Petition Calls for UN Chair to Step Down

JERUSALEM, Israel -- UN Watch has announced it will file a legal petition calling on the chairman of a U.N. fact-finding commission to step down.
 
At a Thursday press conference, UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer said Prof. William Schabas, a Canadian international law professor, has proven himself biased against Israel, thereby disqualifying him to chair the commission. Even the appearance of bias, Neuer said, obligates him to step down.
 
The 20-page petition, to be submitted to the Human Rights Council on September 22, documents Schabas' position on Israel and his support for Hamas as a legitimate political entity.
 
The U.N.'s latest decision to investigate Israel -- not Hamas -- for its response to rocket bombardment from the Gaza Strip follows a long history of U.N. accusations and investigations against the Jewish state.
 
In an interview with the BBC shortly after the IDF launched Operation Protective Edge, Schabas called the number of civilian casualties in Gaza evidence of a disproportionate response by Israel. That disqualified Israel from claiming it was acting to protect its citizens. Self-defense is valid, he said, only if it's "proportionate to the threat that's being posed," the Times of Israel reported.
 
It seems Israel's efforts to document its actions with daily video clips, press releases and social media posts have had little impact at the U.N. Israeli Ambassador Ron Proser's presentations in the U.N. General Assembly have met with a similar fate.
 
Dismissing the IDF's discovery of more than 30 attack tunnels dug under Israel's border, necessitating a ground incursion to destroy them and other elements of the terror infrastructure, the U.N. formed a committee to investigate Israel.
 
In 2012, Schabas recommended that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, be investigated for war crimes. He also accused the IDF of collectively punishing Gazans during Operation Cast Lead, Israel's first military incursion into Gaza to stop Palestinian rocket fire.
 
"If we look at the poor people of Gaza… all they want is a state -- and they get punished for insisting upon this and for supporting a political party in their own determination and their own assessment that seems to be representing that aspiration," the Times quoted Schabas.
 
Schabas refusal last month to call Hamas a terror group during an interview with Israel's Channel 2 is further evidence that he should be removed from the committee. 
 
"Hamas, in Prof. Schabas's view, very clearly is a legitimate political party that represents the aspirations of the Palestinian people for statehood. He does not talk about the war crimes committed by Hamas or the daily genocidal anti-Semitism," Neuer said.