Unsurprisingly, the United Nations Human Rights Council showed on Tuesday that it continues to be the one-sided biased organization that we have long known it to be. It is blinded by a hatred for Israel, and instead of standing up for the values upon which this international institution was founded, it prefers to give credence to terrorists and forces that actively work to undermine democracy and freedom.
This time, it was the UN’s initial report by its highly contentious Commission of Inquiry led by Navanethem Pillay, the former UN high commissioner for human rights. In the report, Pillay and her two colleagues concluded that Israel is largely to blame for its conflict with the Palestinians.
“The commission notes the strength of prima facie credible evidence available that convincingly indicates that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation, has a clear policy of reassuring the complete control over the occupied Palestinian Territory and is acting to alter the demography through the maintenance of a repressive environment for Palestinians and a favorable environment for Israeli settlers,” the report said.
Israel slammed the report and said it was “nothing more than a waste of money and effort of the United Nations’ systems” and “part and parcel of the witch hunt being carried out by the Human Rights Council against Israel.”
UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer also criticized the document, highlighting how it turns a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism.
“The report turns a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism and embraces the Hamas narrative that Israel is the root cause of all conflict,” he said. “This is exactly what we expected from Navi Pillay, who actively lobbies governments to ‘sanction apartheid Israel’ and to condemn Israel for the very conflict that she is meant to investigate.”
As an example, Neuer counted the number of times Israel and Hamas appeared in the report. Israel was mentioned 157 times, Hamas just three and Islamic Jihad and Iran not even once.
What the United Nations fails to realize is that reports like these do not help solve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. They encourage it. The Palestinians – and specifically terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad – receive a feeling from reports like these that their crimes can go unpunishable and that there is no reason for them to stop attacking innocent civilians.
The US State Department recognized this, calling the report out and saying the “Commission of Inquiry in its current form is a continuation of a longstanding pattern of unfairly singling out Israel.”
“As we have stated repeatedly, we firmly oppose the open-ended and vaguely defined nature of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on the situation in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, which represents a one-sided, biased approach that does nothing to advance the prospects for peace,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
The hypocrisy of the Human Rights Council never ceases to amaze. Mauritania, Pakistan, Somalia and Qatar all have laws to kill homosexuals and all have seats on the UN Human Rights Council. China, not exactly a country known for its upstanding record on human rights, also sits on the council.
Can we really expect anything fair and objective to come out of such a body?
Sadly, we know the answer. But the UN needs to know what the consequences are for its actions. Reports like the one drafted by Pillay ensure one thing – the perpetuation of conflict and war. The fact is, on the same day that the report came out, Israel announced it was increasing the number of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who are allowed into Israel daily to work.
Such a move shows what Israel is after – finding a way to coexist with its neighbors, even those who fire rockets at it. The UN is after something completely different – weakening the only Jewish state in the world and emboldening its enemies and detractors.
Anyone who cares about advancing peace in the Middle East and stopping violence must openly stand with Israel and call out this commission for what it is – a facade of human rights and a biased entity that needs to be shut down.