The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday approved a resolution calling for Israel to pay Palestinians reparations for loss and damages suffered during last year’s Operation Cast Lead. The 47-nation council did not call for similar payments by Palestinians to Israelis. The vote comes one day after the same UNHRC approved three more anti-Israel resolutions, with the US being the only member to cast dissenting votes on all three. One resolution on “grave human rights violations” by Israeli forces in the Palestinian territories passed by 31 to 9, with 7 abstentions. Another resolution called on Israel to stop building in the territories and uproot those communities now there was passed by 45 votes, with the EU supporting it and only the US opposing. The third condemned Israel for what it called violation of the rights of the people of the formerly Syrian Golan Heights. Also on Wednesday, the UNHRC website posted a report issued by a Libyan NGO which accused Israeli soldiers of harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed during operations in the Territories. The report also accused Israel of engaging in “ethnic cleansing and massacres” against the Palestinians. “The most preposterous, ridiculous and horrendous of all lies can gain respectability at the UN,” responded Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. The Council was founded in 2006 after the UN Human Rights Commission had lost credibility for its obsessive focus on Israel. However, the new forum has continued that record, with more than two-thirds of its resolutions which have condemned human rights abuses targeting the Jewish state.
Source: IECJ News, March 25, 2010.