Anti-Israel Conference Underway in Geneva
This is the latest report from ACLJ Special Counsel Anne Herzberg:
Any doubts that the U.N. Committee on the Question of Palestine conference in Geneva would try to have a veneer of balance were quickly erased. The meeting got underway this morning in the large conference room directly above the main General Assembly hall. Delegates from Congo, Saudi Arabia, Syria and hundreds of UN and non-governmental organizations (NGO) delegates filled the room. The presenters all invoked the rhetoric of international law leveling unfounded claims and accusations against the Jewish state and glossed over the deliberate crimes of Hamas and its state backers Iran and Syria. Many presenters also attacked the United States for its support of the Israeli government.
The President of the Question of Palestine Division, from Senegal opened the meeting by condemning the Israeli operation in Gaza and praising NGO superpowers Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) for bringing Israeli impunity to light. He accused Israel of an onslaught against Palestinians and a total disregard for international humanitarian law. He repeated as established fact, the anonymous claims of Israeli soldiers made by the EU-funded Breaking the Silence that have been widely discredited. And he accused Israeli army rabbis of waging a holy war.
President of the General Assembly, Miguel DEscoto Brockmann prepared a statement that was read aloud calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel and praised the British government for canceling five arms contracts with Israel. He, too, praised the work of Amnesty International, the NGO leading the boycott campaign against Israel. Of course, Mr. Brockman did not call upon Iran, China, or Syria to stop its arming of Hamas and Hezbollah or for these groups to stop their relentless rocket assaults on Israeli civilians.
Ibrahim Khraishi - the official representative for Palestine - called Israels government extremist and accused Israel of unlawful colonization of Palestinian lands. He, like all of the speakers, called for enforcement of the compromised advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice against Israels security barrier, even though the opinion is of no legal effect and was fraught with procedural and legal irregularities.
Rudy Salles, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians and engaging in collective punishment. Mr.Salles also called for the Jerusalem to once again become a city of unity and peace ignoring the denial of Jews and Christians to their holy sites while the city was under Arab control before 1967. Mr. Salles also called the European Union one of the most wonderful adventures of humankind.
UN in Geneva: The Anti-Israel Rhetoric Intensifies - Day One - Afternoon Session
This is an updated report from ACLJ Special Counsel Anne Herzberg on Day One of the United Nations meeting in Geneva:
The negative drumbeat against Israel continued as the U.N. Committee on the Question of Palestine convened a panel of its hand-picked experts to share the results of their fact finding missions after the Gaza war. These presentations were intended to provide the evidence for the what the Committee considers to be Israel's violation of international law. None of the speakers at this session addressed any of the violence or crimes committed by Hamas.
John Dugard, the former UN Rapporteur who was instrumental in the UN General Assemblys referral for an advisory opinion on Israels security barrier to the International Court of Justice in 2004, presented first. Dugard was the head of the Arab Leagues Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza War. Dugard made the legal assertion that Gaza remains occupied after Israels Disengagement in 2005 and claimed that Israel had no right to self-defense in the face of Hamas rocket attacks on its civilians. He also said that international laws regarding combating terrorism and its financing had no relevance to his legal analysis of the war. He accused Israel of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide and claimed Israel was terrorizing the citizens of Gaza. Dugard ended his presentation by calling for prosecutions of Israeli military and political figures and urged the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to recognize Palestine as a state so that the court can consider Israels "crimes."
George Vella, Chair of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, appeared next. He accused Israel of collective punishment and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on Gazans. Following Vella, David Hammerstein, former EU Parliamentarian, also invoked the collective punishment charge and claimed Israels government was an obstacle to peace because it was dominated by radical elements. Ron Yaron, representative of the EU and Swedish-funded Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I)claimed IDF investigations were a whitewash and not credible. Last year, the organization claimed a Gaza cancer patient died because Israel allegedly refused to let him leave Gaza for treatment. Shortly thereafter, however, it was revealed that PHR-I claim was false and the man was alive and well.
Last to present was Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher, Bill Van Esveld. Esveld claimed that Israels actions against Hamas exceeded any conceivable military necessity. During several points in his speech, Esveld emphasized that the weapons used by Israel were manufactured in the United States. These statements were intended to bolster an anti-Israel arms boycott campaign led by Amnesty International. Esveld ended his presentation by claiming Israeli actions amounted to collective punishment and that it was critical to ensure on-going international pressure on Israel.