'Palestinians' to turn to International Criminal Court on Thursday
It's a travel day, so greetings to all of you from the airline lounge in Paris (France, not Texas).
There is supposed to be WiFi on my next flight, and if there is and I stay awake, there may be a few posts today.
The 'Palestinian Authority' (the state that claims it needs a state) is planning to take advantage of the incredibly biased 'investigation' into last summer's Gaza war that was released by the United Nations 'human rights council' on Tuesday by filing a complaint against Israel in the International Criminal Court on Thursday.
According to a senior Palestinian official, Palestinian Foreign
Minister Riyad al-Amliki will present the documents concerning the
results of the fighting in Gaza along with data on the damage caused by
the war, and the damage to the civilian population. He will
additionially provide information on settlement construction over the
past year, as well as the issue of the Palestinian prisoners held in
Israel, with an emphasis on administrative detention.
Since the signing of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court and Palestine's joining
the ICC in April, the Palestinian National Council has prepared
materials on a number of matters with the goal of presenting them to the
ICC, said the senior Palestinian official.
Last month, Fatah central committee member Mohammed Ashtayya told Haaretz that the Palestinian reports were comprehensive and detailed accounts of
Israel's contravention of international law and were intended to
provide the court with a sufficient basis on which to decide whether to
launch investigations.
The reports were compiled by a special committee
established at the beginning of the year to collate all the material
destined for the court. The committee was assisted by international
jurists and advisers.
The Palestinian position has received renewed
support as a result of the release of the Gaza report this week; and PA
officials have said they are being aided by lawyers who specialize in
international law, in order to prepare the documents for the ICC in
expectation that this will speed up the court's decision to open an
investigation against Israel.
We can thank all the anti-Semitic European governments for funding the NGO's that issued this report.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the report's release, the 'Palestinians' have been directing their celebratory gunfire from Gaza at Israel....
Why the Schabas Report will be every bit as biased as the Goldstone Report
Until he was forced out a month ago when it was discovered that he had worked for the PLO, William Schabas headed the United Nations 'human rights council's commission of inquiry into Israel's summer 2014 Operation Protective Edge. The UN has tried arguing that Schabas' resignation means the report won't be biased. That's nonsense. But not for the reason you think. In a lengthy article published by the Tower, Hillel Neuer explains how Richard Goldstone was duped when he headed the Commission of Inquiry into Operation Cast Lead in 2009, and how as much as Schabas was anti-Israel, his presence or absence on the Commission likely made little difference.
There seems no question that Goldstone was duped. He never suspected
that OHCHR, the UN agency in charge of providing him with professional
staff support, had quietly embedded one of the world’s top anti-Israel
lawfare strategists into the team. After all, only four years before,
Goldstone had worked on another UN inquiry on the oil-for-food program.
In that case, he was supported by a highly professional staff based in
New York, with most if not all of them lawyers and experts hired from
the outside. Goldstone assumed the Gaza inquiry would be the same.
But it was not the same. The culture of the Geneva-based OHCHR
secretariat is known to be far more anti-American, anti-colonial, and
anti-Israel than the one in New York. In his naiveté, Goldstone was
blind to the prejudice and political agenda of his own bureaucracy.
Indeed, there is not the slightest indication that Goldstone had any
knowledge of Baars’ extremist activism. But OHCHR knew—and that is why
they hired her.
On March 23, what for six months was the Schabas Commission, and now
in its final and seventh month has become the McGowan Davis Commission,
will present its report to the Human Rights Council. Do we have any
reason to expect a fair, objective, and credible report?
Not if we consider the built-in prejudice of the commission’s
founding mandate, spelled out in resolution S-21/1 of July 23, 2014,
which preemptively declares Israel guilty. It condemns the Jewish state
“in the strongest terms,” citing “widespread, systematic, and gross
violations of international human rights,” “the targeting of civilians
and civilian properties” as a form of “collective punishment contrary to
international law,” “disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks,”
“grave violations of the human rights of the Palestinian civilian
population,” and “military aggressions.” The resolution mentions Israel
18 times. Hamas is not mentioned once.
Not if we consider that Schabas, the activist chairman who says
that he “devoted several months of work” to the project, is someone who
performed undisclosed paid legal work for the PLO—on the subject of how
to prosecute Israelis in international courts—and who famously declared
barely three years ago that the leader he most wants to see in the dock
at the International Criminal Court is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
And—as the cautionary tale of lawfare general Grietje Baars as the
key author of the original Goldstone Report makes clear—not if we
consider the outsized role played by OHCHR in compiling the evidence,
processing submissions, and picking the people to draft the report’s
chapters and conclusions. Everything we now know about how OHCHR
engineered the travesty of the original Goldstone Report indicates that
Goldstone II will suffer the same politically-motivated fate.
Read the whole thing. The woman whose picture is at the top of this post is Grietje Baars, whose name you probably never heard until today.
Head of UN's Operation Protective Edge probe resigns
In yet another disgrace for the United Nations, William Schabas, the head of the United Nations panel probing this past summer's Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, has resigned as head of the panel, in effect admitting the veracity of Israeli allegations that he is biased against the Jewish state.
In a letter to the commission, a copy of which was seen by Reuters,
Schabas said he would step down immediately to prevent the issue from
overshadowing the preparation of the report and its findings, which are
due to be published in March.
Schabas' departure highlights the sensitivity of the UN investigation
just weeks after prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The
Hague said they had started a preliminary inquiry into alleged
atrocities in the Palestinian territories.
In the letter, Schabas said a legal opinion he
wrote for the Palestine Liberation Organization in 2012, for which he
was paid $1,300, was not different from advice he had given to many
other governments and organizations.
"My views on Israel and Palestine as well as on
many other issues were well known and very public," he wrote. "This work
in defense of human rights appears to have made me a huge target for malicious attacks (...)."
Indeed, his views on Israel and the 'Palestinians' werewellknown, which is exactly why he should not have been chosen to head this panel in the first place.
But what the UN is trying to do by having Schabas resign is beyond disgraceful: Schabas has already completed the 'fact-finding,' which means that the report has effectively been written. Schabas' bias will seep throughout the report, because he determined what 'facts' would be included in the report. But now Schabas can deny responsibility for the report itself, because after all he's not writing the final version.
Of course: Leftist AG's office clears B'Tselem as 'national service'
National Service (Sheirut Leumi) is a substitute for army service which is undertaken by many religious Jewish women (and some religious Jewish men) who won't serve in the army on religious grounds, as well as by people who have physical impediments to serving in the army... and by some conscientious objector types. About six weeks ago, the service's director - Sar Shalom Jerbi - issued a directive stating that volunteering at B'Tselem, our Holocaust-denying anti-Israel propaganda machine, did not constitute national service. Our Leftist Attorney General's office has now overruled that decision, which means that providing anti-Israel propaganda to the biased Schabas Commission will now be deemed 'national service' to the State of Israel.
On Tuesday Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber announced that the decision was null and void.
Zilber
said that Jerbi can strip an organization of the right to receive
national service volunteers only if the organization rejects Israel’s
existence as a Jewish and democratic state, incites to violence, terror
or racism, or supports terrorism or armed struggle against Israel.
However, she said, he failed to prove that B’Tselem does any of these.
Jerbi
had cited two interviews B’Tselem director Hagai El-Ad gave during the
war, one to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network and another to
Radio Tel Aviv, as evidence that the organization supports or incites
to terror. But Zilber deemed this evidence “weak.”
Moreover, she
said, the agency is obligated to treat all organizations equally, and
the fact that Jerbi hadn’t investigated other groups whose activities
are similar to those of B’Tselem “also paints the decision in a
problematic hue from the standpoint of equality.”
Jerbi’s
decision, Zilber wrote, “opens the door to politicization of the
National Civilian Service Administration, which is liable to use its
authority to deny recognition only to certain groups, thereby imposing
an economic and public price tag on them, only because of statements
that are controversial on one side of the political spectrum.”
Jerbi
said he would honor Zilber’s decision, but also plans to explore other
ways “to prevent the absurd situation in which the State of Israel,” via
its provision of national service volunteers, “continues financing an
organization that accused Israel Defense Forces soldiers and the State
of Israel of committing war crimes during Operation Protective Edge [in
Gaza] and libeled it around the world.”
Jerbi is seemingly faced with the Hobson's choice of providing national service volunteers to numerous anti-Israel organizations, or finding the budget to investigate all of them. What could go wrong?
In a JPost op-ed, Mordechai Kremnitzer, vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute and
former dean of the Law Faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explains how the commission of inquiry into Operation Protective Edge established by the UN's 'human rights council' (sorry guys - I cannot type that terms without scare quotes and lower case - it's just such a farce), headed by the implacably biased William Schabas, is betraying the cause of international criminal law.
The body that established a committee to investigate suspected war
crimes – the UN Human Rights Council – has a reputation for singling out
Israel. The committee it appointed is suspected in advance of not
having the pursuit of truth as its goal. What is more, even the
resolution that set up the committee was worded in a way that suggests
“sentence first, verdict afterwards.”
This suspicion is only
augmented by the fact that its members do not include a single citizen
of the country whose military conduct is the focus of its inquiry - even
though Israel has no shortage of retired judges and jurists of
international repute. The damage to the inquiry is redoubled when its
chair has already declared his desire to see the prime minister of
Israel in the dock at the International Court of Justice - that is, the
committee’s chair has already formed a negative judgment about the head
of the political system that oversees the military whose conduct is to
be investigated. He cannot be perceived as an unbiased investigator.
These
circumstances guarantee that Israel will find it very difficult to
cooperate with a committee that can by no means be seen as objective and
fair minded. Even Israeli civil rights organizations - whose role is to be critical
of and a check on Israeli government actions - will not be able to see
the committee as anything but a kangaroo court. The result is that the
inquiry will rely on the narrative of only one side - Hamas.
The
partiality of the inquiry will inevitably lead to biased findings
devoid of real value. The conclusions based on these findings, too, will
necessarily be worthless, as happened with the Goldstone Commission.
Such a report will only undermine the credibility of international
criminal law.
The committee’s chair has stated that Israel would
have been against it even were his place taken by the web-slinging
superhero Spiderman.
William Schabas has been asked to recuse himself from chairing the United Nations 'human rights council's 'commission of inquiry' into Operation Protective Edge because of comments that show he has prejudged the outcome.
Schabas has mocked attempts to unseat him as commission chair, telling an Arab newspaper that “even if Spider-Man were appointed to head the commission they would attack him.
UN Watch reports that when Schabas was in the dock himself - as the President of the militant Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) back in 1974 at the University of Toronto, he had a far different viewpoint.
What is particularly ironic, however, is that, according to a decision of the Ontario Divisional Court (Re Schabas et al. and Caput of the University of Toronto et al.), Schabas tried to disqualify the entire panel hearing his case by arguing that they were biased.
The court rejected Schabas’ claims, finding “no evidence whatsoever to support a reasonable apprehension” of bias.
Yes, of course, Schabas was only a doctoral student, and no one
should be held to account for all their university indiscretions.
But there is simply no justification for Schabas to continue to
refuse to give a legal response to the very genuine allegations of bias,
or the reasonable apprehension thereof, on his part.
I'm shocked at his hypocrisy. Just totally shocked..... (NOT!).
The first investigation will examine events surrounding the military strike on a Gaza beach on July 16, in which four Palestinian kids were killed.
The second will look into the circumstances around an IDF strike on an UNRWA school in Gaza on July 24, in which 14 Palestinians were killed.
Additionally, since the end of hostilities in Gaza, Efroni has ordered immediate in-depth investigations into three cases. The first involved suspected looting by soldiers, the second investigation is examining how a woman who coordinated an exit from her home in Gaza was nevertheless shot and killed, and a third is looking at claims that a 17-year-old Gazan youth was taken into custody and held for five days, during which, according to his claim, he was moved from place to place by soldiers and beaten.
In recent weeks, the Military Prosecutor's office has closed several cases related to the war, after concluding that no criminal wrong doing occurred. An officer in the prosecutor's office decided not to open an investigation into a strike on a journalist in Gaza after it was discovered that he was a terror operative, suspected of carrying a missile in his vehicle.
Another case that was closed involved an air strike on a home following the evacuation of the Kaware family from it on July 8.
Family members left the home after a small unarmed bomb was dropped on its home, but then ran back into the house after a second, armed missile was already fired at the target. Eight members of the family were killed in the strike. "There is no suspicion that international law was violated here," the sources said on Wednesday.
...
The teams are currently looking at 44 incidents from the war. Of those, two have resulted in criminal investigations so far, 12 are being examined, seven have been closed, and three are pending, army sources added.
As if that biased UN Commission chaired by William Schabes is going to give us a break for acting properly....
In a written petition to have Schabas recused filed on Sept. 4, UN
Watch, a Geneva-based NGO, showcased a July 17 BBC interview in which
Schabas presumed Israel guilty. Although at the time of that interview
there had been no ground offensive, Schabas declared “prima facie there
is evidence of disproportionality” by Israel sufficient to declare the
air strikes unjustified because “there are a huge number of civilian
casualties on one side and virtually no civilian casualties on the
other.” The BBC interview is damning evidence sufficiently questioning
Schabas’ impartiality under a longstanding due process principle that
judges or investigators “should be, and should be seen to be, free of
commitment to a preconceived outcome.”
Also on Sept. 4, Schabas championed his commission’s adjudicatory
relevance in a CNN interview, stating: “the International Criminal Court
is sitting in the wings,” and the commission will likely “provide
materials that would go to the prosecutor of the ICC and so that’s a
pretty big stick if we come to the conclusion that there were war
crimes.” The Palestinians recently disclosed plans to join the ICC,
which might be considered encouraging news to Schabas, who has
repeatedly promoted prosecuting Palestinian claims against Israel at the
ICC. Schabas’ admission to CNN that his commission aims to assist any
ICC prosecution lends greater significance to a 2012 address he
delivered to the Russell Tribunal, a London-based pro-Palestinian NGO
that even Judge Richard Goldstone [the author of a controversial UN
report on Israeli actions during the last Gaza war] discredited as “one
sided.” Schabas quipped in that speech: “My favorite would be [Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu within the dock of the International
Criminal Court.”
The BBC and CNN interviews confirm that Schabas should be disqualified
either for actual bias or the appearance of bias. As UN Watch argues,
the BBC interview demonstrates “commitment to a preconceived outcome” of
“Israeli guilt for war crimes” that “constitutes an overt case of
actual bias on the very question that the [UN commission] members are
meant to impartially assess.” These circumstances distinguish Schabas’
case from that of Nabil Elaraby, current head of the Arab League, who
was part of the 2004 judicial panel at the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) that issued an advisory opinion on “Legal Consequences of
the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Territory.” The ICJ refused
to disqualify Elaraby notwithstanding anti-Israel sentiments he
expressed in a newspaper interview prior to joining the Court. The ICJ
reasoned that Elaraby “expressed no opinion on the question put in the
present case” during that interview. In stark contrast, Schabas’ opinion
of prima facie guilt by Israel relates directly to the very issues and
events his commission is supposed to assess.
No other country in the world would be subjected to this treatment. None.
William Schabas on why William Schabas should be disqualified from heading Gaza inquiry
Daniel Edelman, the brother of one of my childhood friends, uses William Schabas' own words to explain why William Schabas should be disqualified from chairing the United Nations fact-finding committee on Gaza.
Whether Professor Schabas thinks he can adjudicate the accusations
against Israel fairly and independently has no bearing on the question
of impartiality. Judicial disqualification is not dependent on the
judge’s subjective assessment of impartiality but is based on an
objective test of whether the reasonable person aware of the facts and
circumstances might consider the judge to be biased. For example, the
Rome Statute authorizing the International Criminal Court provides: “A
judge shall not participate in any case in which his impartiality might
reasonably be doubted on any ground.” Even more directly, the Rules of
Procedure and Evidence applicable to the Rome Statute establishes as a
“ground[] for disqualification of a judge” the “[e]xpression of
opinions, through the communications media in writing or in public
actions, that objectively, could adversely affect the required
impartiality of the person concerned.”
...
Moreover, Professor Schabas himself instructs that war crimes’ tribunal
judges should be disqualified where there is even the appearance of
bias under the objective test. In his book on the UN War Crime
Tribunals, Professor Schabas wrote: “A judge may be disqualified in any
case in which he or she has a personal interest, or some other
association which might affect his or her impartiality. The test is one
of ‘reasonable apprehension of bias.’”
Professor Schabas must concede that UN fact-finding commissions are
subject to these same standards of judicial impartiality. In various
interviews, Professor Schabas has emphasized that he and others
conducting the fact-finding are obliged to be as impartial as any
judge. Professor Schabas is also likely aware of Professor Thomas
Franck’s seminal article relevant to UN fact-finding entitled Procedural Due Process in Human Rights Fact-Finding By International Agencies in
which “choice of fact-finders” is one of the “key indicators of
procedural probity.” As Professor Franck wrote: “impartiality. . .
certainly implies that persons conducting an investigation should be,
and should be seen to be, free of commitment to a preconceived outcome.”
...
Perhaps Professor Schabas considers there to be only a few expert
scholars with the necessary knowledge and skills to function as UN
fact-finders investigating Israel. Such elitism, however, should never
be rationalized as an excuse for suppressing the fundamental due process
protections safeguarding judicial impartiality. If Professor Schabas
genuinely cares about the integrity and fairness of UN fact-finding, he
should immediately recuse himself from the commission. Otherwise,
Professor Schabas and the Human Rights Council have only themselves to
blame for discrediting this commission as legally invalid.
Finally: Israel decides that serving B'Tselem is not serving the State
It took way too long to happen, but the State of Israel has finally concluded that serving the 'human rights' group B'Tselem does not constitute service to the State. Working at B'Tselem will no longer count as 'national service.' I'm amazed it ever did.
National Civilian Service
Administration Director Sar-Shalom Jerbi informed B'Tselem Director
Hagai El-Ad of the decision to strip the group of its "operating
organization" certification on Wednesday, via a letter.
"After reviewing the matter with several other
operating organizations, and given [B'Tselem's] activities against
Israel and IDF troops, I have decided to revoke your participation in
the National-Civilian Service Volunteer Program; especially during this
period of time, when Israel is engaged in neutralizing the threat of
rocket fire looming over millions of its citizens."
Jerbi's letter to El-Ad continued, "As you
know, Israel is currently dealing with an international delegitimization
campaign, which includes gross incitement against the IDF -- the most
ethical military in the world. Unfortunately, B'Tselem is a party to
this smear campaign. The information released by the organization and
its expressed positions encourage our enemies worldwide and prompt
anti-Semitic expressions against Israel, as well as anti-Semitic attacks
on Jews."
A B'Tselem statement issued Wednesday read,
"B'Tselem maintains that protecting human rights is a vital democratic
action done in the best interest of Israeli society. Sar-Shalom Jerbi's
decision, which we doubt he has the authority to make, is an abuse of
his administrative power for the sake of political gain. It constitutes
political and governmental persecution of a human rights group.
"Mr. Jerbi goes as far as to allude that
releasing information about human rights violations during wartime
constitutes treason, thus fanning the flames of intolerance, which have
already poisoned the political atmosphere. He has included himself in
the dubious club of those who incite against anyone expressing any
criticism" of the Gaza operation.
The decision to exclude B'Tselem from the
national service volunteer program "allows the government to bar any
organization whose positions it does not approve of, form employing
those seeking to perform national service. This action contradicts both
the principles of democracy and proper administration norms."
I'm amazed we ever called working for B'Tselem 'national service.' Good riddance!
'Impartial' Schabas: 'Netanyahu bigger threat to Israel than Hamas'
Yes, William Schabas, the 'impartial' investigator appointed to head the 'Goldstone 2' commission that will 'investigate' Israel's (but not Hamas') actions in Operation Protective Edge, really did say that Binyamin Netanyahu is the biggest threat to Israel.
Forget Hamas - he doesn't even classify them as a terror organization.
Let's go to the videotape.
More - including how to protest Schabas' appointment - here.
This may be the worst interview ever by a UN official
William Schabas, who has been appointed as the Richard Goldstone of Operation Protective Edge, was interviewed by Israel's Channel 2 television on Tuesday night. He could not have turned in a worse performance.
Asked why he called Netanyahu his
"favorite" to indict at the International Criminal Court, instead of
Syria's Assad or Hamas' Mashal, Schabas said he merely echoed the
Goldstone Report. Except Netanyahu wasn't PM then—and isn't mentioned
anywhere in the report!
Let's go to the videotape (English with Hebrew subtitles).
It's a pity that the interviewer didn't know enough facts to ask better follow-up questions. More 'highlights' of the interview here.
The United Nations 'human rights council' has appointed as the head of its commission of inquiry a Canadian law professor who has called for Prime Minister Netanyahu to be investigated for war crimes. This time, even the United States State Department has had enough.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department joined in on the criticism on
Monday, with deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf telling reporters that any
investigation related to Gaza should be done in a way that is
non-biased.
“We’ve always said that if there are specific incidents that need
investigation, that we think they should be. We said that with UNRWA
schools and we’ve said that in other cases as well,” she said.
At the same time, she added, “there’s a way to investigate things
that’s not one-sided and biased, and there’s a way that we don’t
support.”
For the State Department, that's strong opposition.
A Canadian law professor chosen to helm a United Nations commission
examining possible war crimes in Gaza scoffed Monday at charges he's
biased against Israel, while Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird scoffed
at the UN.
"The suggestion that I'm anti-Israel is absurd," William Schabas said
Monday in an interview from Toronto, pointing out that he's on the
editorial board of the Israel Law Review.
"Like everybody inside and outside Israel, I disagree with people. Is
everyone in Israel who has an opinion about (Benjamin) Netanyahu
anti-Israel?"
Of course not. But there's a huge difference between someone who opposes Netanyahu's policies, and someone how is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation into his conduct of a war who has already accused him of war crimes. It's pretty clear already what the conclusion of this 'investigation' will be.
In the meantime, another member of the 'commission' has resigned before the work even started.
The 63-year-old Order of Canada officer, renowned for his work on
international criminal and human rights law, was to be working alongside
British-Lebanese lawyer Amal Alamuddin
— the future wife of actor George Clooney — and Senegalese lawyer
Doudou Diene, who has filled UN posts on racism and human rights in
Ivory Coast.
However, Alamuddin rejected the appointment late Monday, citing pre-existing commitments.
How 'unbiased.'
There's a lot more criticism from the Canadian government and NGO's. Read the whole thing.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
