The United Nations Human Rights Council has claimed to have “found reasonable ground” that Israel committed ‘humanitarian law’ and ‘international human rights’ violations against Palestinians, during violent protests along the Gaza border with the Jewish state. According to U.N. War Crimes Commission Chairman Santiago Canton: “We have found reasonable ground to believe that humanitarian law and international human rights violations have taken place and it is also part of our mandate and we said that in the long report, those violations under human rights and humanitarian law may constitute international crime violations. There, we have asked the office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights to present our report to the ICC (International Criminal Court) which is conducting an ongoing investigation.”
The world body’s war-crimes commission head further stressed that Israel should avoid shooting – what he termed as – “legitimate targets,” in cases in which terrorists operate from within civilian crowds, in order to protect the lives of innocent civilians. “We believe that in situations of crowd control and in situations that we deem to be civilian in nature, if there are individuals in the crowd that may be legitimate targets, you still cannot shoot at the crowd because you may shoot or kill innocent individuals, and we say that very clearly in the long report,” said Santiago Canton.
The Human Rights Council, which has published more condemning reports against the Jewish state than any other country around the world, has refrained from condemning the Islamist Hamas organization – which controls the Palestinian enclave – for its role in promoting and facilitating weekly violent protests. Additionally, the U.N. body abstained from criticizing civilian Palestinian protesters for their attempted breach of the Gazan border-barrier into Israel as well as their continued use of improvised explosives and incendiary kites and balloons against Israeli soldiers and civilians
In response to what Israel termed as “a theater of the absurd,” hundreds of people attended a pro-Israeli demonstration in front of the U.N. Human Rights Council building, protesting its chronic bias against the Jewish country. Among those protesting was U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenel, who accused the Council of adopting a one-sided standard that could only be interpreted as “anti-Semitism.” In Grenell’s words, “In the case of the Human Rights Council, anti-Semitism comes from the belief that the awesome responsibility of promoting human rights consists almost entirely of criticizing one small democracy already struggling to survive. To pass resolution after resolution on Israel while frequently ignoring China, Cuba, or Russia is a horrendous hypocrisy. Applying one standard to the state of Israel and not applying the same standard to others is anti-Semitic.”
The demonstrators voiced growing frustration over the U.N. body’s actions, terming its continued persecution of Israel as a “blatant injustice.” Eva Korulski, a Polish Citizen attending the Pro-Israel rally was quoted saying that “There is a blatant injustice, probably because of the countries that compose the U.N. and include a lot of Arabic countries that ganged up against Israel.” / “Did Human Rights (council) accuse Hamas for terrorizing Palestinians and for terrorizing Israelis? Nobody accuses Hamas.”