October 11, 2024
American Jewish Committee today expressed outrage at the irresponsible and profoundly biased report published by an independent UN panel that uncritically endorses defamatory claims that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza aims to deliberately harm the Palestinian people and largely ignores Hamas’ policy of recklessly and intentionally endangering civilians.
The report, released Oct. 10, was produced by the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI), which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021. It briefly acknowledges but then summarily disregards evidence made public by Israel that an essential aspect of Hamas’ operational strategy in Gaza is to locate its operations and hide weapons inside, underneath, and near hospitals, actions that defy the protected status of hospitals under the law of armed conflict and can turn them into legitimate military objectives.
Rather than chastising Hamas for this policy, which is central to its operations and has indisputably caused harmful impacts for Palestinian civilians, the COI report treats all of Israel’s claims about Hamas' actions to be unreliable, unfounded, or indeterminate. It goes so far as to discount the significance of the presence of a tunnel and shaft on the grounds of the Shifa Hospital as evidence of Hamas' malign practices, saying it “could not verify” that they “were used for military purposes.”
“This is yet another sorry episode of a UN-appointed panel demonizing Israel and refusing to acknowledge that Israel has an inherent right to defend itself,” AJC CEO Ted Deutch said. “In castigating Israel but essentially giving Hamas a free pass, the COI has shown it lacks the moral integrity to assess the war with any credibility.”
Having largely absolved Hamas of responsibility for harm afflicting Palestinian civilians as a result of its use of hospitals and dismissed the significance of Israeli forces’ efforts to evacuate hospitals before carrying out operations against Hamas, the COI report then makes the unfounded sweeping assertion that Israel “has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza” and deliberately created conditions of life that have resulted in the “destruction of generations of Palestinian children and the Palestinian people as a group.”
The COI’s treatment of allegations of mistreatment of prisoners by Israeli forces is similarly biased. While uncritically recounting charges against the IDF, the COI ignores evidence that the Israeli authorities are investigating cases of mistreatment and claims that Israel is intentionally harming Palestinian detainees as a matter of policy.
The COI’s biased treatment of Israel and Israelis is epitomized by its unwillingness to determine that Hamas has not only mistreated but also deliberately killed hostages, despite credible evidence made public by Israel that Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino were executed by Hamas just before the IDF discovered their bodies in a Hamas tunnel in Rafah on August 30.
“Once again, the Commission of Inquiry has produced a disgraceful, unserious report that not only lacks credibility, but will incentivize terrorist groups around the world to mirror Hamas’ brutal tactics and imperil civilian lives,” Deutch said. “Governments should never have allowed the creation of this biased body; they now have no choice but to call out this façade and openly refute its outrageous conclusions.”
AJC is the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people. With headquarters in New York, 25 regional offices across the United States, 15 overseas posts, as well as partnerships with 38 Jewish community organizations worldwide, AJC’s mission is to enhance the well-being of the Jewish people and Israel and to advance human rights and democratic values in the United States and around the world. For more, please visit www.ajc.org.
