TICK FOR PM ON ISRAEL UN VOTE
BE proud that Australia was one of just two countries with the guts to vote against the hypocrites of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
We and the United States were alone in voting against Friday’s UNHRC resolution that Israel be investigated for killing 62 Palestinians protesting at its border with Gaza. Sadly, 16 others, such as Britain, Germany and Japan, abstained or went missing rather than denounce the investigation as a fraud.
But worse, the remaining 29 members of this politically corrupt UN body voted “yes”.
In how many ways is this investigation a farce?
Firstly, who can take seriously a “human rights” council that includes dictatorships such as China and Cuba and Islamic autocrats such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates? Second, who can trust it when nine of its 47 members are Muslim-majority nations where defending Jews even from terrorists is unpopular, and several others have turbulent Muslim minorities? Third, who can trust anything the UN says about Israel, when Israel has been the target of 83 of 97 UN General Assembly resolutions passed in the four years to 2015 criticising specific countries?
But this latest anti-Israel move is particularly suspect. Nowhere in the UNHRC resolution calling for an investigation is there a mention of the Hamas terrorist group, which organised to have tens of thousands of Palestinians threaten to tear down the fence to get into Israel.
Hamas’s role is ignored, even though Hamas spokesman Salah Bardawil last week admitted that “50 of the martyrs (shot by Israel) were Hamas and 12 from the people” and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was filmed threatening: “We will take down the border and we will tear out their hearts.”
What’s more, the UNHRC has already declared Israel guilty, denouncing in its resolution “the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians, including in the context of peaceful protests”.
Peaceful protests? When TV images show Palestinians throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails?
The South African delegate was particularly venomous, attacking Israel as “bullies” and “cowards”.
So Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is right to say we cannot vote for such a prejudged and one-sided investigation, given “our principled opposition to resolutions that fail the test of balance and impartiality”.
Give the Turnbull Government a big tick.