In May, the UN Human Rights Council held a special session to discuss its favorite topic: the imagined crimes of the Jewish state. The session concluded by passing a typical resolution condemning Israel for war crimes, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and so forth, while making no mention whatsoever of Hamas or the missile war it had recently launched. But it also created an “ongoing independent, international commission of inquiry”—naturally to be led by anti-Israel activists—to look into the matter. Anne Bayefsky explains what makes this anti-Israel UN resolution different from so many others:
Extraordinarily, the budget for funding the “inquiry” only surfaced four months after the vote creating it was taken, so voters did not know its financial ramifications. Quietly posted after the fact on the UN website at the end of September 2021, the budget manifests a wild grab for an unprecedented amount of cash and human resources. All of it is to come from the UN’s regular budget. . . . It is currently set to cost at least $11,812,700 total in its first three years, and $5,475,600 each year thereafter.
Here is another shocking component. The Israel inquisition is the largest boondoggle in the history of the UN human-rights system: it will fund 790 days of travel for experts and staff every year from 2022 on—forever. Those are two UN employees provided food and accommodation and airfare to roam around demonizing the Jewish state every day of every year. That is also more travel days than any of the Council’s current human-rights investigations about anything, anywhere.
Especially insidious is an amount the UN has budgeted for lawfare. There will be four full-time lawyers, plus a “forensic expert” to “report on medico-legal issues,” and a “military advisor” to pronounce on “de-jure command responsibility” and liaise with law-enforcement officials. Lawfare in the UN-Palestinian context will consist of falsifying, misrepresenting, and abusing law to criminalize (a) the self-defense of Jews and the Jewish state, and (b) Jews living, cultivating, or even being on land whenever or wherever Arabs object.
In effect, the budget of this UN inquisition funds the creation of a law firm inside the UN dedicated to manufacturing charges and mounting a global chase to arrest and incarcerate Israeli Jews.
Read more on Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: https://jcpa.org/article/the-newest-anti-israel-un-action-must-be-challenged-now/