Luke Tress is editor and reporter in New York for The Times of Israel.
The United Nations Open-ended Commission of Inquiry into Israeli and Palestinian Rights Violations said Thursday it will investigate apartheid allegations against Israel, confirming fears in Jerusalem that the questionable investigation seeks to stigmatize it with the term toxic.
The ongoing UN investigation established through the Human Rights Council in the wake of last year’s 11-day war between Israel and Gaza terrorists to investigate rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, has focused almost exclusively on Israel.
The commission released its report of the moment last week, calling on the UN Security Council to end Israel’s “permanent occupation” and urging UN member states to prosecute Israeli officials.
On Thursday, the three members of the commission said the long-term reports would investigate apartheid in Israel, at a briefing at the United Nations in New York. They said the investigation has focused so much on the “root causes” of the conflict, which characterize. Israel’s presence in the West Bank.
According to Dr. Navi Pillay, a former UN human rights leader who chairs the commission, apartheid is a “manifestation of occupation. “
“We are at the root of the cause that is the profession and the component of it is a component eheid,” Pillay said. “We’ll get there. That’s the good looks of this open mandate, it provides us with the action box.
Commission member Miloon Kothari also said the open nature of the investigation allowed him to read about the apartheid allegation.
“We will get there because we have many years and problems to look at,” he said.
“We believe that a comprehensive technique is needed, so we want to take a look at the disorders of colonialism,” Kothari added. “Apartheid itself is a very useful paradigm, so we have another technique, but we’ll definitely get there. “
Israel refused to cooperate with the commission and did not allow it access to Israel or Palestinian-controlled spaces in the West Bank and Gaza. He rejected last week’s report, calling the panel neither credible nor legitimate. On Thursday, Israel’s ambassador to the UN said the panel members were selected because they “abhorred” Israel.
Earlier reports this year indicated that the Foreign Ministry is planning a crusade to prevent accusations of apartheid through the commission. A leaked cable allegedly revealed that Israeli officials were involved in the damage the commission’s first report could cause if it referred to Israel as an “apartheid state. “
Prime Minister Yair Lapid, when he was foreign minister earlier this year, warned that Israel would face intense campaigns to label it an apartheid state this year.
The UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others have accused Israel of apartheid for the past two years, borrowing the term codified racial discrimination from South Africa.
Israel has categorically denied accusations of apartheid, saying its Arab minority enjoys full civil rights, while most Palestinians, who live outside Israel’s sovereign territory, are subject to Palestinian Authority rule under the Oslo Accords.
He also gets angry at the term “occupation” to describe his activities in the West Bank and Gaza. Perspective of Gaza, from which it withdrew foot soldiers and settlers in 2005, as a hostile entity ruled by the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas, and perspective of the West Bank as an issue of disputed territory for peace negotiations, which collapsed about a decade ago. The Palestinians claim the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war, for a long-term independent state.
The commission presented its latest report to the UN General Assembly on Thursday.
The 28-page report accuses Israel of violating foreign laws by making permanent its rule over the West Bank and annexing land claimed by Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Syrian lands in the Golan Heights. citizens, theft of herbal resources and gender-based violence against Palestinian women.
Not mentioning Hamas, rockets or terrorism at all, the panel has continually pointed out that alleged Palestinian crimes fall within the scope of the investigation.
All 3 members of the commission have harshly criticized Israel in the past, with Israel saying the investigation is biased and anti-Semitic.
It stoned the anti-Semitic report, “biased, false, inciting and manifestly unbalanced. “
Pillay on Thursday denied accusations that he had in the past classified Israel as an apartheid state. The monitoring organization UN Watch said it had documented several cases in which it accused Israel of apartheid as recently as 2020.
She has also been criticized for her defense of Kothari, after he sparked an uproar earlier this year when he said social media was “largely controlled through the Jewish lobby,” bringing up anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power. He also asked why Israel at the United Nations.
Israel’s UN envoy Gilad Erdan on Thursday denounced the report along with the parents of Ido Avigal, a boy he killed through Hamas in the 2021 conflict.
– Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) October 27, 2022
Panel members said Israel’s critics “denied the findings” of the report.
The United States has also consistently condemned the commission. U. S. President Joe Biden denounced the investigation as biased Wednesday in a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
The investigation “continues a long-standing trend of unfairly Israel and does nothing to identify the terms of peace,” the White House said.
Pillay on Thursday called accusations of anti-Semitism “offensive” and “deviant. “
“The 3 of us are not anti-Semites. Let me explain this, and then to add insult to injury, they said the report was also anti-Semitic. There is not a word in this report that can be interpreted as anti-Semitic. “Semitic,” he said. It’s talked about as a distraction. “
“We are so committed to justice, the rule of law and human rights and will not be subjected to abuses like this. They are completely false, all false and lies,” he said.
She said Israel may be to blame for foreign crimes, adding war crimes, through the transfer of civilians to “occupied territories,” referring to settlements in the West Bank, where some 500,000 Israelis live.
Kothari denounced the settlers as a “paramilitary force. “
“They can do whatever they want, they can loot houses, they can destroy olives,” he said.
Pillay dismissed security considerations cited across Israel for maintaining a presence in the West Bank as “a fiction” that the country sought to “hide. “
“Some of Israel’s policies in the West Bank are ostensibly aimed at justifying security concerns,” he said.
The commission called on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, demanding nothing from the Palestinians.
Kothari rejected the concept of an Israeli withdrawal as a component of peace talks toward a two-state solution, a procedure subsidized by much of the foreign community.
“How can we communicate about peace or negotiations before action is taken on the Israeli side?” said Kothari.
While Israelis seek at most a two-state solution, Israel maintains that a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank without promises of security would create a terror state on its doorstep, pointing to Gaza, where it has waged repeated wars to thwart Hamas rocket attacks on civilians, for example. Israel also justifies its blockade of the Gaza Strip, which it maintains throughout Egypt, as mandatory security measures to prevent terrorism.
The first report, released in May, discussed rocket attacks and Palestinian terrorism, but blamed Israel’s “persistent discrimination against Palestinians” for violence between the two sides.
The commission said Thursday it “condemns the entire bureaucracy of violence. “
Commissioner Chris Sidoti said long-term reports will have “more comprehensive coverage” and said reporting on Israel is limited because Israel did not allow commissioners entry.
“If we are allowed to enter Israel, we will ask those questions to the appropriate officials,” Kothari said. “Give us your share of history because we can establish the facts fairly. “
The commissioners also don’t have Gaza or the West Bank.
The commission was established last year at a special Human Rights Council consultation in May 2021 following fighting between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip. of foreign human rights law” in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
The commission was the first to have an open mandate from the U. N. human rights framework, rather than tasked with investigating an explicit crime, and critics say such a permanent review shows an anti-Israel bias within the 47-member council. . He supports the commission as a way to be aware of the injustices suffered by Palestinians during decades of Israeli rule.
“They seem to settle for a profession that has no end but they complain about this commission. The open mandate allows us to address some of those issues in depth,” Pillay said.
The commission also argued that it had not initiated the investigation (member states had) and said it believed more UN investigations were being opened.
I joined The Times of Israel after many years of American and Israeli policy for the Israeli media.
I that guilty policy of Israeli politicians means presenting a 360-degree view of their words and movements, not only conveying what is happening, but also what it means in the broader context of Israeli society and the region.
It’s hard to do because you can rarely take politicians literally: you have to go the extra mile to provide full context and try to triumph over your own biases.
I am proud of our paintings that tell the story of Israeli politics in a direct and comprehensive way. I believe that Israel is more powerful and more democratic when professional bloodhounds get these deceptive paintings right.
His of our paintings through joining the network paintings of The Times of Israel allows us to continue doing so.
Thank you, Tal Schneider, political correspondent.
That’s why we introduced The Times of Israel ten years ago: to provide discerning readers like you with the must-have politics of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other media outlets, we have not set up a paywall. But because the journalism we do is expensive, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become vital to help our paintings join the Times of Israel community.
For just $6 a month, you can help our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel WITHOUT ADVERTISING, as well as access exclusive content only for members of The Times of Israel community.
Thank you, David Horovitz, founding editor of The Times of Israel.