The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an extraordinary meeting this week on the occupied Palestinian territories, providing another chance for Israel's critics to discuss a Gaza war crimes report.AP helpfully adds:
"The holding of the special session is at the request of Palestine," the United Nations said in a statement circulated on Tuesday in Geneva, where the 47-member body is based.
It will be the sixth time that Israel has been the subject of a special session by the Geneva-based council. Each previous session has resulted in a resolution critical of Israel.Is there any chance the debate would say anything negative about Hamas? After all, the report does condemn Hamas rockets, right?
Of course not. Look at the UNHRC press release about the session:
The Human Rights Council will hold a Special Session on the "human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and East Jerusalem" on Thursday, 15 October 2009, starting 3 p.m. in Room XX of the Palais des Nations.The session is only about the human rights of Palestinian Arabs, not the human rights of Jews who had been subject to years of terrorist and rocket attacks before Israel decided to put a stop to them.
The holding of the Special Session comes at the request of Palestine. The request is co-sponsored by the following 18 Member States of the Human Rights Council, namely Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.
For all of Goldstone's claims that he had the right to expand the mandate of the commission to cover all human rights abuses by all sides, it is obvious that the UNHRC is only interested in the parts that castigate Israel. This is why Hamas, the PA and their panoply of like-minded abusers of human rights are so keen on getting the Goldstone Report on the agenda of the UNHRC: because they know that this sham of an organization has as little interest in real human rights as they do.
Does anyone think that Goldstone will raise his voice to mention that Hamas violated human rights, too?