A sweeping bipartisan majority of the US Senate, 68 members i.e. More than two-thirds, have signed a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for the Biden administration to quash the UN Human Rights Council permanent inquiry into Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
The inquiry came after the human rights entity voted for the creation of a permanent investigation Commission of Inquiry, which is considered the most potent tool at the council’s disposal, in May 2021– when the assault over Gaza took place.
The inquiry aimed to monitor and report on rights violations performed in so-called Israel and the Palestinian territories. It is worth mentioning that it is the first such COI with an ongoing mandate.
In May 2021, the UN rights chief said,” Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and faulted the Hamas terror group for violations of international law in their 11-day conflict earlier that month.”
It’s worth mentioning that the Biden administration rejoined the UNHCR earlier this year, after former president Donald Trump withdrew the US from the council over its alleged anti-Israel bias. As an attempt to justify the return, the current White House has argued it was “unable to influence the international dialogue on human rights without a seat at the table.”
They were led by Maryland’s democrat senator Ben Cardin the republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio; the decision was backed by 31 Democrats and 37 Republicans.
Biden administration officials have insisted they will use the renewed US membership to oppose alleged one-sided measures targeting Israel and speak out against the 125-8-34 vote to launch the open-ended probe into Israel following last May’s war against the Hamas terror group. As they described
The Senate letter was praised by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, which described the probe as “part of the UN’s broad, decades-long campaign to criminalize and delegitimize the world’s only Jewish state.”
There is a very small probability of this initiative passing and it is for the council to adopt a resolution reversing the previous one. That being highly unlikely as the prob was supported by a resounding majority.
And while the initiative was hailed by the US senate, it didn’t receive hardly the same support from the house of representatives as only 42 lawmakers out of its 435 population.
Israeli leaders were quick to attack the legitimacy of the probe as soon as it was suggested as of May last year, shortly after the conclusion of the 11-day war on the besieged Gaza strip.
Israel has continuously refused to cooperate with the UNHCR’s investigators, under pretexts of accusing the human rights organization of anti-Israel bias— a claim they were not hesitant to call other human rights groups such as amnesty international and even the Israel-based B’Tselem, the Israeli information center of human rights.
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