Israel slams UN’s ‘shameful’ war crimes probe

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the probe as “yet another example of the UN Human Rights Council’s blatant anti-Israel obsession.”

By Aryeh Savir, TPS

Israel harshly criticized the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) after it passed a resolution on Thursday to launch a Commission of Inquiry against Israel for alleged war crimes it committed and called for an arms embargo against the Jewish state.

Twenty-four states, including Bahrain with which Israel recently signed a peace treaty, supported the motion, nine voted against it, and 14 countries abstained.

No European country supported the motion.

This is the first time that the UNHRC has voted to establish a permanent fact-finding mission on any UN member state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated after the vote that the “shameful decision is yet another example of the UN Human Rights Council’s blatant anti-Israel obsession.”

“Once again, an immoral automatic majority at the Council whitewashes a genocidal terrorist organization that deliberately targets Israeli civilians while turning Gaza’s civilians into human shields. This while depicting as the ‘guilty party’ a democracy acting legitimately to protect its citizens from thousands of indiscriminate rocket attacks,” he stated.

“This travesty makes a mockery of international law and encourages terrorists worldwide,” he added.

The Foreign Ministry stated that Israel “rejects outright” the resolution by “a body with a built-in anti-Israel majority, guided by hypocrisy and absurdity.”

“Any resolution that fails to condemn the firing of over 4,300 rockets by a terror organization at Israeli civilians, or even to mention the terror organization Hamas, is nothing more than a moral failure and a stain on the international community and the UN,” Ministry Spokesperson Lior Haiat stated.

He noted that “Israeli security forces acted with the highest ethical standards, in accordance with international law, in defending our citizens from Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire” while Hamas committed “a double war crime – firing from civilian locations inside Gaza, at Israeli civilians. This resolution ignores that completely.”

The purpose of the Commission of Inquiry is to “whitewash crimes committed by the terror organization Hamas, and to incriminate Israel’s actions to defend itself and its population. Israel cannot and will not cooperate with such an investigation.”

Israel will “continue to defend itself against the terrorism of Hamas and against politicized international bodies that seek to delegitimize our lawful and just actions. Israel thanks all those countries at the HRC who did not support this outrageous resolution,” he concluded.

Ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s Permanent Representative to UN organizations in Geneva, accused the UNHRC of “creating a parallel universe where Hamas and Israel are given a moral equivalence, a parallel universe that has no grip in reality, where politics prevails over human rights. This session and this resolution are no different.”

Danny Danon, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, said he was “appalled but not in the least surprised” by the UNHRC’s resolution.

The UNHRC “is known for its anti-Semitic stance and ongoing farcical sessions which unfairly lambast Israel,” he charged.

“The greatest travesty is that the commission is made up of nations who are some of the world’s worst offenders, including Venezuela and Cuba. Their own horrific human rights violations are being ignored while they continue to point the finger at Israel,” he noted.

The UN Human Rights Council members include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Qatar, Egypt, Cuba, China, Venezuela, Mauritania, Sudan and Libya.

The UNHRC is infamously biased against Israel, with nearly half of its resolutions focused solely on Israel while it ignores war, strife and atrocities committed around the globe.