The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) released a report on Monday claiming Israel committed war crimes during its attack against Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip last year, producing outrage from members of the Florida congressional delegation.
Presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, insisted “the council has lost all credibility” and the “U.N. Human Rights Council is not a fair tribunal.”
“It is a source of regular and one-sided biased attacks against Israel, produced by a membership featuring some of the world’s worst human rights abusers.,” Rubio said about the UNHRC before turning his fire on the Obama administration and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“This attack on Israel is just the latest piece of evidence that President Obama and Secretary Clinton’s efforts to reform the organization from within have failed,” Rubio said. “The U.S. should not participate in the council until it is truly reformed.
“Last summer’s conflict happened because Hamas, once again, resumed its efforts to kill and terrorize innocent Israeli civilians, while using the Palestinian people as human shields,” Rubio insisted. “Israel, like the U.S., goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, and its record is, and the precautions it takes are, exceptional. This report is unfair, biased, one-sided, and intended only to prevent Israel from defending itself in the future.”
Rubio vowed to “continue to fight U.N. efforts like this to delegitimize Israel and will work to ensure that no U.S. funding goes to support U.N. agencies, such as the U.N. Human Rights Council, unless they cease their anti-Israel agenda.”
Over in the House, other members of the Florida delegation tore into the UNHRC report. From her perch as chairwoman of the U.S. House Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said this was just the “latest effort by the U.N. Human Rights Council to delegitimize Israel. Ros-Lehtinen called attempts to “establish some false moral equivalency between the terror group Hamas” and Israel “deplorable.”
“Israel’s military took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza that almost no other military in the world would be asked to show in a similar situation, while Hamas militants fired thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israel with no regard for the lives of Israelis or Palestinians,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “When some of the world’s worst human rights offenders, like Cuba, China and Venezuela, sit on the council, continued participation by the United States lends credence where there should be condemnation and skepticism. President Obama must condemn in no uncertain terms this report, the UNHRC and its continued anti-Israel agenda, and he must immediately cut all funding and withdraw from the council until real and concrete
reforms are implemented.”
Florida Democrats also called out the UNHRC report, including U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., the ranking Democrat on the House Middle Eastern and North Africa Subcommittee.
“This biased U.N. report tries to equate Israel's efforts to minimize casualties and defend its people with terrorists' goal of mass casualties,” Deutch noted late on Monday.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN
