The United Nations never misses an opportunity to show the world how much of a bias it has against the State of Israel.
On Thursday we were witnesses to the latest example when the United Nations Human Rights Council approved a proposal to launch an investigation against Israel for alleged war crimes, including during the recent war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also called for an arms embargo against the Jewish state.
The proposal passed in a 24-9 vote while 14 countries out of the 47-member body abstained. None of the European Union countries supported the measure.
The decision marks the first time that the UNHRC has created a permanent fact-finding mission with respect to a UN member state. Israel’s Foreign Ministry, as expected, immediately announced that it had no intention of cooperating with the probe.
We completely agree with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who called the decision “shameful” and the latest “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,” the prime minister said.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said that the “commission of inquiry” would examine incidents that occurred both before and after April 13, 2021 within sovereign Israel, including Jerusalem, as well as in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The decision to call for such a probe was sparked by the 11-day IDF-Hamas war and was submitted by the Palestinian Authority and Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The text “urges all states to refrain from transferring arms when they assess, in accordance with applicable national procedures and international obligations and standards, that there is a clear risk that such arms might be used in the commission or facilitation of serious violations or abuses of international human rights law or serious violations of international humanitarian law.”
The UN decision is a boon to terrorism. Hamas, as expected, welcomed the decision and said that its actions – the firing of over 4,000 rockets into Israel, constituted “legitimate resistance.”
A look at the countries which supported the opening of the war crimes probe is quite telling. There is China, Russia, Pakistan, Cuba, Libya and Venezuela. The fact that these countries even have a seat on the UN Human Rights Council is itself absurd, let alone them standing suddenly on the side of human rights against Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East.
What these countries fail to remember is that Operation Guardian of Walls was the most accurate and precise military operation in world history. Israel dropped around 1,000 bombs on 1,000 targets. Any other military doing so would have killed thousands of people. In this case, Israel went to amazing lengths to safeguard civilian life and while every life lost is tragic and regretful, never before has a military carried out such precise airstrikes like Israel just did.
It is a testament to the investment the IDF makes in sparing the lives of civilians in the Gaza Strip, which includes phone calls to residents of homes and buildings before they are bombed as well the use of the roof-knocking tactic. No other military in the world goes to these lengths to save the lives of its enemy.
And this also has to be said: The side that is responsible for the deaths in Gaza is not Israel but Hamas. Yes, it is an Israeli plane dropping an Israeli bomb, but it is Hamas that purposely stores its weapons in civilian homes and launches its rockets from office buildings indiscriminately into Israeli population centers.
Doing so is the true war crime. It is also part of Hamas’s strategy. It embeds its weapons and installations in civilian areas since it knows Israel will retaliate to defend itself and it knows that the world will then criticize Israel and open war crimes probes like the one launched on Thursday.
By opening the probe, the UN is standing with Hamas and handing a victory to terrorism. This is the real problem and it needs to be fixed.