UN Human Rights Council investigator ignores abuses by PA and Hamas -

Israel's ambassador to the U.N. accused a human rights investigator of 'hateful incitement' for reporting on abuses in Palestinian territories -- but leaving out actual Palestinian abuses.  (AP Photo/Osamu Honda, File)

A special investigator assigned by the United Nations Human Rights Council to look into abuses in the Palestinian territories left out any mention of actual Palestinian abuses in his report. He instead released a litany of complaints and charges against Israel.

In one small section of his report, Michael Lynk did try to give the impression of being evenhanded, writing, “The Rapporteur notes that human rights violations by any State party or non-State actor are deplorable and will only hinder the prospects of peace.”

However, at a press conference at the world body in New York, Lynk, the U.N. special rapporteur, admitted to journalists that he did not add human rights abuses by either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas to his report because that was not in his mandate to do so, even though his title seemed to indicate it was. 

When he was asked about it, Lynk seemed unaware that two of his predecessors had in fact included these abuses during their tenures.

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But that wasn’t the end of it: U.N. Watch, a human rights group based in Geneva, released a letter to Lynk calling on him to investigate human rights abuses by Palestinians.

“By any definition of human rights, morality and logic, if Mr. Lynk is a United Nations human rights monitor for the Palestinian Territories, he must address Palestinian Authority and Hamas torture and arbitrary arrest committed against their own people,” said Hillel Neuer, the executive director of U.N. Watch.

Neuer listed examples of human rights violations enacted against its own citizens by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that included jailing of journalists, the suppression of peaceful protests, torture, torture of juveniles and extrajudicial killings. He also cited the killing of Israelis in terror attacks, suicide attacks and kidnappings by Palestinian terror groups.

Israeli ambassador Danny Danon in 2016.  (UNTV via AP)

Lynk said that Fox News and other journalists were confusing his mandate: “It is not aimed at Israel, it’s aimed at Israeli occupation of a territory that’s not its own. That is a distinct and separate question, and those who wind up confusing the two do so, I suggest, deliberately to obfuscate the question of the 60-year-old occupation.”

Lynk did concede, however, that he possibly would consider asking the council when he next reports in March to expand his mandate to include Palestinian abuses.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon fired off a statement following his press conference accusing Lynk of spreading hateful “incitement against the State of Israel.”

“The U.N. Human Rights Council has lost its legitimacy as it focuses obsessively on attacking Israel instead of working on resolving the real human rights problems plaguing the world.  The Council has lost all touch with reality and the original intent of upon which it was founded,” Danon said.

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Lynk asserted that he has the independence to choose his topics under the framework of his mandate given to him by the council.

Anne Bayefsky, professor and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and Holocaust, told Fox News that Lynk’s title gives the opposite impression of what he actually does.

“Link demonstrates how dangerous the U.N. Human Rights Council really is,” she said. “The Council gave him the misleading title of U.N. human rights expert investigator, knowing in advance he had made up his mind about the subject he was to investigate. Lynk went into the U.N. job wildly anti-Israel, and voilà, he now produces statements and reports containing wild anti-Israel pronouncements, starting with analogies to apartheid South Africa.”

The Trump administration is said to be strongly considering pulling the U.S. out of the much maligned Human Rights Council just as it recently did when it left another U.N. body, UNESCO, citing amongst other reasons its anti-Israel bias.