An ‘Israel genocide’ finding by a body dedicated to attacking Israel is not a finding

Those of us who do take a special interest in what’s going on in Gaza have spent much of the past two years since October 7 2023 bemoaning flaws in the coverage. It’s a theme we repeat pretty much daily – for good reason. Because while it’s perfectly possible and entirely legitimate to oppose aspects of Israel’s military action in good faith, and to regard the latest moves around Gaza City as wrong (indeed the IDF’s chief of staff is reportedly against it), for those of us who spend inordinate amounts of time looking at the facts, it does seem that the real problem is that so much coverage is not in fact in good faith. It starts, rather, from the premise that Israel is in the wrong: always.

But however bad the past couple of years have been in this respect, the coverage of Tuesday’s so-called “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel” commissioned for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has been breathtaking in its mistakes, its naivety, its ignorance and, in some cases, its clearly malign intent.

For one thing, the report has been almost universally described as being a UN finding that Israel is committing genocide. Leave aside, for the moment, the issue of genocide itself. The report is not a UN finding about anything. It is a report by a group of three people appointed by the UNHRC, which is notorious for its obsession with attacking Israel. The UNHRC has passed not a single resolution on any human rights abuses in Algeria, China, Cuba, Egypt or Gaza, Iraq, or Zimbabwe. Not one. Ever. But it does have a standing order to debate a resolution against Israel at least once per session, the only country subject to such a standing order. The UNHRC has condemned Israel at least four times a year in resolutions in every year since 2006. In May 2021 it set up its only permanent Commission of Inquiry, into Israel. When you see the list of UNHRC members which voted for the commission, you see what it was intended to do: help destroy Israel. Argentina, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Eritrea, Gabon, Indonesia, Libya, Mauritania, Mexico, Namibia, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

The commission’s mandate is to examine the “root causes” of the conflict and the so-called “systematic discrimination” based on race – and it is a permanent commission, mandated to last forever under a chair, Navi Pillay, who has repeatedly described Israel as an apartheid state and called for governments to “sanction apartheid Israel.” The UNHRC's clear bias against Israel is so bad that when Ban Ki-moon was UN Secretary-General he felt compelled to condemn it.

As for Pillay, that estimable organisation, UN Watch, puts it like this: “Navi Pillay, appointed to head the Commission of Inquiry, is well known for her bias against Israel while UN High Commissioner of Human Rights in 2008-2014. In this position, she empanelled four fact-finding missions targeting Israel, more than any other country; oversaw the discredited Goldstone Report, which was later rejected by its primary author; and convened the 2009 Durban II conference, which was boycotted by most democracies, and provided Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a prominent platform to disseminate antisemitic vitriol.”

This is the woman who this week submitted the 72-page dossier to the UN Human Rights Council, “Legal analysis of the conduct of Israel in Gaza pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” And guess what? It finds Israel guilty of genocide, based on any conceivable so-called evidence the panellists can find, and placing enormous weight on comments taken entirely out of context such as Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to Amalek, which is cited as proving the intent needed for genocide, as well as incitement. But what he actually said, days after the October 7 massacre, was this: "They [IDF soldiers] are longing to recompense the murderers for the horrific acts they perpetrated on our children, our women, our parents and our friends. They are committed to eradicating this evil from the world, for our existence, and I add, for the good of all humanity. The entire people, and the leadership of the people, embrace them and believe in them. 'Remember what Amalek did to you' (Deuteronomy 25:17). We remember and we fight.”

All figures for civilian casualties supplied by Hamas are taken at face value and all civilian deaths are considered the result of deliberate targeting by Israel, and never as the tragic but inevitable consequence of war, let alone of Hamas’ deliberate use of civilian shields. News reports by Al-Jazeera are taken as fact and used to prove genocide.

But there is no mention of any actual facts which run counter to the idea of Israeli genocide, such as the issues with Hamas’ tunnel network, Hamas’ strength in numbers and armaments, its own destruction of much of Gaza through misfired rockets, booby trapped homes and tunnels and killing of opposition, its use of human shields or even the recognition that there are any legitimate military targets in Gaza. Every aspect of Israel’s military action from day one is portrayed as illegitimate.

You would know none of this if – like the vast majority of people – you relied on mainstream coverage of the report, which has been treated as if it is some sort of neutral inquiry and finding.

Nor would you be aware of any issues with Pillay’s two fellow panellists: Miloon Kothari, who in 2022 said that social media was “controlled largely by the Jewish lobby” and questioned why Israel was allowed in the UN; and Chris Sidoti, who told the UNHRC in 2022 that Jews were “throwing around accusations of antisemitism like rice at a wedding.”

The reaction to this blood libel of a report was inevitable. Even when the mainstream media is not deliberately seeking to portray Israel as the embodiment of evil, it is lazy and rarely bothers to dig beneath the surface. So a supposed “UN report” which is nothing of the kind becomes a finding of genocide, which is nothing of the kind, and independent proof, which is nothing of the kind.