Itongadol.- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the UN Human Rights Council on Friday after it ratified a Palestinian-presented resolution on last summer\’s war in Gaza, saying the body was unnecessarily harsh on Israel and "is not really interested in facts and human rights."
The premier issued his fiery statement shortly after a projectile launched at Israel exploded in the southern Eshkol Regional Council. Despite previous uncertainty over the rocket\’s origins, according to Netanyahu, the projectile was launched from the Sinai Peninsula where Islamic State-linked fighters recently carried out a series of deadly strikes on Egyptian military posts.
In his condemnation of the UNHRC, the prime minister mentioned the rocket strike along with brutal Islamic State terrorist attacks in Syria, the atrocities of the ongoing Syrian civil war and Iran\’s arbitrary executions of minority group members, indicating that the UN body should concentrate on those issues.
"The council has now adopted more resolutions against Israel than the total number of resolutions it has made on other countries," the premier said, adding that the UNHRC "cannot call itself a human rights council."
"Those who fear to openly attack terrorism will – in the end – be attacked by terrorism," he said in reference to the UN council.
However, Netanyahu stressed that Israel would continue to defend its citizens from those who aim to destroy it.
"The State of Israel acted to defend itself against a murderous terrorist organization," he said of Israel\’s operation against Hamas last summer.
Netanyahu\’s remarks came after the UNHRC called on Israel and the Palestinians to prosecute alleged war crimes committed in the 2014 Gaza war and to cooperate with the International Criminal Court\’s preliminary investigation.
The council debated the issue days before the first anniversary of Israel launching "Operation Protective Edge" in response to rockets fired by terrorists in the Hamas-ruled enclave into Israel.
The 47-member state forum adopted the resolution, presented by the Palestinian delegation backed by Muslim states, by a vote of 41 in favor, one against (the United States) and five abstentions. Israel denounced it as an "anti-Israeli manifesto."
After hours of behind-the-scenes negotiations on the text, all European Union member states of the Council, including Britain, France and Germany, voted in favor.
The resolution underlined "the need to ensure that all those responsible for violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law are held to account, through appropriate fair and independent domestic or international criminal justice mechanisms."
Independent UN investigators issued a report on June 22 that Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups committed grave abuses of international humanitarian law during the 2014 Gaza conflict that may amount to war crimes.