SC Security Council Resolution 1860 Adopted on January 8, 2009VOTE: 14 in favor, 1 abstention (United States)
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Human Rights Council Resolution S-9/1 "The grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip"Adopted on January 12, 2009 VOTE: 33 for, 1 against (Canada), 13 abstentions (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and United Kingdom) The Resolution, which set the mandate of the Goldstone Mission, decided "to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission". |
General Assembly Resolution ES-10/18 Adopted on January 16, 2009VOTE: 144 in favor, 3 against (Israel, Nauru, United States), 9 abstentions (Australia, Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Venezuela) ; Absent: Antigua and Barbuda, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nicaragua, Palau, Paraguay, Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Vanuatu. The Resolution calls for the support of the flawed Security Council resolution 1860 (2009) and in addition "expresses its support for the extraordinary efforts...particularly [by] the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)", which has well documented ties to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. |
Human Rights Council Resolution 10/21 "Follow-up to Council resolution S-9/1 on the grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip"Adopted on March 26, 2009 VOTE: 33 for, 1 against (Canada), 13 abstentions (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and United Kingdom) The Resolution recalls the Mission's biased mandate "to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression" and calls ONLY on Israel and not Hamas "to abide by its obligations under international law, international humanitarian law and international human rights law". |
Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, 13 August 2009 Pillay, who is a lawyer, however, raised no objections to her mandate and proceeded to issue a grossly one-sided, distorted account of events in Gaza. Among the 80 paragraphs in the report, only 8 refer to allegations against Hamas, while 66 discuss allegations against Israel. Rather than recognizing and condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization, the report lauds Hamas for having "made public statements that it is committed to respect international human rights and humanitarian law." (p.5, para. 7) The racist character of Hamas and the genocidal nature of its violent campaign against Israeli civilians are entirely ignored by the UN's lead actor in the fight against racism and xenophobia. Pillay is not concerned about the context of the Gaza conflict. She suggests the conflict began on the day that Israel launched Operation Cast Lead: "On 27 December 2008, Israel launched a large-scale aerial and naval offensive on the Gaza Strip...". (p. 6, para. 10) In passing, she mentions in a footnote that a few hundred rockets fell in Israel in the six months preceding the war, but fails to describe the more than seven years of rocket and mortar attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilian targets that preceded the Gaza conflict. The High Commissioner's report dismisses the fact that Hamas used - and continues to use - civilians and civilian structures as human shields. According to the report: "international human rights organizations investigations have concluded that either there was no large-scale abuse of civilians and civilian object by combatants, or that civilians deaths could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters in civilian areas." (p. 12, para 24) In other words, the conclusions rely heavily on hearsay and organizations whose investigative capacity and objectivity have been seriously questioned. (NGO Monitor: Amnesty Plays Hamas Apologist in Gaza Report, July 01, 2009; HRW's "Rain of Fire": Neither Thorough Nor Impartial; NGO Monitor April 02, 2009) Contrary to the High Commissioner's report, however, the evidence of Hamas' use of civilians as human shields is overwhelming. Hamas operatives have admitted (The Operation in Gaza - Legal and Factual Aspects, July 30, 2009, para. 119) that they frequently carried out rocket fire from schools and one Hamas legislator bragged on television of encouraging women, children and the elderly to form human shields to protect military sites against Israeli attack. Even the Secretary-General of the United Nations confirmed receiving reports (26 March 2009) of Hamas using children and others as shields to prevent attacks against launch sites and other military targets. At the Jabalya school, for example, witnesses "said that they had seen a small group of terrorists firing mortar rounds from a street close to the school." The report entirely ignores, for example, that Hamas uses schools and surrounding areas to store their weapons and train terrorists (para. 154 ff). Refusing to provide the actual context of the war, denying the threat posed to Palestinian civilians from the terrorists operating among them, and failing to object to her one-sided mandate and its predetermined conclusions, Pillay's recommendations are unsurprising. She directs them specifically only to Israel. Not a single recommendation names Hamas. |
UN Efforts to Stymie Israel's Right to Self-defense in High Gear
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