Despite Israeli lobbying efforts against the Goldstone Report, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva endorsed the document on Friday, a move that will send it on to more powerful UN bodies in New York for action.
The resolution passed 25-6, with mostly developing countries in favor and the United States and five European countries opposing. Eleven mostly European and African countries abstained, while Britain, France and three other members of the 47-nation body declined to vote.
The Palestinians, through Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tunisia, had submitted the resolution to the council, which called for an endorsement of the Goldstone Report that accuses Israel of committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during Operation Cast Lead.
The resolution also condemned Israeli human rights violations in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. RELATEDForget the inquiries - lift the blockadeOpinion: It looks like law, but it's just politicsVideo: Kids of Kassam Ave Dershowitz's blog: Goldstone backs away from report
Although the Goldstone report also accuses Hamas of war crimes, the five-page resolution explicitly mentions only Israeli violations of international law.
Based on the recommendations in the report, the document will now move on to the UN General Assembly and the Security Council. The report asks that the Security Council forward it to the International Criminal Court, so that it could be used as a basis to prosecute Israelis for war crimes.
US diplomat Douglas M. Griffiths told the council Washington was disappointed with the outcome of the vote. The United States had wanted the report to stay in Geneva, and is likely to veto any action in the 15-member Security Council.
Prior to the vote, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan addressed the UN session, and said that based on his knowledge and experience, during Operation Cast Lead, the IDF "did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare."
Speaking on behalf of UN Watch, an independent Geneva human rights group, Kemp added that "Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."
He said that Hamas, like Hizballah, was expert at driving the media agenda.
"Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes," he said. "They are adept at staging and distorting incidents."
"It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights," continued Kemp. "The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties."
He also noted that during the conflict, the IDF took risks by allowing huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying that to the military tactician, delivering aid virtually into your enemy's hands is "normally quite unthinkable."
"War is chaos and full of mistakes," added the former commander who has served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. "There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes."
He stressed that the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas' way of fighting, saying the terror group deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.
"Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets," he concluded.
UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer blasted the meeting, saying, it had nothing to do with human rights.
"There's no emergency, other than Palestinian President Abbas' precarious political predicament," he said. "The Arab-sponsored draft resolution is entirely one-sided, condemning Israel while saying nothing about Hamas and its rocket attacks."
"UN Watch calls on all council members to vote against the imbalanced resolution, and to deny Hamas terrorists the political victory they desperately crave, but which the world will only grant at its peril," he stated. "We urge council members like Pakistan, China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to end their strategy of focusing on Israel in order to hide the world's real abuses, especially their own. With this being the council's 6th special session on Israel - versus only 4 for the whole world combined - it's tragic that once again politics is trumping human rights."
Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report
