Arthur Stark, Chairman and Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued the following statement:
We strongly reject the latest anti-Israel report released by the United Nations Human Rights Council investigating Israel’s response to the weeks-long violent attacks on its border organized and led by the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.
In its unceasing quest to vilify Israel, the so-called Human Rights Council’s politically motivated and inherently hostile agenda against Israel has once again driven it to new depths of hypocrisy and bias with marked indifference to the lethal exploitation of the people of Gaza by Hamas.
The report disregards the despicable inhumane tactics of Hamas that incites their own people to violence, deliberately places them in harm’s way and exploits their deaths and injuries. The Hamas leaders have proudly acknowledged their manipulation of the people to distract attention from their corrupt and failed regime.
The Council’s report willfully ignores the brazen public statements of Hamas leaders boasting of using thousands of rioting Palestinians storming the border fence to camouflage the armed terror operatives seeking to breach the sovereign borders of Israel and carry out attacks against Israeli civilians. Hamas officials also acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of those killed were Hamas operatives.
No nation in the world, including Israel, can or should stand by and allow an armed invasion of its territory. Every nation, including Israel, would and must act to defend its sovereign borders and its population against armed aggression, but not every nation would adhere to rules of engagement and processes of command and control to ensure that norms of international humanitarian law are followed, as Israel does. Today’s report brings shame on the Human Rights Council. In denying Israel’s right to defend its citizens, the UN Human Rights Council becomes a partner in Hamas’s terror.
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