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The United States was the only nation to vote against The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) vote on Friday in Geneva to approve a report which blamed Israel for violating human rights in Gaza during last summer’s conflict there. The UNHRC report accuses Israel as much as Hamas for violating international law during what is known in Israel as “Operation Protective Edge.”
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office Tweeted “Thank you President Obama for standing with Israel at UNHRC.”
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The vote passed 41 to 1 with Ethiopia, India, Paraguay, Macedonia and Kenya all abstaining. EU member states like France, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands all voted in favor of adopting the report. On the bright side, India’s abstention means a great deal since Israel has improved relations with that country over the past few years.
“In the past also, whenever a Human Rights Council resolution had made a direct reference to the ICC, as had happened in the Resolutions on Syria and North Korea, our general approach had been to abstain. We have followed the same principle in our voting on today’s Resolution, ” said an Indian government official spokesperson.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, of course, condemned the vote saying, “On the day on which Israel was fired at from Sinai, and at a time when ISIS is committing vicious terrorist attacks in Egypt, as [Syria’s Bashar] Assad slaughters his people in Syria and as the number of arbitrary executions per annum climbs in Iran, the UN Human Rights Council decides to condemn the State of Israel for no fault of its own, for acting to defend itself from a murderous terrorist organization.”
US Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Keith Harper said, “We [THE US] are troubled that this resolution focuses exclusively on Israel.”
British Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Julian Braithwaite said “Israel has the right to defend itself against indiscriminate attacks. But it is a principle of international humanitarian law that the use of force in self-defense must be proportionate and distinguish between military and civilian targets.”
Before the vote, Israeli Ambassador Eviatar Manor said, “I have no interest in debating the content of the resolution. It is an anti-Israeli manifesto. I will state, however, that the resolution distorts the intention of the authors of the report by completely ignoring alleged violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.”
