WarSclerotic

Known Israel critic to lead UNHRC Gaza probe, Jerusalem Post, Tovah Lazaroff, August 11, 2014

(Couldn’t they get a well known “neutral intellectual” such as former President Jimmy Carter? He would feel right at home in the “death to Israel” echo chamber. Like the rest, he wouldn’t concern himself with Israel’s evidence or, for that matter, any bothersome aspects of international law and custom on warfare. — DM)

The Prime Minister’s Office says the commission is akin to a ‘kangaroo court’; Foreign Ministry says Israel does not plan to cooperate with the investigation.

A United Nations Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York Photo: REUTERS

International Canadian law expert William Schabas — known for his past criticism of Israel — will head the United Nations Human Rights Council’s probe into the IDF’s action in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the last two months.

The commission is tasked with identifying those responsible for “violations of international humanitarian law,” and with holding the violators accountable and ending their impunity. It’s expected to deliver its report to the UNHRC in March, 2015.

UNHRC President Ambassador Baudelaire Ndong Ella announced the appointments to the three-member panel on Monday in Geneva.

Also of note on the panel is British-Lebanese lawyer Amal Alamuddin, who is engaged to American Hollywood star George Clooney.

The third panelist is legal expert Doudou Diene of Senegal, who was a UN special investigator on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

When the probe was first announced in July the Prime Minister’s Office said it was akin to a “kangaroo court.” The Foreign Ministry has said that Israel does not plan to cooperate with the investigation.

The latest UNHRC investigation against Israel, has been equated with the infamous UNHRC Goldstone Report that accused Israel of war crimes during Israel’s military incursion into Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead.

According the Geneva based UN Watch, Schabas lauded the Goldstone report and said that its primary author, South African jurist Richard Goldstone should be “on next year’s Nobel short list.”

It called on Schabas to recuse because in the past he said that Prime Minister Netanyahu and former President Shimon Peres should be indicted before the International Criminal Court.

“Under international law, William Schabas is obliged to recuse himself because his repeated calls to indict Israeli leaders obviously gives rise to actual bias or the appearance thereof,” said UN Watch’s executive-director Hillel Neuer said.

“You can’t spend several years calling for the prosecution of someone, and then suddenly act as his judge,” said Neuer. “It’s absurd — and a violation of the minimal rules of due process applicable to UN fact-finding missions.”

From 2002 to 2004 Schabas served on the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in 2010 drafted a report to the Secretary General on the death penalty.

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