Instigated by Pakistan, which is no paragon of human rights, the new UN Human Rights Council roundly condemned Israel today for “grave violations of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law in Lebanon�.
The resolution’s operative paragraphs said nothing about Hezbollah or the killing of Israeli civilians. Even Amnesty International, no friend of Israel, and Switzerland, the global custodian of human rights laws, criticized the decision for absence of balance.
The resolution also called for a Commission of Inquiry, which must report to the Council no later than September 1, 2006. The vote was 27 in favor, 11 against and 8 abstentions.
This decision should not be ignored as anti-Israeli rhetoric. It is significant because it reveals the diplomatic weakness of Israel’s supporters. Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Holland, Poland and Japan were the major powers against the resolution. (The US is not a voting member.) The Czech republic, Finland, Romania and Ukraine were the other nay votes.
The ayes included Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil and Mexico alongside the predictable ayes from Arab or Islamic states. Switzerland, South Korea, Nigeria and the Philippines were among the abstentions.
The voting pattern confirms the opposition to Israel’s narrative in the UN Security Council and the wider reluctance to accept Israel’s view of preconditions necessary for its security. At worst, two veto powers, Russia and China, believe Israel protects itself through aggression and gross violation of human rights. At best, they voted aye to placate their own restive Muslim populations, similarly to India, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Either way, the vote demonstrated that none of the major non-Western countries will stick their necks out for Israel regardless of the threats to it. The overall message is that most of the global community either does not believe Israel’s narrative, is too fearful of offending its own Muslims or simply happy to stick one in the eye of Israel’s supporters.
For Israel, this is not a tenable situation. Israel wants to exist for centuries at peace in its region of choice. It is failing to convince the wider world that its version of what it must do to build that peace deserves sympathy. In today’s world of global diplomacy, Israel cannot find security without also finding ways to win more support for its diplomatic arguments.