Defense minister slams investigation ordered by UN’s top human rights body following weeks of violence along Gaza fence
05/19/2018
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday accused the UN Human Rights Council of becoming a “cheerleader for terrorists,” after the UN’s top human rights body ordered an investigation into the deadly violence along the Gaza border fence this week.
Rejecting the probe, Liberman tweeted in Hebrew that “the only investigation that needs to be set up is into how the Human Rights Council became a cheerleader for terrorists.”
Israel said Friday that it will not cooperate with the investigation after the UN body voted through a resolution in a special session calling on the council to “urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry,” following the deaths of some 60 Palestinians on Monday, which coincided with the move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Almost all of the dead were members of Hamas, the terror group has acknowledged.
The US, one of two countries to vote against the investigation, called the move “another shameful day for human rights.”
אביגדור ליברמן✔@AvigdorLiberman
The council voted 29 in favor and two against with 14 countries abstaining. Australia and the US were the two countries to oppose the decision. The council also condemned “the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians.”
The inquiry mandated by the council will be asked to produce a final report next March.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said Israel would not cooperate with the probe.
On Friday, she tweeted that “the UN Human Rights Council prefers to back Hamas instead of supporting Israel’s right to defend itself from terror. We have no intention of cooperating with an international investigative committee that wants to dictate results without a connection to facts.”
The resolution “makes no mention of Palestinian violence and incitement,” protested Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aviva Raz Shechter.
“This resolution entirely disregards Israel’s right and legal duty to defend its citizens,” she said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the vote and the council as “irrelevant.”
“The organization that calls itself the Human Rights Council again proved it is a hypocritical and biased body whose purpose is to harm Israel and back terror, but mostly it proved it is irrelevant,” he added.
“The State of Israel will continue to defend its citizens and soldiers,” he said.
Israel pointed out that the vast majority of the 60 people killed in Monday’s protest “were Hamas members, as even the leaders of the terror group have acknowledged in their own voices,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Israeli statement said Israel’s actions were completely legal and intended to “protect our sovereignty and prevent a mass assault against the border with the intention of killing Israelis and carrying out terror attacks.”
Israel completely rejected the decision, saying all that it proved was that the council had “an automatic anti-Israel majority, where hypocrisy and the absurd held sway.”
Israel also accused the council of systematically ignoring real human rights violations around the world and instead “adopting far more resolutions against Israel than against all the rest of the countries in the world combined.”
Israel is not a member of the UNHRC, and Liberman on Thursday called on the US to leave it. “We need to stop lending a hand to this hypocrisy-fest,” he said.
The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, slammed the council.
“At a time when Venezuela lurches toward dictatorship, Iran imprisons thousands of political opponents, and ethnic cleansing has taken place in Burma, the UN’s so-called Human Rights Council has decided to launch an investigation into a democratic country’s legitimate defense of its own border against terrorist attacks,” said Haley. “It is another shameful day for human rights.
Hamas welcomed the decision “to probe Israel’s war crimes and violence.”
The special UN session came after seven straight weeks of mass protests and clashes along the Gaza border with Israel.
Since March 30, tens of thousands of Palestinians have taken part in weekly “March of Return” protests, which Israel says are orchestrated by the Hamas terror group and used as cover for attempted terror attacks and breaches of the border fence.
The violent demonstrations were meant to end on May 15, but Hamas leaders have said they want them to continue.
On Wednesday, a Hamas official said 50 of the 62 killed on Monday and Tuesday were members of the group and the Islamic Jihad terror group claimed another three as its members.