Opartisk undersökning?

Undersökningen om Gazakriget som utförs av Richard Goldstone för FN:s mänskorättsråd granskas av Irwin Cotler. Han förklarar varför denna undersökning inte kan vara opartisk.

Irwin Cotler is the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. He is a member of the Canadian Parliament, special counsel on human rights and international justice to the Liberal Party, and a law professor (on leave) at McGill University.

Prof. Cotler explained how the Goldstone Commission was tainted by the UN Human Rights Council resolution creating its mandate, as well as the predisposed views of some of its personnel. In the second part of his piece, he elaborates the systemic and systematic bias of the UN council itself, and the implications this bias has on the fact-finding mission and on the integrity of international law generally.

Läs artiklarna här:
The Goldstone Mission - Tainted to the core (part I)
The Goldstone Mission - Tainted to the core (II)

Utdrag ur texten:
Indeed, the mandate that was handed over to Goldstone was deeply one-sided and flawed, by his own admission. For the resolution of the UNHRC creating the mandate already served as a direct indictment of Israel - it began by "strongly condemn[ing] the ongoing Israeli military operation… which has resulted in massive violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of Palestinian infrastructure." Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom - among others - accordingly refused to support it.

The mission's mandate is tainted through more subtle ways of prejudging its conclusions as well. For instance, the council's enabling resolution refers to the Gaza as being "occupied Palestinian territory." Such a description is loaded, and ignores the reality on the ground - that Israel fully withdrew from Gaza years ago. Indeed, the territory's status under international law remains unclear. By adopting this vernacular, the council - and Goldstone himself, who uses a similar characterization - implicitly predetermines an essential part of its analysis. For under international law, what constitutes a legitimate response will be very different depending on whether rocket attacks are coming from territory a state "controls," or whether they are coming from territory that is controlled by the attacking terrorist government, as in the case of Hamas.

But the problem is not that Israel seeks to be above the law; it is that Israel has been systematically denied equality before the law in the international arena. The issue is not whether Israel must respect human rights, but that the human rights of Israel and its people have not been respected. The discrimination emerges not from suggesting that human rights standards should be applied to Israel - which they must be - but from the fact that these standards have not been applied equally to anyone else.
IT IS on this basis that the Goldstone Commission should be opposed: not because it represents an objective inquiry into Israel - because independent and impartial inquiries should be welcomed by democracies - but precisely because it does not represent such an objective inquiry.

I know from first-hand experience the baggage that comes with participating in a mission created by the UN Human Rights Council - a UN body systematically and systemically biased against Israel. For this is a Council that has a special and permanent agenda item targeting Israeli violations of human rights, and another agenda item for the rest of the world - thereby singling out Israel for differential and discriminatory treatment. This is a Council that targets some 80% of its resolutions at one member state, Israel, while the major human rights violators enjoy exculpatory immunity. This is a Council that has had more emergency "Special Sessions" directed against Israel than against all the other countries of the world combined. This is a Council that excludes only one country - Israel - from membership in any regional grouping, thereby denying it international due process.