The US views the UN probe on the IDF’s actions during last year’s Operation Protective Edge as clearly biased. The US State Department therefore has no interest in further investigation by the world body on this issue.
Hamas terrorists march with their rockets. (AP/Mohammad Hannon)
The US rejects the UN’s report that probed the IDF’s actions during Operation Protective Edge as biased and challenges “the very foundation upon which this report was written,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday. The US also sees no need to pursue with the report at the UN Security Council (UNSC) or the International Criminal Court (ICC), he said.
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) released on Monday another biased report on Israel’s war against Hamas last year. Based largely on hearsay, the report alleged that Israel committed war crimes while operating against Hamas terror infrastructure in Gaza and that the IDF intentionally targeted civilians.
The US was “certainly reading” the report, as it reads all UN reports, Kirby said, but challenges “the very mechanism which created it. And so we’re not going to have a readout of this. We’re not going to have a rebuttal to it. We challenge the very foundation upon which this report was written.” Therefore, he explained, the US does not see a need for any further Security Council work on this issue.
The US also rejects “using this report in any referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC).”
“We do not support any further UN work on this report,” Kirby reiterated. The US rejects “the basis under which this particular commission of inquiry was established because of the very clear bias against Israel in it.”
The US believes that the report does not require “any further action” at the UNSC or elsewhere due to a “bias against Israel that established the mechanism for the commission of inquiry into this particular conflict,” Kirby concluded.
On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest responded to the report by reaffirming Israel’s right to self-defense. The administration in Washington, he added, was nonetheless awaiting “further outcomes” of Israel’s own investigation into the war.
Hamas, which was also said to have committed war crimes in the report, welcomed the chapters referring to Israel and its “condemnation of the Zionist occupier for its war crimes.” It rejected the chapters that cited the terror organization’s war crimes abuses.
By: Max Gelber, United with Israel
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