Canadian Prof. William Schabas, the head of the newly-named UN HRC panel investigating the Israel-Hamas conflict, tells Army Radio that he has been to Israel several times, lectured at Israeli universities, and sits on the board of a prestigious Israeli law journal. This, to counter allegations that he is biased against Israel, including because he has called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former president Shimon Peres to stand trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes.
As for the mandate of his probe, Schabas says that while it “doesn’t specify,” he interprets his mission as being “to look at violations on both sides.”
William Schabas (screen capture: YouTube)
Schabas, a professor of International Law at London’s Middlesex University, supported the 2010 Goldstone Report into Israel’s last ground offensive in Gaza, though he said in a later interview that the scale of destruction in Gaza did not compare to other atrocities in the world.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has been bitterly critical of the probe and the panel.
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From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
