UN names Gaza probe panel, headed by harsh Israel critic/ Haaretz

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

Good. I'm glad to see the UN getting involved.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-gaza-conflict-2014/.premium-1.610046

The United Nations Human Rights Council last night named the three members of the international commission of inquiry to investigate possible war crimes by Israel during Operation Protective Edge. A senior official in the Foreign Ministry said that despite Israel’s attempts to influence the composition of the panel, the final outcome is unbalanced and problematic.

The three-member panel will be chaired by Prof. William Schabas, a Canadian expert on international law whose academic focus has been on genocide. He is known to be highly critical of Israel and harshly attacked Operation Cast Lead at the time (2008-09). He praised the report issued by the Goldstone Committee following that operation, and said the commission’s chairman, Richard Goldstone, should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Schabas has called in the past for the International Criminal Court in The Hague to put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Shimon Peres on trial. Last year, at a conference in New York, Schabas said: “My favorite would be Netanyahu within the dock of the International Criminal Court.” A few years earlier, he said that if there was an indictment in the ICC against the president of Sudan for genocide, why should a similar indictment not be issued against the Israeli president for events in Gaza.

Also on the committee is the Lebanese-born British lawyer Amal Alamuddin, who was the legal adviser to the prosecutor during the special international tribunal convened by the UN following the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Alamuddin may face accusations of bias because of her background: In 1982, when she was 4, her family fled Beirut in a U.S. ship while Israel was bombarding the city. She is engaged to actor George Clooney. The third member of the committee is Doudou Diène, an expert on human rights from Senegal who was the UN special envoy on racism and racial discrimination from 2011-14.