The following media release concerns the recent vote in the UNHRC on a res­ol­u­tion con­cern­ing whether there should be an inquiry into recent events in Israel and Gaza.

Australian rejection of UNHRC resolution on Israel-Gaza

 
We commend the Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment for rejecting the UNHRC res­ol­u­tion calling for an inquiry into events at the Israel-Gaza security barrier. The Foreign Minister was correct in rejecting the terms of the res­ol­u­tion which pre-empted the outcome of the Inquiry, accusing Israel of “impunity”, “sys­tem­at­ic failures”, and “inten­tion­ally targeting civilians”. UN High Com­mis­sion­er for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein made similarly pre­ju­di­cial state­ments in his address to the Council on May 18. No Inquiry can have any integrity if its con­clu­sions have been pre-announced. The whole exercise is a polemical stunt to give the appear­ance of legit­im­acy and objectiv­ity to blatantly one-sided political attacks on Israel.
This latest res­ol­u­tion continues in the tradition of the Goldstone Report and the Schabas Report, the central con­clu­sions of which were widely dis­cred­ited and sub­sequently retracted by the authors them­selves, but only after Israel’s repu­ta­tion had been falsely traduced.
The unusually high number of absten­tions indicates that many other States were wary about joining the 25 dic­tat­or­ships or semi-dic­tat­or­ships among the Council’s 47 members in con­demning Israel in advance of any Inquiry. Every demo­crat­ic State needs to think carefully about what it would do dif­fer­ently to Israel if it were to face a com­par­able danger in the future. It takes courage and principle to stand apart from yet another of the Human Rights Council’s many trav­esties and we are proud of the Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment for doing so.
Contact:
Alex Ryvchin | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0478 297 245
e: [email protected] | www.ecaj.org.au