The Newest Anti-Israel UN Action Must Be Challenged – Now

• The UN Human Rights Council has launched the most hostile anti-Israel “inquiry” in UN history, headed by the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African Navi Pillay, known for her direct involvement and support of the infamous Goldstone Report. Her two deputies have years of experience pillorying Israel.
• The Human Rights Council’s resolution in May 2021 created an “ongoing independent, international commission of inquiry” with a sweeping mandate to investigate “all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since April 13, 2021, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability, and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.”
• The Human Rights Council resolution failed to refer to Hamas at all. It did not mention – let alone condemn – the launch of thousands of rockets by Hamas into Israel. Indeed, the Israeli civilian population was omitted from the resolution. The only civilians mentioned are the “Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Nor did the resolution condemn the use by Palestinian terror groups of Palestinian civilians as human shields, a war crime.
• The “inquiry” will have the mandate to ferret out “discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity” and to find discrimination and repression at the hands of Jews. This is full-frontal antisemitism, an inversion of the truth, such that the Jewish victims of racism and religious hatred become its perpetrators.
• This attack on Israel is unprecedented in the history of the United Nations human rights system in terms of the “inquiry’s” funding, staffing, and permanence.
• The Commission has invited “individuals, groups, and organizations to submit information and documentation relevant to its mandate. In particular, the Commission has asked to receive information concerning the “underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability, and protraction of conflict in and between the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial, or religious identity.”
• Efforts must be made to encourage governments to condemn the Human Rights Council’s “inquiry.” More than 30 nations boycotted the biased and antisemitic Durban hate fest in September 2021. Their condemnation of the anti-Israel inquisition will underscore that the HRC undermines the promotion of international human rights and erodes the standing of the United Nations.
• The verdict of this kangaroo court is a foregone conclusion. The urgent need arises, therefore, to challenge its veracity and legitimacy. Answering the “Call for Submissions” en masse – and ensuring alternative voices reach the court of public opinion – provides just such an opportunity for all those committed to combating modern antisemitism and defending the human rights of Israelis.

Introduction

The UN Human Rights Council has launched the most hostile anti-Israel inquisition in UN history. It is headed by the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African Navi Pillay, notorious for her antipathy to Israel throughout her tenure. The new “Commission of Inquiry” has a pre-determined outcome. The Commission’s origins, mandate, format, and membership have all been designed to cast the Jewish state as racist, ravish its right of self-defense, and destroy its economic well-being. In so doing, the “Inquiry” will disfigure the principles of international law and human rights and the fundamentals of equality and non-discrimination while spuriously claiming to be their guardians.

The “Inquiry” has issued a “Call for Submissions” that provides an avenue to respond to the Council’s plan to excoriate Israel. This paper is intended to provide information and material to facilitate such submissions and to encourage governments to condemn the “Inquiry,” as they did the latest Durban hate fest. The paper includes an account and the context of the May 2021 Gaza conflict in which Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel, which was followed by the rush of anti-Israel sources to operationalize the UN in support of their lethal ambitions. It also provides a detailed description and analysis of the nature, purpose, and program of the “Inquiry” and how to diminish and disrupt the very real threat posed by its inevitable treacherous conclusions.

Facts on the Ground

On May 10, 2021, the terrorist organization Hamas launched a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from residential areas in Gaza.¹ During the course of 11 days of fighting, Hamas fired more than 4,360 rockets and mortars. Of those, about 680 misfired and fell into the Gaza Strip, killing Palestinians² and damaging Palestinian property.³ Approximately 3,570 of the remaining rockets and mortars reached Israeli airspace, while around 280 fell into the sea.⁴ Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were in the target path of the rockets, which struck Israeli towns and cities, including its capital city Jerusalem and its second-most populous metropolis, Tel Aviv. Thirteen Israelis were killed, and hundreds were injured.⁵ Israelis living near the Gaza border were forced to stay in bomb shelters around the clock; others, paralyzed with fear, remained in their homes during the entirety of the conflict.⁶ Schools bordering Gaza were closed, while those in the Tel Aviv area could remain open only if they had ready access to bomb shelters.⁷

In response, Israel launched Operation Guardian of the Walls to restore peace and security and to defend and protect the human rights of Israelis. During the operation, Israel destroyed more than 1,500 terrorist targets.⁸ Targeted were 270 terrorists, including senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders; 60 miles of tunnels used by Hamas operatives as hideouts and command and control centers; 600 rocket launchers and mortar shell launchers; weapons-manufacturing facilities and weapons storehouses; Hamas administrative structures; cyber warfare centers, and other posts and command centers where terrorist activity was coordinated.⁹ Of the 236 Gazans who were killed during the conflict, at least 114 were members of terrorist organizations, and 21 were killed by fellow Palestinians as a result of rocket misfires.¹⁰

The UN Attack

1. A Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council

After pursuing a path of wanton death and destruction, Palestinians then took the second step in their attack strategy – instrumentalizing the United Nations. Although atrocities around the world go unanswered by the UN for long periods of time – if they are ever answered – after a mere nine days of this conflict, the UN sprang into action. On May 19, 2021, Pakistan, on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the “State of Palestine,” sent a letter to the president of the Human Rights Council requesting that the Council hold a “special session” to discuss “the Grave Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”¹¹ The request was supported by 22 Council member states, more than half of which were members of the OIC and ten of which have the most appalling human rights records on the planet.¹² (Special sessions are held upon the request of a member of the Council with the support of one-third of the Council’s membership.¹³)

On May 20, 2021, the Human Rights Council secretariat announced that the special session “on the grave human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” would be held on May 27, 2021.¹⁴ The request of Pakistan and the “State of Palestine,” along with the secretariat’s announcement, ignored the situation of human rights in Israel – where thousands of indiscriminate Hamas rockets were killing and injuring Israeli civilians.

The “special” session was held notwithstanding the fact that the next “regular” session of the Human Rights Council would take place only a month later, starting June 30, 2021, and that Israel is the only state with a permanent Human Rights Council agenda item dedicated to it, making Israel the only country in the world under continuous UN attack.¹⁵ So Israel’s assailants would both pounce at the special session and attack during the Israel agenda item at the regular session, only a few weeks later.

The special session was the ninth such session of the Human Rights Council targeting Israel alone. To get the complete picture: there have been 19 country-specific special sessions ever held by the Council on any of the other 192 UN member states combined.¹⁶

The special session in May 2021 proceeded as its sponsors desired: a free-for-all of wild false accusations made against Israel. Allegedly, an Israeli “killing machine” was guilty of targeting children, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, a scorched earth policy, barbarism, crimes against humanity, and massacres. The endgame was not difficult to discern from the unguarded references to “Palestine from the river to the sea.”¹⁷

2. The Resolution of the UN Human Rights Council

At the special session, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution¹⁸ by a vote of 24 in favor, nine against, and 14 abstentions. ¹⁹ More than half of the states voting in favor were Islamic states (OIC).²⁰ Not a single Western democracy voted in favor of the resolution. Twenty-two of the 24 states voting in favor of the resolution are not even considered to be “fully free” democracies on the Freedom House scale.²¹

The resolution was one of the most outrageous ever adopted by the United Nations.

The OIC-concocted resolution failed to refer to Hamas at all. It failed to mention – let alone condemn – the launch of thousands of rockets by Hamas into Israel. Indeed, the Israeli civilian population was omitted from the resolution. The only civilians mentioned are the “Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Nor did the resolution condemn the use by Palestinian terror groups of Palestinian civilians as human shields, a war crime.

a. The Investigative Mandate

Furthermore, the Human Rights Council’s resolution initiated an unprecedented UN assault on the state of Israel. It creates an “ongoing independent, international commission of inquiry”²² with a sweeping mandate to investigate:

…All alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since April 13, 2021, and all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.²³

The implications of these investigative terms and conditions include the following:

1. The enormous breadth of the investigation indicates that the whole Council process was a fraud and a set-up. The scope of the “Inquiry” goes far beyond the alleged rationale of holding an emergency meeting about the 11 days of the conflict in Gaza.²⁴ Indeed, the earlier date of April 13, 2021, appears because it was the first day of Ramadan and the start of routine Palestinian violence in Jerusalem framed and falsified as Jewish infringement of Muslim rights.
2. The open-ended language “leading up to” and the references to “root causes,” “recurrent” tensions, “protraction” of conflict – mean this “Inquiry” has been given carte blanche to go back to square one, back to 1948; the mandate for an inquisition purports to grant a license to rewrite history and to question the wisdom of a modern Jewish state, or to redefine Israel such that it is indefensible and doomed to fail.
3. The reference in the investigative terms and conditions to “root causes” is well-known UN lingo for historical revisionism, adopting the storyline of a fictional Palestinian “narrative.” At the UN, root causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict start with the historic “tragedy” of the creation of a Jewish state (for the Arabs who rejected it and refused partition), the affront of Israel miraculously surviving yet another attempt at its annihilation in 1967, the audacity of Jews liberating Jewish holy sites that Jordanians had plundered after Israel’s birth, and the “crime” of Jews inhabiting land that various Arab actors had rendered judenrein between 1948 and 1967.
4. Ferreting out “discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity” is intended to find discrimination and repression at the hands of Jews. Full-frontal antisemitism and an inversion of the truth, such that the Jewish victims of racism and religious hatred become its perpetrators.

b. The Plan of Action

The resolution also lays out a plan of action. The resolution mandates the “Inquiry” to:

2.

1. Establish the facts and circumstances that may amount to such violations and abuses and of crimes perpetrated;
2. Collect, consolidate and analyze evidence of such violations and abuses and of crimes perpetrated, and systematically record and preserve all information, documentation, and evidence, including interviews, witness testimony, and forensic material, in accordance with international law standards, in order to maximize the possibility of its admissibility in legal proceedings;
3. Have the capacity to document and verify relevant information and evidence, including through field engagement and by cooperating with judicial and other entities, as appropriate;
4. Identify, where possible, those responsible, with a view to ensuring that perpetrators of violations are held accountable;
5. Identify patterns of violations over time by analyzing the similarities in the findings and recommendations of all United Nations fact-finding missions and commissions of Inquiry on the situation;
6. Make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring legal accountability, including individual criminal and command responsibility, for such violations, and justice for victims.
7. Make recommendations on measures to be taken by third States to ensure respect for international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, in accordance with article 1 common to the Geneva Conventions, and in fulfillment of their obligations under articles 146, 147 and 148 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, including by ensuring that they do not aid or assist in the Commission of internationally wrongful acts;
8. Report on its main activities on an annual basis to the Human Rights Council under agenda item 2 as of its fiftieth session, and to the General Assembly as of its seventy-seventh session.”²⁵

The consequences of these action items include the following:

1. The “Inquiry’s” findings are intended to be used as evidence in criminal legal proceedings. Such criminal proceedings will have one overarching goal: to declare that the Jewish state is a criminal state. The Jews defending it are criminals. The Jews living, working, praying – or simply being – any place where Arabs say they cannot be, are criminals.
2. Manufacturing “measures to be taken by third States” will mean demanding boycotts, divestment, and sanctions be taken by third states against Israel. The intention is to lay waste to the Jewish state’s economic well-being.
3. The preambular paragraphs of the resolution also attempt to introduce into the agenda “responsibilities on all business enterprises to respect human rights by, inter alia, refraining from contributing to human rights abuses arising from conflict.” Meaning, in Israel’s case, that the UN intends to blackmail businesses. To push businesses to engage in unlawful, discriminatory, antisemitic acts of BDS.²⁶

Cutting through all the UN verbiage, the “Inquiry” has been set up to destroy the modern Jewish state by criminalizing its self-defense and ravishing its economy.

3. Comparison with other UN Human Rights Council Inquiries

a. The Mandate

This attack on Israel is unprecedented in the history of the United Nations human rights system. Period.

Of the 33 UN Human Rights Council “commissions of inquiry, fact-finding missions, and other investigations/investigative bodies” ever created by the Human Rights Council,²⁷ this “Inquiry” is the only one:

• mandated to investigate, identify and indicate remedial responses for “all underlying root causes;”
• charged with unearthing discrimination and repression based on national identity, or ethnic identity, or racial identity, or religious identity;
• charged with spawning “measures to be taken by third States.”

The “Inquiry” also treats Israel differently than any other state in another way. The mandate charges investigators with directing their recommendations specifically to identifying “individual criminal and command responsibility” – a blatant attempt to threaten, impede, and criminalize Israel’s self-defense. The only other time a Council inquiry made such a move, the inquiry was also directed at Israel.²⁸

Furthermore, this “Inquiry” is only one of two such bodies ever created with a continuing mandate. It never needs to be revisited, or renewed, or reviewed based on the actual situation. (The other situation is on Myanmar, where prior to creating a continuing mandate, there had already been a finding that crimes against humanity had occurred.²⁹)

The Israel “Inquiry” is set to report twice every year in perpetuity to both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

b. The Resources

Extraordinarily, the budget for funding the “Inquiry” only surfaced four months after the vote creating the “Inquiry” was taken, so voters did not know the “Inquiry’s” financial ramifications. Quietly posted after the fact on the UN website at the end of September 2021, the budget manifests a wild grab for an unprecedented amount of cash and human resources. All of it is to come from the UN’s regular budget – that is, to be charged to every taxpayer of every UN member state every year for eternity.

More specifically, this “Inquiry” will cost more than all but one of the 33 investigative mechanisms ever created by the Human Rights Council in its 15-year history.³⁰ (The single exception is the distinguishable case of Myanmar.³¹) It is currently set to cost at least $11,812,700 total in its first three years, and $5,475,600 each year thereafter ($1,016,500 in 2021, $5,320,600 in 2022, and $5,475,600 in 2023 and beyond).³²

In all, there are seven current investigative mechanisms of the Human Rights Council having similar tasks as the “Inquiry” on Israel. The median cost of the Human Rights Council resolutions creating the other six such investigative mechanisms³³ is $2,622,950. The budget for the Israel “Inquiry” is almost five times that – $11,812,700 and counting (since the “Inquiry” is in perpetuity).

The UN Secretariat says that implementing the Israel “Inquiry” requires hiring a whopping 24 people as permanent staff.³⁴ To put this in perspective, the regular budget of the UN provides the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with 20 permanent staff for the entire “Asia, Pacific and Middle East Branch”³⁵ – a branch covering more than 60% of the world’s population or four-and-a-half billion people.

In fact, Israel will now be only one of two of 193 UN member states to have any permanent staff at the Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights devoted to “investigating” it.³⁶ A point of comparison: millions of North Koreans suffer from “one of the most repressive and totalitarian states in the world,” with 100,000 prisoners being tortured in political prison camps.³⁷ But there will shortly be three times as many permanent staff dedicated to investigating, condemning, and isolating Israel than there were temporary staff assigned to the inquiry set up on North Korea in 2013, and that inquiry lasted only one year.³⁸

Here is another shocking component. The Israel inquisition is the largest boondoggle in the history of the UN human rights system: it will fund 790 days of travel for experts and staff every year from 2022 on – forever.³⁹ Those are two UN employees provided food and accommodation and airfare to roam around demonizing the Jewish state every day of every year. That is also more travel days than any of the Council’s current human rights investigations about anything, anywhere.

Another part of the bill for global taxpayers: the “Inquiry” will now pick up the tab for food, accommodation and travel for Pillay, the “Inquiry” head and her two associates – each – 50 days a year.⁴⁰

Especially insidious is an amount the UN has budgeted for lawfare. There will be four full-time lawyers, plus a “forensic expert” to “report on medico-legal issues,” and a “military advisor” to pronounce on “de jure command responsibility” and liaise with law enforcement officials.⁴¹ Lawfare in the UN-Palestinian context will consist of falsifying, misrepresenting, and abusing law to criminalize (a) the self-defense of Jews and the Jewish state, and (b) Jews living, cultivating, or even being on land whenever or wherever Arabs object. In effect, the budget of this UN inquisition funds the creation of a law firm inside the UN dedicated to manufacturing charges and mounting a global chase to arrest and incarcerate Israeli Jews.

Absolutely irrelevant to this adventure is that Israel is a democracy governed by the rule of law, while the rule of law is non-existent in the Palestinian-run society. And lest there be any confusion, the UN enterprise is not intended to institute the rule of law or an independent judiciary or a fair legal system in Palestinian-run Gaza and the West Bank. It is intended to denounce and demolish the Israeli one.

4. The Members of the UN’s “Commission of Inquiry”

The resolution mandated the President of the Human Rights Council to appoint the “Inquiry” members.⁴² On July 22, 2021, President Nazhat Shameem Khan, (a Muslim lawyer from Fiji) appointed the following members: Navi Pillay of South Africa as Chair of the “Inquiry,” Miloon Kothari of India, and Chris Sidoti of Australia.⁴³

As is true of every UN “inquiry” on Israel, the selection of the inquisitors is intended to pre-determine the answer – in clear violation of UN rules. UN Human Rights Council rules require members of inquiries to adhere to a specific code of conduct. These “mandate-holders” are supposed to uphold the “highest standards” of “impartiality.” They are supposed to be guided by the principles of “impartiality and even-handedness.”⁴⁴ The Council is bound to ensure that all mandate-holders who are chosen satisfy criteria “of paramount importance,” including: “independence, impartiality, and objectivity.”⁴⁵

It is important to examine the record of each of the members of the “Inquiry” in light of these theoretical requirements.

a. Navi Pillay

Navi Pillay served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008-2014. Herself a native of Durban, South Africa, Pillay made the glorification of the Durban antisemitic hate fest the centerpiece of her time in office. She became the world’s leading pro-Durban advocate, personally justifying the inclusion of alleged Palestinian victims of Israeli racism in Durban manifestos.⁴⁶ Pillay initiated, organized, and led a global campaign to defend and promote Durban follow-up conferences in 2009 and 2011.

In addition, it was Pillay who generated⁴⁷ and championed⁴⁸ the Goldstone Report – the UN blood libel that the 2008/9 Gaza conflict was about Israel targeting the innocent and deliberately murdering civilians. She went on pushing it well after Goldstone himself recanted the report’s central lie.⁴⁹

The 2014 Gaza conflict occurred weeks before Pillay ended her term as High Commissioner. A conflict that saw the kidnap and murder of Israeli teenagers, hundreds of rockets fired at Israeli civilians, a Palestinian cross-border terror tunnel network uncovered, and 12 ceasefires violated by Palestinian terrorists. But from Pillay came a series of blood libels, including the accusation that Israel targeted and deliberately murdered children.⁵⁰

Since leaving office as High Commissioner, Pillay has been very open about exactly where she stands on these issues. According to Pillay,⁵¹ Israel practices apartheid. BDS should be supported. Israelis are criminals who should be rounded up and imprisoned. And Israelis should be denied military support and armaments.

On November 29, 2017, Pillay went out of her way⁵² to speak at a special event for “United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” She claimed “apartheid…is happening in Israel,” and after praising “the worldwide anti-apartheid movement…mobilized on the moral principle of abhorrence against racism,” she declared: “I hope that the Palestinian struggle to end colonization gains this kind of momentum, especially in the civilian campaign of BDS, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.” She produced a lengthy charge sheet only for Israel, and paradoxically promoted her offensive against racism, by pointing to whom she believes is the real villain: “the lobbies supporting Israel,” or again: “the extremist Israeli lobby.”⁵³

b. Miloon Kothari

Pillay’s compatriots were obviously selected for their like-mindedness. “Inquiry” member Miloon Kothari, who previously served as the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, was the subject of a formal complaint filed by Israel to the UN in 2002 for lying on a visa application.⁵⁴ After entering Israel under false pretenses, Kothari issued a report in which he described the Second Intifada – during which Israeli men, women, and children were routinely butchered by Palestinian suicide bombers – as the “wave of Palestinian resistance in September 2000.” He alleged Israel was guilty of “ethnic cleansing” and concocted the allegation that Israel had a “theocratic” legal system based on “ethnic criteria.” Kothari’s UN report denounced “Israel’s long record of…implantation of settlers prior to and since its establishment as a State.”⁵⁵

In a UN press release, Kothari encouraged countries to discontinue “military cooperation” with Israel. He also said that he already knew the factors “that underlie the ongoing conflict” – namely, “the colonization activities” of the “World Zionist Organization and Jewish National Fund.”⁵⁶

c. Chris Sidoti

“Inquiry” member Chris Sidoti posted an article in 2018 on the website of the Palestinian “national institution” named the “Independent Commission for Human Rights” (ICHR). His post is accompanied by a biographical description that says of Sidoti: “He worked closely with Arab and Palestinian Human Rights organizations, and is a close friend and ally to ICHR.”⁵⁷ Indeed, Sidoti wrote of the Commission: “It has courageously denounced violations by the occupying Israeli forces. It has established an international reputation for integrity and credibility in its work, providing a welcome, reliable voice.”⁵⁸

The ICHR changed the name of the IDF to a fictitious “IOF – Israeli Occupying Forces” and said of the 2014 Gaza conflict that “the IOF committed crimes against humanity” and tortured children. It called throwing stones at Israelis – which kill and maim – “acts of natural rights.”⁵⁹ In 2009 the ICHR included a submission to the UN Human Rights Council that contained this outlandish assertion: “facts on the ground confirmed…a pure Israeli intention to eliminate all the assets of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.” The ICHR also complained of the “jewishizing” of Jerusalem.⁶⁰

Moreover, Sidoti “provides strategic guidance and advice” to the “Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ).” ⁶¹ Working in partnership with the “Palestinian Human Rights Organization Council,” in May 2021 the ACIJ issued a report demanding the Australian government endorse BDS and the criminal prosecution of Israelis.⁶² After the May 2021 conflict with Gaza, Sidoti’s Centre pronounced itself directly on the subject matter of Sidoti’s “Inquiry.”⁶³ Among other things, the ACIJ signed and promoted an open letter objecting to the creation of a Jewish state from day one. The letter denounced “this systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the past seven decades of Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, prolonged illegal belligerent occupation….”⁶⁴

Consequently, none of the three members of this “Inquiry” satisfy the UN’s own rules about independence, impartiality, and objectivity. This is especially true of the “Inquiry’s” Chair. The mandate requires findings of facts and investigating issues upon which Pillay has repeatedly pronounced herself and exhibited bias.

The Role of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

In October 2021, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights provided an oral update on the “Inquiry” to the Human Rights Council.⁶⁵ The High Commissioner’s Office had immediately dedicated two staff members as part of an “initial surge capacity” to support the establishment of the “Inquiry.” The staff members have been “providing general support to the Commissioners, including preparation of initial briefing packages, organization of meetings, analysis of information and information management.”⁶⁶ The full secretariat for the “Inquiry” is expected to be in place on UN premises in Geneva by early 2022 and “will consist of a multi-skilled team with a variety of functions, including legal, analytical, and investigative.”⁶⁷ The “Inquiry” is expected to meet in person by the end of 2021 to consider its next steps.⁶⁸

The Role of NGOs

The UN has set up the inquisition so that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) critical of Israel can and will play a major role in its operations. Specifically, the resolution creating the “Inquiry” says:

4…encourages civil society, the media and other relevant stakeholders, to cooperate fully with the commission of inquiry to allow it to effectively fulfil its mandate and, in particular, to provide it with any information or documentation they may possess or come to possess….

It was no accident that anti-Israel NGOs played a very active role in urging the creation of the “Inquiry” in the first place, including the recently designated terror-connected NGO “Al-Haq Law in the Service of Man.”⁶⁹ Public statements made before and during the adoption of the resolution suggest that Human Rights Watch, among others, may well have dictated the “Inquiry’s” terms and conditions.⁷⁰ In subsequent press releases and speeches at Human Rights Council sessions, anti-Israel NGOs have continued the drumbeat, embracing and ratcheting up support for the “Inquiry.”⁷¹ These cheerleaders can be expected to provide the “Inquiry” with all kinds of (mis)information.

A Call for Submissions

On September 22, 2021, the “Inquiry” formally issued a “call for submissions” which lays out five capacious topics upon which anyone can write. It says:

The Commission invites individuals, groups and organizations to submit information and documentation relevant to its mandate. In particular, the Commission would welcome information concerning:

• Underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict in and between the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel; as well as systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial, or religious identity;
• Facts and circumstances regarding alleged violations of international humanitarian law and alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since April 13, 2021;
• Identification of those responsible;
• Recommendations on accountability measures, with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring legal accountability, including individual criminal and command responsibility;
• Recommendations on measures to be taken by third States to ensure respect for international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”⁷²

The many NGOs with highly visible records of anti-Israel activity that have been publicly rallying around the “Inquiry” will answer this call. Hence, it is already apparent that the “Inquiry” will soon be inundated with fanatical accusations masquerading as “facts” and “law” and aimed at demonizing and destroying the Jewish state.

The UN has set up this “Inquiry” as a means of divisiveness. Its goal is not to promote peaceful coexistence but to demonize a Jewish state as inherently dangerous and wrong. It is quintessential modern antisemitism. Make no mistake: this is not an “inquiry.” As is evident from the history, the mandate, and public profiles, the minds of the inquisitors are made up.

Nevertheless, Jewish and non-Jewish experts, NGOs, other organizations, parliamentarians or legislators – who care about defeating modern global antisemitism embodied in this UN “Commission of Inquiry” – need to proffer submissions. Such submissions are not about changing the minds of the members of the “Inquiry.” They are about delegitimizing Israel’s would-be delegitimizers. They are about exposing antisemitism and calling it out as such. Submissions are an opportunity to inform a global audience of the true facts and legal norms, and to help ensure that a report that ignores those facts, distorts those standards, and negates the voices of Jewish and Israeli human rights victims, will be met with the derision it deserves.

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Further details about deadlines, tips for submissions, topics or the subject matter of submissions, who should submit, where to send submissions, and follow-up actions to take with submissions, can be found here.

Main UN Documents

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Notes