The United Nations Humans Rights Council voted Friday to adopt a report accusing Israel of crimes against humanity for its handling of violent protests on the border with Gaza Strip.
Twenty-three countries voted to in favor of the measure, with nine opposing it. Another 14 countries abstained, while one was absent.
The countries that voted against adopting the report were Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Fiji, Hungary, Togo and Ukraine.
The decision was condemned by the Foreign Ministry, which claimed that a “moral majority” did not vote in favor of the measure.
“Dictatorships and hypocrites vote in favor of the singling out, absurd pro Hamas pro terror report,” ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon wrote on Twitter.
“We will not cooperate with this mockery and will keep protecting Israel and Israelis,” he added.
Aviva Raz Schecter, the Israeli ambassador to UN institutions in Geneva, said ahead of the vote that the report “was born in sin” and accused it of ignoring the role of the Gaza-ruling Hamas group in the clashes. An Islamist terror organization, Hamas seeks to destroy Israel
“The commission’s report will only serve to encourage Hamas’s use of the civilian population as shields and as a tool in its efforts to attack Israel, and increase the danger to civilians on both sides,” she told the Human Rights Council.
Raz Schechter also defended Israel’s track record of investigating suspicions against Israeli soldiers.
The vote came after the so-called Commission of Inquiry on the Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory on Monday presented a 250-page report alleging that Israel may have committed “crimes against humanity” by using live ammunition against Palestinians protesters who participated in the so-called Great March of Return.
Intentionally killing civilians who are not “directly participating in hostilities” is a war crime, the report stressed. “The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that individual members of the Israeli security forces, in the course of their response to the demonstrations, killed and gravely injured civilians who were neither directly participating in hostilities nor posing an imminent threat.”
Israel had at its disposal “less lethal alternatives,” the document went on, positing that the use of the live ammunition against protesters was disproportionate and unlawful.
Hamas has acknowledged that dozens of those killed were its members.
The report accused Israel of having “consistently failed to meaningfully investigate and prosecute commanders and soldiers for crimes and violations committed against Palestinians.” While it acknowledged that the army has opened several internal army inquiries into the shootings of apparently uninvolved civilians, it doubted the government’s willingness to honestly scrutinize its policies and actions.
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