Pre- empting a UN Smear

Even as he released a comprehensive 277page report documenting Israel’s adherence to international law during last summer’s war with Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew it would change no minds at the United Nations.

As Bibi said, the UN Human Rights Council investigation set to be released this week found Israel “guilty even before the examination began.” Just so.

The UN, after all, continues to all but ignore the ongoing humanrights tragedy that ISIS inflicts on Palestinians at the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria. And the Israel obsessed Human Rights Council closes its eyes to real war crimes in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

So expect the UN agency to declare Israel guilty of war crimes and hand the Palestinians a legal basis for bringing a case to the International Criminal Court.

Yes, the lead UN investigator, Canadian law professor William Schabas, promised to investigate Hamas “in the most neutral and objective way possible.” But it’s a safe bet that this report, like past UN studies of Israeli wars, won’t bear much relation to the facts.

Indeed, we feel confident the Israeli Foreign Ministry document is not only closer to the truth but also far more objective.

Its key point: Hamas deliberately used civilians as human shields and moved hostilities to densely crowded urban areas— making it impossible for Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it responded to Hamas’ firing of thousands of rockets and mortars at Israeli population centers.

Then there was that early Egyptianmediated ceasefire — which Israel accepted but Hamas nixed. The deal contained the same conditions finally adopted six weeks later; had Hamas not waited, 90 percent of Palestinian casualties could’ve been prevented.

The report is backed by a panel of 11 former chiefs of staff, generals and senior US officials, whose own probe determined that no army has taken “such extensive measures” as did the Israelis “to protect the lives of the civilian population.”

This, even though Israel will remain under constant threat as long as Hamas rules Gaza.