The piece has been published in The Telegraph by ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin.

When the judge in the trial of Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins dismissed the jury and ordered a retrial, it was to uphold a cardinal principle of justice – those standing in judgement of others must be unim­peach­able in their neut­ral­ity, free from bias and exhib­it­ing no prejudice towards those they are required to judge. Justice Lucy McCallum ter­min­ated the trial after a juror was found to possess several academic articles on sexual assault in con­tra­ven­tion of the judge’s repeated instruc­tions that jurors must rely solely on admiss­ible evidence presented and tested in a courtroom.

The impact of the judge’s decision is grave. A new trial puts the com­plain­ant and defendant through fresh strain and potential trauma, it clutters the system causing knock-on delays, and it costs taxpayers sub­stan­tially. But so sacred is the concept of impar­ti­al­ity, so essential it is to maintain con­fid­ence in the admin­is­tra­tion of justice that some mere googling with no evidence of impact on any juror, torpedoed the entire process.

Contrast this with the invest­ig­a­tion conducted by a United Nations Human Rights Council into the root causes of the Israeli-Palestini­an conflict. The Com­mis­sion of Inquiry was called followed Hamas’s escal­a­tion with Israel in May last year. The three com­mis­sion­ers selected to invest­ig­ate and pass judgement were Navi Pillay of South Africa, Miloon Kothari of India, and our very own, Chris Sidoti.

There is of course the pre­lim­in­ary question, which is what gives any three indi­vidu­als who have never defended their countries, the right to stand in judgement of a democracy defending its people against des­ig­nated terror groups that exist solely to kill as many of those people as possible?

If you do deem such an inquiry appro­pri­ate, then consider the fitness of these three indi­vidu­als to deliver just and impartial findings.

Pillay’s previous public positions on Israel include denoun­cing it as a sup­posedly “apartheid state”, signings petition for Israel to be sanc­tioned, and calling on it to end its “oppres­sion” of the Palestini­ans. Kothari went further, ques­tion­ing whether Israel should even be a member of the United Nations. Israel was admitted as a full member of the UN in 1949. Kothari now questions whether the country he is invest­ig­at­ing should be a country at all.

Kothari then came to resemble an even more decrepit version of Kanye West in claiming that the Jewish lobby controls social media. At least West had the cre­ativ­ity to accuse Jews of coercing his ex-wife into for­nic­at­ing in front of a fireplace. Chris Sidoti sits on the advisory council of the “Aus­trali­an Centre for Inter­na­tion­al Justice (ACIJ),” an activist group that accuses Israel of apartheid, settler-colo­ni­al­ism and other first semester Arts degree insights.

By any standard of justice, the com­mis­sion­ers should have recused them­selves from serving or been swiftly removed once their prior positions on Israel became known. Certainly, when a royal com­mis­sion or any similar pro­ceed­ings are conducted in Australia, we expect more than a panel stacked with indi­vidu­als whose per­form­ances are “more rehearsed than kabuki actors,” to borrow a line from Bob Carr. Under Aus­trali­an law, actual bias occurs when a decision-maker is “so committed to a par­tic­u­lar outcome that he or she will not alter that outcome, regard­less of what evidence or arguments are presented.” Appre­hen­ded bias occurs when “the judge might not bring an impartial and unpre­ju­diced mind to the res­ol­u­tion of the question.” The UN Human Rights Council itself requires decision-makers to uphold the “highest standards” of “impar­ti­al­ity.” Readers can determine for them­selves whether those called upon to pass judgement in this case meet such standards.

But this is the United Nations, hence, rather than canning the inquiry or replacing the com­mis­sion­ers, the com­mis­sion proceeded unper­turbed, with an open-ended mandate, a permanent staff of 18 and a budget of $4 million.

The com­mis­sion serves a very precise function. The Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment dismissed the report as “one-sided” and “doing little to advance the cause of peace.” Still, you can count on mega­lo­ma­ni­ac­al former foreign ministers and Labor’s Corbynite elements using it as fodder to demand still more pro-Palestini­an policies no matter how repellent or irrel­ev­ant to Aus­trali­ans. The report will grease more campaigns by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, that husk that just betrayed the heroic defenders of Ukraine as war criminals. It will be cited in more student papers calling for “death to Israel”, as recently occurred in Adelaide, and they will ignite more online chatter to globalise the message of an irre­deem­ably evil Israel.

This latest “com­mis­sion of inquiry”, was little reported and barely noticed. There is over­whelm­ing indif­fer­ence to the UN’s pro­nounce­ments, blighted as they fre­quently are by hypocrisy, ineptitude and cor­rup­tion. Yet it should be noticed. It should spawn outrage. For its per­ver­sion of justice and due process, its con­tri­bu­tion to racism and discord, and its pre­sump­tion that Aus­trali­ans can’t spot a scam when they see it.