Head of commission says ‘no bias’ in UN report

Mary McGowan Davis, who headed the UNHRC panel on the Gaza war last summer, tells Israel’s Channel 2 that the commission was correct in treating the IDF and Hamas as bound by “the same principles” of the laws of war.

Asked about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rush to dismiss the report, McGowan Davis comments: “Well, I would say that he’s wrong. I doubt he had time to read all 183 pages” of the report. “He’s a busy man” after all, she adds.

McGowan Davis rejects accusations that the commission was biased: “I think we tried very hard to be even-handed, and there’s no bias at all in the report,” she claims.

Asked about juxtaposing the Israeli army and Hamas, the New York-based jurist says that “Israel and the armed groups operate under the same principles, the same international human rights principles,” and therefore it was correct to juxtapose their conduct during the conflict. “You had the IDF on one side and armed groups on the other,” and they were measured by the same principles.

Asked whether she sees the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas as “equivalent,” McGowan Davis comments, “I didn’t say equivalence.”

And asked if she views Hamas as a terror group, the head of the panel refuses the bait. “I am not going to go into that. They obviously didn’t abide by the rules of international law. We use that label a lot in my country and I try to stay away from labels like ‘terrorists.’”