U.S. Ambassador the U.N. Nikki Haley. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Mission to the UN
The United States slammed the “so-called” United Nations Human Rights Council for voting on Friday to investigate Israel on their approach to the Gaza border riots, in which Palestinians mostly aligned with terrorists have been killed by Israel during efforts to breach Israel’s border with Gaza and conduct terrorism.
“At a time when Venezuela lurches toward dictatorship, Iran imprisons thousands of political opponents, and ethnic cleansing has taken place in Burma, the UN’s so-called Human Rights Council has decided to launch an investigation into a democratic country’s legitimate defense of its own border against terrorist attacks,” said US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley in comments released by her office. “It is another shameful day for human rights.”
An anti-Israel vote passed at the Council by a margin of 29 for, 14 abstaining, with just the US and Australia against, according to the Council’s Twitter feed. However, the list of those voting “for” included such notable human rights violators as Cuba, China, and Venezuela, as well as multiple Arab nations. Only Belgium and Spain were among the first-world Western nations who voted in favor. The voting list was highlighted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said his country “completely rejects” the resolution accepted by a “automatic anti-Israel majority.”
“An organization that calls itself the Human Rights Council once again proves that it is hypocritical and biased and that its purpose is to harm Israel and support terror,” said Netanyahu in a statement published on spokesman Ofir Gendelman’s Twitter feed. “But mostly it has proven that it is irrelevant.”
The vote follows the deaths of dozens of Palestinians in riots in recent weeks at the border fence separating Israel from Gaza. However, Hamas admitted that 50 of the most recent 62 slain were its own members, and Israel has repeatedly shown that far from peaceful protests, the Gazans have sought to breach the border fence, launched burning kites at Israeli territory to try and start destructive fires, and used the protests as cover for terrorism—including planting explosives.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom Mark Regev recently posted to Twitter a summary of an editorial he wrote in the Daily Mail in which he noted that he agrees with Hamas about the protests.
He tweeted that he agrees with Hamas when they “admit the term ‘peaceful protests’ is a ‘deception’”, “say they want to ‘tear down the border’ & murder Israelis” and “claim 50 out of the 62 killed as their own militants.”
Said Netanyahu in his comments, “Israel will continue to defend its citizens and soldiers as it has the right to defend itself.”
Gendelman pointed out in a separate Tweet that Hamas thanked the UN Human Rights Council for its vote: “When a terror org whose goal is to destroy a UN member state THANKS a UN body, you know that this UN body is morally bankrupt.”
Meanwhile, while Hamas has been trying to launch terror attacks against Israel, the Israelis continue to enable transfers of supplies into Hamas-controlled Gaza—and it’s Hamas that’s rejecting the help.
Tweeted the IDF Spokesperson on Friday, “The IDF transfers humanitarian aid to Gaza & will continue to do so in the future. On Tuesday, the IDF transferred large quantities of equipment to Gaza. All of it was returned by the Hamas terror organization.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, May 20, 2018)