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Denial of Israel's Right of Self-Defense Needs to Stop Now

(Times of Israel) Anne Bayefsky - On Oct. 9, 2023, two days after a slaughter of Jews unprecedented since the Holocaust, the Pakistani Ambassador to the UN in Geneva asked the states attending a UN Human Rights Council meeting to stand and join him in a minute of silence for "the victims of decades of foreign occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory." And they did. UN forces are doing the political dirty work of Hamas and its partners. UN officials reacted immediately by condemning Israel and finding ways to excuse and diminish the actions of its mortal enemies. The UN is not a neutral party in this war. UN statistic-gatherers rely heavily on Hamas sources, who lie. Palestinian terrorists seek to inflate casualty numbers, and the UN has repeatedly obliged. The UN continuously announces alleged numbers of dead and injured in Gaza without separating casualties into terrorists and civilians. Yet killing the armed combatants of the enemy during a time of war is not illegal. UN sources constantly misrepresent international law, claiming that any civilian casualty is a war crime. In fact, the rules prohibit targeting civilians, and they recognize that within limits, civilian collateral damage or indirect harm is unfortunate but legal. The writer is President of Human Rights Voices and Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust.
2023-10-15 00:00:00
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