Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) on Tuesday said William Schabas’s resignation from the UN Human Rights Council’s Gaza war probe will not affect the findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry, which is investigating “war crimes” charges against Israel.
Those findings are “as prejudiced as the body that established it, whose sole purpose is bashing and attacking Israel. The resignation serves to highlight once more the character of the Commission’s members and its inherent bias,” Liberman said as quoted in a press release.
Nevertheless, Liberman welcomed Schabas’s resignation as a victory for Israeli diplomacy, and as the fruit of efforts by the Foreign Ministry.
He added the move “serves to show that even the biggest hypocrites in the international organs cannot ignore the fact that Schabas’ appointment to investigate Israel was akin to the appointment of Cain to investigate the murder of Abel,” in a reference to the Biblical account of the first murder in history.
Schabas is well-known for his bias against Israel. Speaking in a 2013 panel, Schabas clearly revealed his great eagerness to bring about the prosecution of Israel over its actions in Gaza, even if that involved “twisting things and maneuvering” in the international legal arena.
In resigning from the probe, Schabas said he didn’t want allegations of his bias – strengthened by the fact that he worked as a consultant for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist group back in 2012 – to overshadow the findings of the investigation.
However Schabas is not the only member of the three-person inquiry team with a proven track record of bias against Israel.
Former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis is also a member; she was part of the 2009 Goldstone committee which accused Israel of “war crimes” in Operation Cast Lead. Israel rejected the findings of the report which many assessed as blatantly biased, and even Judge Richard Goldstone later retracted the core accusation of the report.
Given the openly anti-Israel bias of the latest probe Israel has refused to cooperate, and several months ago reportedly prevented members of the Schabas commission from entering the country on their way to Gaza.
