Canada is being commended for standing alone to oppose a “one-sided” UN resolution critical of Israel in its war against Hamas.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) voted 33-1 with 13 abstentions on a resolution that called for an halt to military attacks in Gaza and an immediate Israeli withdrawal. The resolution also branded Israel’s military operation an “aggression” that had “resulted in massive violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure.”
The resolution, passed last week during the council’s ninth special session, also called for the “dispatch of an urgent independent international fact-finding mission to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
“Canada has to be commended for taking the position it did at the UNHRC,” said Moshe Ronen, chair of the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC), the Jewish community’s advocacy arm for Israel. “The resolution was unfair at the least and a farce at best. There was no mention of Hamas and its ongoing attacks. It pointed the finger at Israel.”
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UNWatch, a Geneva-based organization that monitors United Nations’ actions on human rights, said, “Canada showed courage and leadership in defending the principle of human rights and in opposing unfair attacks by the Islamic and Arab countries to legitimize Hamas and grant impunity to Hamas. The resolution ignored the suffering of one million Israeli civilians who are under constant rocket fire. Canada is to be saluted for its moral leadership.”
Prior to casting the opposing vote, Marius Grinius, Canada’s representative at the UNHRC, said “the draft text still failed to clearly recognize that rocket fire on Israel had led to the current crisis. It also used unnecessary, unhelpful and inflammatory language.”
Israel’s representative, Aharon Leshno-Yaar, quoted former UNsecretary general Kofi Annan asking whether all the UN resolutions and conferences had provided any tangible benefits to the Palestinians.
Furthermore, “in the real world, there could be no meaningful consensus without Israel. The current resolution was not balanced and did not reflect the realities in the Gaza Strip and did no service to the cause of peace or to the human suffering of Palestinians in Gaza… Such a resolution would only embolden Hamas and weaken the trust of the Israeli public in the United Nations and the council,” Leshno-Yaar said.
The Palestinian representative, Ibrahim Khraishi, said “the open wound that the Palestinian people had suffered had been offered at the altar of the Human Rights Council, and it was hoped this would be remedied… The barbaric acts of aggression required the calling for the establishment of a fact-finding mission to investigate Israeli slaughters and acts of terror.”
The resolution was supported by a host of Asian and African states – most of them dictatorships –that were joined by Argentina, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines and Russia.
European Union countries abstained, along with Cameroon, Japan and South Korea.
Ronen called the Europeans’ stance “a gutless position to take. Hamas and Islamic organizations threaten countries that don’t oppose Israel and support Hamas in their terrorist activities. The Europeans were cowed and browbeaten by these threats.”