The May 18 decision of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to establish a commission of inquiry into the killing of Palestinian protesters in the latest clashes at the Gaza border, especially those on May 14, was met with a Pavlovian response from Jerusalem: Israel will boycott the commission, will not allow its members to visit Israel and will refrain from testifying to it. As in the past, it might make do with submitting an official paper that explains the need to defend its borders, and protect its citizens.
The UN council is a very problematic body as far as Israel is concerned. Its critique over the years has been far from professionally objective, and much closer to hostile. Most of its debates and decisions touch on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and its leaning against Israel is evident, as is the fact that it overlooks other cases around the world, involving much greater numbers of casualties and cruelty that can’t be denied and can’t be ignored.
But over the years Israel’s use of the right to remain silent has not helped at all, has not strengthened its case and has not raised second thoughts among critics of the Jewish state. When the Jewish South African Judge Richard Goldstone headed a commission of inquiry on behalf of the council in 2009, to investigate the events of Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, Israel boycotted him and his commission. The report was indeed very critical, but two years later Goldstone published a surprising essay in The Washington Post, where he wrote that if Israel would have cooperated with him, if it had revealed the relevant material to him, which had reached him in the meantime, he would not have accused it of the crimes it was accused of.
Despite all this, Israel sticks to its stance. In 2012, it decided to break any ties to the commission. Shortly afterward Jerusalem changed policy and made every effort to reconnect with the commission, since someone in the government understood that anger can’t guide Israel’s foreign policy and that self-isolation does not punish the state’s rivals or its enemies — only Israel itself.
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