UN report: ‘errors of fact, appalling bias’
JEWISH community groups have sharply criticised the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) report into last year’s war between Israel and Gaza.
The 183-page report from the UNHRC, released on Monday, has been condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s Foreign Ministry. The report claimed both sides were potentially guilty of war crimes during the 50-day conflict.
The document slammed Israel for not curtailing bombardment of Gaza after mounting civilian deaths. It attacked Israel’s command accountability and its attacks on residences (from where Hamas missiles were launched).
Meanwhile, the report’s authors expressed “serious concerns” at the “inherently indiscriminate nature of most of the projectiles directed towards Israel” but claimed they were hindered from a fuller investigation into Hamas’s missile and rocket attacks on Israel during the war by Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the UNHRC investigation.
But a heavy cloud hangs over the Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Canadian law expert William Schabas, who eventually quit after it was disclosed he had earlier taken payment from the Palestine Liberation Organisation for legal advice.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim told The AJN that while the 2015 UNHRC report was “not quite as egregious as the discredited Goldstone report in 2009; it was marred by fundamental errors of fact and law underpinned by an appalling bias”.
Wertheim said: “Responsibility for the 2014 Gaza war lies squarely with Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups.
“They fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians, dug tunnels into Israel to attack civilians, urged their own civilians to act as human shields, stored weapons and munitions in schools, hospitals, mosques and other civilian structures, conscripted Palestinian children to act as child soldiers, and sacrificed the lives of Palestinian children in tunnel-digging operations.
“Why were they digging tunnels into Israel in the first place?” he asked.
Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) president Dr Danny Lamm was emphatic: “The ZFA categorically rejects the findings and recommendations.
“The Commission’s report is permeated by longstanding biases that have made the UNHRC notorious for its obsessive hostility towards Israel.
“Commissioners Mary McGowan Davis and Doudou Diene have irrevocably besmirched their legal reputations by allowing their names to be associated with such an unscrupulously prejudiced process.”
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Dr Colin Rubenstein said the UNHRC “has once again shown why they are incapable of credibly, impartially and objectively investigating matters connected to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
“While the report superficially shows more willingness to criticise Palestinian militants for their war crimes than similar reports in the past, this was mere sugar-coating for the main, toxic thrust, which singles out Israel for special condemnation.
“At the core of its failings, the report immorally equates the acts of Gazan terror groups who use their civilians to protect their military assets, and the response of democratic Israel, which judiciously uses its military to defend its civilians while taking extraordinary steps to avoid harming Palestinian civilians.”
PETER KOHN
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