How Dare You Accuse Us of Bias, UN Commission Members Say After Producing Biased Report

Who, us? That was basically the reaction of members of a United Nations commission accused by America and others of anti-Israel bias: They were aghast today at suggestions that their latest report is one-sided — even as they contradicted themselves by promising that their next report may address the other side. When the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council last year came up with the idea of creating an unprecedented, open-ended “independent international commission of inquiry” to bash Israel, America and most other democracies declined to support it. Scapegoating Israel is a unifying force at Geneva, however, and so a commission headed by three well-known critics of the Jewish state was founded.Today the team presented its second report at the UN General Assembly. Their yarn includes outlandish accusations about goings-on in the course of what they call Israel’s “permanent occupation” of the West Bank. The report recommends dragging Israelis to international courts, and calls on UN members to ostracize Israel. One country that is unlikely to embrace that last recommendation is America. During a meeting yesterday with President Herzog of Israel, President Biden expressed “strong opposition to the open-ended and biased nature of the UN Commission of Inquiry established in May 2021, which continues a longstanding pattern of unfairly singling out Israel and does nothing to establish conditions for peace,” according to a White House readout. Commission members were chosen for “their very public and very poisonous hatred of Israel,” the Israeli ambassador at the UN, Gilad Erdan, told the General Assembly. “Nothing screams antisemitism more than this blatant double standard against the one and only Jewish State. Maybe the UN could learn from Adidas when it comes to hiring blatant antisemites.”Who’s biased? What antisemitism? Us?The commission’s chief, Navi Pillay of South Africa — who has supported boycotting Israel, which she’s called an “apartheid state” — was aghast. “I’m 81 years old and this is the first time I’m accused of antisemitism,” she told reporters at the UN today. The commission members “should not be subjected to abuse such as this.” Another member, Chris Sidori of Australia — who has extensive ties to Palestinian groups — was just as indignant. “I’m not gonna comment on what was said, but what was not said,” he said when asked about Mr. Erdan’s comments. “There is no denial on the part of the government of Israel on the essential findings of our report.”The third commission member, Miloon Kothari of India — who was forced to apologize for saying that Jews “control” social media, and for calling on the UN to cancel Israel’s membership — chimed in as well. “There is something about our commission that has received a different response, or a response at a higher level,” he said, referring to Mr. Biden’s statement. On the bright side, he added, it would bring attention to the report. The report gives Palestinians no agency in West Bank events. Addressing women issues, for one, it fails to mention the Palestinian Authority’s lax atttidue toward honor killings. Yet, it contends that “Israel often confiscates water” in the area, so women and girls suffer most “as they have additional water-related needs for their hygiene and privacy.”Constant rocket barrages on Israeli cities, knifings of Israeli citizens, car-rammings, shootings, and other forms of Palestinian terrorism go unmentioned in a tract boasting examination of the dispute’s “root causes.” Hamas, Palestinian Islamist Jihad, the latest Nablus-based terrorist group known as the Lion’s Den — none exist as far as this report is concerned. “We condemn any form of violence,” Ms. Pillay said, promising to address attacks on Israelis in future reports — but not in this one. “We are restricted to write in 10,700 words,” Mr. Sidori chimed in. “You will find that in our report next year” these issues will be included, he said, “so be patient.” Then again, they also vowed to produce a future report dedicated to Israeli “apartheid.” Critics of the commission say that the report relies heavily on human rights groups, NGOs, and researchers that are critical of Israel.Following the commission’s call for contributions, “I facilitated over five million unique submissions relating to Jewish victims” of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, a Touro Institure professor, Anne Bayefsky, says. Her meticulous reporting, however, was likely thrown away, unopened by the commission, she said.“We’ve received thousands of submissions” and “some of them are very difficult to read,” Ms. Pillay told the Sun. “It seems that they are, really, records of Holocaust victims and so on, so not relevant to us.”Boasting a unique, open-ended mandate to forever zero-in on one issue, the commission is sure to keep alive Geneva’s obsession with Israel, at the expense of examining human rights violations elsewhere. “We are supposed to look at the root causes, we are supposed to look at the situation inside Israel, we are supposed to look at third party responsibility — it would be impossible to do that in a year or two, so it makes very much sense that we are given an open-ended mandate,” Mr. Kothari told the Sun.No such extensive mandate was created to examine Communist China’s oppression of the Uighurs, Afghanistan and Iran’s war against women, or other world atrocities. The reason, as Mr. Kothari once indicated, is because the countries that mandated the commission believe that Jews, and by extension Israel, control everything.

How Dare You Accuse Us of Bias, UN Commission Members Say After Producing Biased Report

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