Israel Matzav

Time to leave the UN 'Human Rights Council'

Noah Pollak explains how the UN 'Human Rights Council' is trying to lay the groundwork for Israel to be brought to the 'International Criminal Court' (despite the fact that we never signed the treaty) and why the time has long since come for the Obama administration to stop the farcical experiment of being part of the Council (and providing 22% of its budget).

One of the Council’s flagship projects has been promoting the Goldstone Report on last year’s war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. The Council is now pushing forward with a second phase that seeks to “implement” the findings of the report. This new effort will attack the very legitimacy of the Israeli legal system and declare Israel unfit to conduct its own investigations, opening the door to the involvement of the International Criminal Court.

There is a long-standing tradition in international law of deference in legal matters to national courts and governments. As enshrined in the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Criminal Court, and in customary international law, states are given primacy in investigating and prosecuting misconduct during war — one recent example being the U.S. military’s prosecutions of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It is only in cases where there is no state authority, or a state refuses to investigate credible allegations of large-scale atrocities, that international bodies may be entitled to get involved.

These rules are an obstacle to the Council, because Israel’s legal system, both civil and military, conducts rigorous investigations into allegations of wrongdoing. It ranks with those of the leading liberal democracies as one of the most professional and independent in the world. Thus, the task before the Council is to produce a deeply biased document that provides a fig leaf of credibility to the claim that outside investigations are warranted.

Why is it likely that the Council’s new panel will conclude that Israel’s military justice system is illegitimate? It is led by a German radical named Christian Tomuschat, who performed legal advisory work for Yasser Arafat in 1996, and in 2002 wrote that Israel’s targeted killings of terrorists — the same policy the United States currently employs in Afghanistan and Pakistan — means that Israel “uses the same tactics as the terrorists themselves.” He also accused Israel of “ordering the systematic commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Furthermore, Tomuschat has written that when it comes to fighting terrorism, “there is little hope that the judicial system of the state concerned will conduct effective investigations and punish the responsible agents.”

Unfortunately ,with these people, evidence, logic and the rule of law just don't count. They are determined to lynch us.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:35 PM