HRW to Participate in anti-Israel UN Question of Palestine Event
On July 22 and 23, 2009, The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will hold an NGO conference examining “Responsibility of the international community to uphold international humanitarian law to ensure the protection of civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in the wake of the war in Gaza”. The objective is “to discuss questions related to Israeli violations of international humanitarian law during the recent hostilities in the Gaza Strip” [emphasis added]. The NGO conference – one of a series held periodically by this committee–will also examine possibilities of lawfare against Israel and “individual and collective action by Governments”. Violations by Hamas, including the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians with continuous rocket attacks, and the extensive use of human shields in Gaza, are not on the agenda. The session represents yet another UN framework used to attack Israel coordinated with NGO superpowers and many EU and European funded NGOs. This event is timed to coincide with the Goldstone mission hearings and the tendentious reports issued by HRW, Amnesty and other NGOs during the past few weeks.
Among others on the program is Bill Van Esveld, Israel and PA researcher for Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. Van Esveld will be presenting on a panel entitled, “The Results of Israeli conduct during the war in Gaza”. Mr. Esveld’s and HRW’s appearance at this blatantly one-sided event comes amidst the intense controversy over HRW’s use of anti-Israel activities and the emphasis on the need to defeat “pro-Israel pressure groups” during a May fundraising dinner held in Saudi Arabia.
Esveld will be joined by a range of anti-Israel NGO activists and UN and Palestinian officials. Speakers include Charles Shamas, partner in the Mattin Group, co-Founder of Al Haq, and HRW board member; Raji Sourani of the EU-funded PCHR; the former notorious UN rapporteur, John Dugard, leader of the Arab League’s “fact finding” delegation to Gaza that accused Israel of “genocide” and “war crimes”; Pierre Galand; Ron Yaron, an official of the EU- and European government-funded Physician’s for Human Rights-Israel; Daphna Golan, co-founder of B’Tselem, researcher at the Minerva Center for Human Rights of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a consultant to a pseudo-academic study organized by Dugard and Al Haq, claiming Israel is an “apartheid” state; and representatives of the Irish and Scandanavian government funded Badil, the EU- and NIF- funded Adalah, and the EU-funded Keshev.