Candidate for UN’s Palestine observer compares Israel to Islamic State, watchdog says
‘Radically’ anti-Israel Penny Green has accused Israel of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, called for its total boycott, UN Watch says
The United Nations Human Rights Council has tapped a British professor, who has accused Israel of apartheid and compared it to the Islamic State, to be its investigator into human rights violations in the Palestinian territories, a UN watchdog group reported Thursday.
A committee charged with reviewing candidates to replace Makarim Wibisono, who will leave the position at the end of March, has recommended Penny Green — a professor of law and globalization at Queen Mary University of London — as its first choice for the role.
In response, UN Watch said it had submitted a report to the UNHRC against the “radical” Green’s appointment, citing her apparent bias against Israel.
The watchdog first spoke out against the position itself, charging that “while the title of the mandate implies that the special rapporteur monitors ‘the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories,’ this is false. In fact, the text of the mandate… makes clear that the rapporteur is charged with investigating only ‘Israel’s violations.'”
Not only does the rapporteur’s mandate not cover Palestinian actions against Israelis, it also ignores rights violations by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas against other Palestinians, the report said.
Meanwhile, a look at the Twitter feed of the top candidate for the post shows her to be vehemently anti-Israel. Green, UN Watch said, “accuses Israel of ‘criminal state practices,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and ‘apartheid.'” She has lamented that the US and UK haven’t yet started “bombing Israel for its massacres,” as they have the Islamic State.
She also supports the total boycott of Israel and has posted tweets in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Support BDS against Israel – best way to resist this criminal government: Five Things That Netanyahu Actually Said https://t.co/BpF3bSBGB5
— Penny Green (@pennyjgreen) October 23, 2015
UN Watch claimed that the International State Crime Initiative, of which Green is a director, “opposes Western counterterrorism and anti-extremism efforts as manifestations of Islamophobia.”
The group added that the committee’s second choice, Canadian law professor Michael Lynk, “plays a leadership role in numerous Arab lobby groups, including CEPAL, which promotes ‘Annual Israeli Apartheid Week’ events; signs anti-Israel petitions; calls to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes… and argues that ‘the solution’ to ‘the problem’ must go back to Israel’s very creation in 1948, which he calls ‘the start of ethnic cleansing.’”
UN Watch called on the UNHRC to reject “the grossly partisan applicants,” which, it said, failed to meet the minimal criteria of neutrality.
“By recommending Penny Green to investigate a country that she seeks to bomb and boycott, the UN makes a mockery of its own selection criteria of objectivity and impartiality,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
In February, outgoing rapporteur Wibisono accused Israeli security forces of using excessive force against Palestinians.
He said in his resignation letter that his “efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under the Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way,” because Israel didn’t give him access to the Palestinian territories.
Wibisono told the Human Rights Council that the Palestinian violence that’s raged since October of last year came amid Israel’s construction of “illegal” West Bank settlements. He called Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, designed to prevent the import of weapons by the terror group, a “stranglehold” and “collective punishment.”
