept and instead seem to prove that anti-Semitism is alive and well in the halls of the UN. The vast majority of its work has always been concentrated on efforts to smear Israel or otherwise deny its rights while at the same time ignoring some of the most egregious human-rights catastrophes going on elsewhere.

Isn't Schabas just the perfect choice for Goldstone 2?

...He has expressed no hesitation in exploiting international mechanisms to achieve political goals. He has already declared Israel guilty of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” He has no problem participating in the most fringe anti-Israel initiatives. He erases the context of Palestinian terrorism. Such characteristics define the very essence of the HRC and its NGO lawfare partners.

Anne Herzberg..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
17 August '14..

On August 11, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights appointed the members to the latest Human Rights Council “investigation” of Israel. Predictably, one of the appointees, law professor William Schabas, is well-known for his association with many anti-Israel NGO initiatives.

Given the history of special animus towards Israel by the Human Rights Council, a body dominated by dictators and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, it is no surprise that it would appoint such a partisan figure to render judgment on Israel’s operations against Hamas rocket fire and terror tunnels. But there is another agenda at play in the Schabas appointment beyond yet more absurd condemnations of the Jewish state by Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea.

One of the key components in the political war against Israel is “lawfare” or the exploitation of legal frameworks to achieve objectives that cannot be accomplished militarily. The goal is to delegitimize (and ultimately end) Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and to punish the country for its anti-terror operations.

The lawfare strategy was developed at the NGO Forum of the 2001 UN Durban Conference, which branded Israel a “racist, apartheid state” guilty of “genocide” and “war crimes” and called for “the establishment of a war crimes tribunal” and other measures.

Lawfare involves making accusations of “war crimes” and other international legal violations in the hopes that these allegations can then be turned into some form of legal “judgment” which can be used to imprison Israeli officials and implement BDS. Almost always, these violations are based upon invented or distorted concepts in international law. Another key component is to erase Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians and to immorally support suicide bombings, missiles, shootings and other atrocities as “resistance.”

Shortly after the Durban Conference, NGOs operationalized their strategy by issuing “war crimes” reports that are then used to push for UN investigations, serve as the basis for universal jurisdiction lawsuits, underpin governmental lobbying campaigns for BDS, and promote cases at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Surprise! The UN Human Rights Farce Gets Worse

...But the main takeaway here is not the obvious one about a report whose anti-Israel conclusions are already a certainty. It’s that anti-Semitism and hate for Israel has now reached such high levels that no one at the UN thinks it necessary to veil their bias.

“Why are we going after
the president of Sudan for
Darfur and not the president
of Israel for Gaza?”

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
12 August '14..

Over the past few decades, the bias against Israel at the United Nations has reached the level of caricature. The disproportionate interest in anything that the Jewish state does matched with the world body’s general indifference to real crimes being perpetrated anywhere else is an object lesson in the definition of prejudice. But just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the choice of a man to head a UN Human Rights Council probe of the fighting in Gaza who has already called for the prosecution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrates just how ridiculous the anti-Israel farce there has become.

That the UN Human Rights Council, whose membership is made up of many of the worst dictatorships and human-rights offenders in the world, wouldn’t give Israel a fair hearing was already a given. The Council devotes most of its attention to attempts to undermine the Jewish state’s legitimacy or to promote libelous attacks on its policies. While a lot of the attention on this panel was devoted to the decision of George Clooney’s fiancée to decline participation in the probe, the appointment of Canadian law professor William Schabas demonstrates that the Council is not even interested in the appearance of fairness.

Schabas has already demonstrated his animus for Israel and actually called for Netanyahu to be hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for prosecution. Lest anyone think he takes sides in Israeli political debates, he also advocated the prosecution of Shimon Peres in a comment in which he compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the genocide in Darfur.

The organization UN Watch, which performs the tiresome yet essential task of monitoring the unfortunate doings of the Human Rights Council, assembled this collection of quotes and dubious positions from Schabas. A dive into his record shows that he is not only an avowed foe of Israel but also something of an apologist for Iran.

Of course, the appointment of someone like Schabas is hardly unique in the history of the UN, a world body where anti-Semitism and hatred for Israel is deeply embedded into the culture of the institution. Why, then should we bother even commenting on this?

The first reason is that the UN probe into Gaza will undoubtedly be used to bolster attacks on Israel and to delegitimize its right of self-defense against Hamas terrorists. No matter how outrageous the nature of anything produced by the Human Rights Council, the mere fact that such a report will bear the imprimatur of the UN will give it a hearing and a bogus legitimacy in the mainstream media.

Second, Schabas’s appointment is significant because it marks the further descent into Jew hatred at the world body.