The UN Human Rights Council adopted a report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in its fight against Hamas. Those afraid to condemn terror will become victims, Netanyahu warned.
The UN’s top human rights body voted to adopt a report authored by a UN inquiry commission on Operation Protective Edge and backed calls Friday for accountability in last year’s conflict in Gaza.
The decision by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has no binding effect but adds to pressure supporting war crimes prosecutions before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Israel condemned the move, saying it was one-sided and that it ignored the fact that Israel is conducting its own investigations into possible wrongdoing.
Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. (Mohammed Othman/Flash90)
As expected, 41 of the council’s 47 members voted in favor of the resolution, which cited a recent UN report concluding that both Israel and Palestinian terror groups may have committed grave crimes during the conflict.
Five countries abstained, while the United States was the only country that voted against the text, saying it was biased against Israel.
The resolution stressed that all those responsible for human rights violations must be held to account and that effective solutions should be offered to all victims, including reparations.
All European members, including Britain, France and Germany, backed the resolution, although they expressed disappointment that the firing of rockets at civilians in Israel by Hamas, which controls Gaza, was not mentioned.
Strong History of Anti-Israel Bias
The UNHRC has a strong history of anti-Israel bias, and recent reports indicate that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering withdrawing Israel’s membership.
Israel has strongly resisted allegations that its troops violated international law. Such claims against the IDF could have serious implications since the Palestinians joined the ICC, where they are pursuing war crime charges against Israel.
PM Benjamin Netanyahu. (Alex Kolomoisky/Flash90)
“The UN Human Rights Council is not interested in the facts and is not really interested in human rights,” charged Netanyahu on Friday.
“On the day on which Israel was fired at from Sinai, and at a time when ISIS is committing vicious terrorist attacks in Egypt, as Assad slaughters his people in Syria and as the number of arbitrary executions per annum climbs in Iran – the UN Human Rights Council decides to condemn the State of Israel for no fault of its own, for acting to defend itself from a murderous terrorist organization,” the Israeli leader stated. “Israel is a stable democracy in the Middle East that upholds equal rights for all its citizens and acts in accordance with international law.”
Netanyahu warned that “those who fear to openly attack terrorism will – in the end – be attacked by terrorism.”
Netanyahu also pointed out that the UNHRC has adopted more decisions against Israel than against all other countries, and therefore “cannot call itself a human rights council.”
“The State of Israel will continue to defend its citizens against those who call for its destruction and take daily action to achieve this goal,” he vowed.
Palestinian UN envoy Ibrahim Khraishi welcomed the resolution. “I think those who oppose this resolution or those who abstain from the vote will be contributing to ongoing violations and abuses against civilians,” he said.
Israel: UNHRC Adopted an ‘Anti-Israel Manifesto’
Israeli Ambassador to Geneva Eviatar Manor slammed the decision to adopt the report, saying, “Hans Christian Andersen wrote famously that the king is naked. So let me assume the role of the little boy in the story and tell you – this Council has lost its bearing.”
Calling the adopted resolution “an anti-Israeli manifesto,” Manor asserted that it “distorts the intention of the authors of the report by completely ignoring alleged violations of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.”
Manor, in his address to the UNHRC on Friday, said that “we are not dealing here with fairness or moral integrity. We are dealing with a UN organ that is highly politicized, obsessive with Israel, ignoring serious situations of human rights violations across the globe and spending its scarce resources of money and manpower on reports on my country.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
He accused the council of being an “agent provocateur feeding the flames,” saying it “failed to be a constructive player and promote rapprochement between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said the UNHRC decision was “absurd, even more so as this decision was made while Israel is once again under fire from an extreme Islamic terror organization and the region has experienced blood baths in many of its nations. The actions of the Human Rights Council have become a farce.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said the UNHRC’s decision was to be expected. “The report’s sole purpose is to tarnish Israel’s image.”
Saying the UNHRC is obsessed with Israel and does not meet the basic requirements on any proper research, Hotovely stated that “no organization or committee will preach to the most moral army in the world.
By: United with Israel Staff and AP