Israel denounces UNHRC as ‘kangaroo court’
Israel denounces UNHRC as ‘kangaroo court’ Jerusalem Post, Tovah Lazaroff, July 24, 2014
(The UNHRC claims to be four-square in favor of “proportionality.” Shouldn’t it lead the way by showing at least a smidgen of proportionality itself? — DM)
Council to probe Israeli “war crimes” after holding a special emergency session in Geneva on the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza; US was the only one of 47-member states to oppose the probe.
OVERVIEW OF the Human Rights Council at the UNHRC Photo: Reuters
Israel attacked as a “travesty” a UN decision on Wednesday to probe its actions against Hamas in Gaza on the same day that the terrorist organization launched 80 rockets against it, targeting civilian areas.
“This investigation by a kangaroo court is a foregone conclusion,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.
The United Nations Human Rights Council ordered the probe after holding a special emergency session in Geneva on the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. The US was the only one of 47-member states to oppose the probe, while 29 countries approved it. Another 17 states abstained, including Israel’s European allies – the UK, Germany and France – who have verbally backed Israel against Hamas.
Among those countries who supported the probe were Russia, China, India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa.
Prior to the vote, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay warned that Israel could be committing war crimes in Gaza.
“There seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated in a manner that could amount to war crimes,” she told the UNHRC.
The head of the UNHRC is scheduled to appoint an “international commission of inquiry” to look at Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories, with a focus on Gaza, but including the West Bank and east Jerusalem, since the June 12 Palestinian kidnapping of three Israeli teens.
The commission is tasked with identifying those responsible for “violations of international humanitarian law,” and with holding the violators accountable and ending their impunity.
Israel said such a probe only emboldens Hamas and encourages its policy of using civilians as human shields.
“Rather than investigate Hamas, which is committing a double war crime by firing rockets at Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians, the UNHRC calls for an investigation of Israel,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.
According to the IDF, Hamas has launched 2,249 rockets against Israel over the past 16 days. The UNHRC should be investigating Hamas’s use of hospitals as military command centers, schools as a weapons depots and its placement of missile batteries next to playgrounds, private homes and mosques, the Prime Minister’s Office said.
“The UNHRC is sending a message to Hamas and terrorist organizations everywhere that using civilians as human shields is an effective strategy,” it said.
The Prime Minister’s Office equated this probe to the infamous UNHRC Goldstone Report on Israel’s military incursion into Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead.
“The predictable result will be the libeling of Israel and even greater use of human shields in the future by Hamas,” said the Prime Minister’s Office. “Those who will pay the price will be not only Israelis but also Palestinians who Hamas will redouble its efforts to use as human shields in the future.”
But Pillay told the council that the loss of life in Gaza was disproportionate to the threat facing Israel. Since July 7, Israel has bombed Gaza from the land, sea and air, resulting in the deaths of 600 Palestinians including 147 children and 74 women, she said.
“As we saw during the two previous crises in 2009 and 2012, it is innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, including children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities, who are suffering the most,” Pillay said.
Preliminary UN figures show that 74% of those killed by IDF attacks in Gaza have been civilians, she said.
“Hundreds of homes and other civilian buildings, such as schools, have been destroyed or severely damaged in Gaza, and more than 140,000 Palestinians have been displaced as a result,” Pillay said. She condemned Hamas’s indiscriminate launching of rockets against Israel that endangers Israelis, killing three civilians in the past 16 days.
“I further emphasize that it is unacceptable [for Hamas] to locate military assets in densely populated areas or to launch attacks from such areas. However, international law is clear: The actions of one party do not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law.
“Even where a home is identified as being used for military purposes, any attack must be proportionate, offer a definite military advantage in the prevailing circumstances at the time, and precautions must be taken,” she said.
In the wake of Pillay’s comments and approval of the probe, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman labeled the UNHRC as the “council for the rights of terrorists.”
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WarSclerotic 
July 24, 2014 at 3:18 AM
Don’t take anything UNHRC says at face value, they lie and they have a hidden agenda.
This is no more than we should expect from UNHRC and so anything is says carries zero weight.
The whole UN was created by the Communists.
“In 1945, (Harry Dexter) White got another opportunity to betray his country: He was named as senior adviser to the U.S. delegation to the conference in San Francisco that founded the United Nations. In this capacity, he funneled information to his handlers as to how the U.S.S.R. could get veto power and kept them apprised of the U.S. position on significant issues. White’s perfidy was coupled with that of another high-ranking American spy for the Soviets, Alger Hiss, who presided over the U.N. conference. Hiss served as a top adviser to FDR at the Yalta conference, where Roosevelt and, yes, Winston Churchill ceded Eastern Europe to Joseph Stalin.”
From The Unfortunate Postwar Legacy of Harry Dexter White.
The Communists, or perhaps better, those who seek world domination and use Communism as their vehicle to power, their “trolley car” as Recep Tayyip Erdogan would say, the Communists being those who seek world domination and recognize that the United States stands in their way, and also Israel, as the outpost of Western Civilization in the fetid Islamic swamp called the Middle East, both Israel and then the United States itself must be eliminated if the Communists are to accomplish their nightmare dream of world domination.
The EU sold it’s soul to the Devil (Islam) a long time ago. Read “Eurabia” by Bat Ye’or. The leaders of Europe sold princess Europa into slavery in the Sultan’s rape harem in hopes of uniting the European and Islamic kingdoms into something even more powerful called the Euro-Mediterranean Community, Eurabia. Of course the EU will do everything it can to eliminate Israel, even lie about so-called “war crimes” besides, look at Syria with over a hundred thousand dead and not a peep from UNHRC, but if Israel, in self defense, tries to put an end to Hamas’s rain of rockets it’s called a “war crime”.
The UNHRC is practising something called “selective enforcement”. This is another Communist technique, make everything illegal and then have the political leadership decide which laws they will enforce, against whom and when. This means in effect that there is no law. This allows them to use the force of law arbitrarily in the manner of a tyrant and a dictator.
July 24, 2014 at 4:48 AM
“The UNHRC is practising something called “selective enforcement”. This is another Communist technique, make everything illegal and then have the political leadership decide which laws they will enforce, against whom and when. This means in effect that there is no law. This allows them to use the force of law arbitrarily in the manner of a tyrant and a dictator”
This is exactly how Obama operates.
July 24, 2014 at 8:29 AM
Israel’s Channel 2 interview with colonel Richard Kemp on the Gaza conflict
http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/israels-channel-2-interview-with.html
Colonel Richard Kemp:
No other army in the world has ever done more than Israel is doing now to save the lives of innocent civilians in a combat zone. And people like Ban Ki-moon or President Obama or other world leaders who tell Israel they should do more. Perhaps Israel should ask them what more they can do?
Islamist extremists around the world use very similar tactics. We’ve seen young boys being given hand grenades to throw at British soldiers with the intention that because they are young boys the soldier won’t shoot so the attacker would be able to do so without being killed himself. On the other hand, if they do shoot that is a propaganda victory for the Taliban.
Many British citizens, civilians, are influenced a great deal by Hamas propaganda, indirectly normally, but also by the way complex subjects are portrayed in the media and incidentally the media in some cases bare responsibility for the killing that is taking place because they are themselves projecting Hamas’s desire at propaganda and that is causing the conflict to continue. So, in some respect irresponsible media have some responsibility. And the majority of the British public are taken in by the influence of the media in this respect. There is a difference in the attitude if you talk to a British soldier or a former British soldier. Because British soldiers have fought this kind of enemy, exactly this kind of enemy in Afghanistan and in Iraq. British soldiers understand what Israelis doing and support what Israel is doing on the whole.
Question: Do you think the IDF in the end of this conflict can make Hamas surrender?
Colonel Richard Kemp:
Inevitably, Israel’s inexorable military force driving in trough Gaza will lead to the surrender of Hamas. Unfortunately, it will cost quite= a large number of Israeli soldier’s lives. Of course, whether that happens depends on pressure from the international community, the plans of the IDF and the Prime Minster of Israel, whether or not there is a ceasefire of some sort before Hamas is completely defeated
July 24, 2014 at 9:22 AM
Forgotten Syrian war claims 170,000 lives in 3.5 years
http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/generalnews/2014/07/23/forgotten-syrian-war-claims-170000-lives-in-3.5-years_9d91d4bd-df00-4a73-8f8f-c0251ffe8cbf.html
Deaths in last 3 weeks double those in Gaza. 6 children killed
23 JULY, 12:25
Mothers carry their young babies in their arms as they return to their rebel-held al-Moadhamiyah city following the entry of Syrian Red Crescent trucksMothers carry their young babies in their arms as they return to their rebel-held al-Moadhamiyah city following the entry of Syrian Red Crescent trucks
(ANSAmed) – BEIRUT – Overshadowed by fighting in the Gaza Strip, the war in Syria claimed the lives of 200 people over the last 24 hours, the Center for Documentation of Violations (VDC) said Wednesday. Roughly 50 were civilians.
In the last three weeks, since the beginning of the Israeli-Gaza conflict, lives lost in Syria have more than doubled the number of deaths in the Palestinian territory.
Since the end of June, 1348 people have been killed in fighting in Syria, while deaths in Gaza over the same period numbered 600. Six children belonging to the same family were killed today in Aleppo by Assad forces, the National Observatoru for Human Rights reported.
Over nearly 3.5 years of fighting in Syria, a total of 170,000 people have been killed – more lives than those lost during the entire 15-year Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). The VDC relies on a network of field researchers who have documented victims and the circumstances of their death since 2011, and includes members of armed forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Reports on the ground continue of armed clashes on different fronts: incessant air attacks by the Assad regime against areas supporting revolt and gunfire and mortar attacks by insurgents against areas controlled by loyalist forces.
Fighting remains most intense in the periphery of Damascus and the regions of Aleppo, Idlib, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hama.