UN investigator for Gaza vilified before his work starts
EVEN before starting work as chairman of a United Nations human rights commission investigating the Gaza war, Canadian law professor William Schabas has been vilified as an apologist for Iran incapable of setting aside his perceived anti-Israel bias.
Full-page adverts have been taken out against him in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, while the Facebook page of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a leader of the antiSchabas campaign, has attracted more than 30,000 likes.
The make-up of Prof Schabas’s commission is still being finalised — George Clooney’s fiancee Amal Alamuddin turned down the invitation, so another one or possibly two members must be found — but already he is worried about whether the team will be allowed into the region.
“Other fact-finding bodies of this nature have had difficulty in the past,” he said. “I can’t rule it out,” he told Reuters, speaking from his home in England, where he is a professor of international law at Middlesex University.
In the meantime, he finds himself defending his past criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and explaining how he can carry out a balanced inquiry. “We all have views about Israel, Palestine and things that have gone on in the past, and we all have to put those things to one side,” he said. “I’m determined to do that. The question is whether the person is capable of doing it. I think (I am) and no one has any proof to the contrary.”
The month-long war left more than 2,000 Palestinians dead,
We all have views … and we all have to put those things to one side
most of them civilians, as well as 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians. It was the deadliest war in Gaza since Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005, and included several incidents in which Israel was accused by rights groups of excessive use of force, war crimes or crimes against humanity.
For its part, Hamas fired rockets indiscriminately at Israel, and has been accused of using civilians as human shields and of carrying out attacks from next to hospitals, from ambulances and inside densely populated areas.
In two cases, UN-run schools being used as shelters were hit by Israeli artillery, killing 25 people, and in another incident four boys playing on a beach were killed by shell fire. Israel said the area around the schools had been used to fire rockets, while describing the death of the boys as a “tragic outcome” in which Hamas fighters were the intended target.
Prof Schabas would not be drawn on which events would be most closely scrutinised but made clear the mandate was for a broad investigation, covering both sides. Israel had already given “brief but nevertheless significant” explanations for some of its actions, he said. The aim would be to get more detail and clarity.
From Rabbi Boteach’s point of view, nothing Prof Schabas can say will make his investigation credible. Having once described Mr Netanyahu as “the greatest threat to Israel” and declared him his “favourite” to appear before the International Criminal Court, Prof Schabas is, in the minds of most Israelis, unfit to serve as an independent investigator.
Part of the frustration for Israel is what it feels is an excessive focus on its every action, with
Other fact-finding bodies have had difficulty (with access) in the past
past UN inquiries, most infamously the Goldstone Report on the 2008-09 Gaza war, focusing far more on Israel than Hamas. More than a year after his report was published, Judge Richard Goldstone separated himself from some of its findings, saying subsequent information provided by Israel had convinced him some conclusions were wrong.
Israel refused to co-operate with Judge Goldstone’s inquiry and Prof Schabas said the judge’s later comments were “a very compelling argument to encourage Israel to co-operate (now). If they think it’s fruitless or futile to cooperate, it’s a good argument to bear in mind.”