Israel demands UN scrap investigation body for Palestinian territories
In the message sent on Wednesday, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Daniel Meron, said The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, discriminated against his country.
Israel has regularly criticised findings by the U.N.-mandated commission, which has condemned actions by the Israeli military since it launched its offensive on Gaza following the deadly attacks by Hamas militants in October 7, 2023.
The commission - established in May 2021 by the Human Rights Council during earlier hostilities between Israel and Hamas - can provide evidence used in pre-trial investigations by tribunals such as the International Criminal Court.
"The Commission of Inquiry, both in its mandate and in the work of its members, constitutes nothing less than a manifestation of the institutional discrimination against Israel in the Human Rights Council," read the letter.
Council President Jurg Lauber Lauber had received the letter but had no authority to abolish the commission, Council spokesperson Pascal Sim said. That would be up to the Council's 47 members, Sim added.
In March a report by the commission said that Israel had carried out "genocidal acts" against Palestinians.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the report's findings biased and antisemitic.
Israel disengaged from the Human Rights Council in February.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
Syria's Druze find bodies in the streets while searching for loved ones after days of clashes
A Syrian Druze woman living in the United Arab Emirates frantically tried to keep in touch with her family in her hometown in southern Syria as clashes raged there over the past days. Her mother, father and sister sent videos of their neighbors fleeing as fighters moved in. The explosions from shelling were non-stop, hitting near their house. Her family took shelter in the basement. When she reached them later in a video call, they said her father was missing. He had gone out during a lull to check the situation and never returned. 'Now I only pray. That's all I can do," she told The Associated Press at the time. Hours later, they learned he had been shot and killed by a sniper. The woman spoke on condition of anonymity fearing that using her name would put her surviving family and friends at risk. A ceasefire went into effect late Wednesday, easing days of brutal clashes in Sweida. Now, members of its Druze community who fled or went into hiding are returning to search for loved ones and count their losses. They are finding homes looted and bloodied bodies of civilians in the streets. 'Systemic killings' The fighting began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze militias in the majority-Druze Sweida province. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians. At least 600 people — combatants and civilians on both sides — were killed in four days of clashes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. It said the dead included more than 80 civilians, mostly Druze, who were rounded up by fighters and collectively shot to death in what the monitor called 'field executions.' 'These are not individual acts but systemic,' the Observatory's director Rami Abdul-Rahman told the AP. 'All the violations are there. You can see from the bodies that are all over the streets in Sweida clearly show they're shot in the head.' In response, Druze militias have targeted Bedouin families in revenge attacks since the ceasefire was reached. Footage shared on Syrian state media shows Bedouin families putting their belongings in trucks and fleeing with reports of renewed skirmishes in those areas. There was no word on casualties in those attacks. Most of the Syrian Druze who spoke to the AP requested anonymity, fearing they and their families could be targeted. The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. They largely celebrated the downfall in December of Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad but were divided over interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa's Sunni Islamist rule. The latest violence has left the community more skeptical of Syria's new leadership and doubtful of peaceful coexistence. Gunned down in the street One Syrian-American Druze told the AP of his fear as he watched the clashes from the United States and tried to account for his family and friends whom he had seen in a recent trip to his native city Sweida. Despite internet and communications breakdowns, he tracked down his family. His mother and brother fled because their home was shelled and raided, he said. Their belongings were stole, windows shattered. Their neighbors' house was burned down. Two other neighbors were killed, one by shelling, another by stray bullets, he said. He also pored over online videos of the fighting, finding a harrowing footage. It showed gunmen in military uniform forcing a number of men in civilian clothes to kneel in the street in a well-known roundabout in Sweida. The gunmen then spray the men with automatic fire, their bodies dropping to the ground. The footage was seen by the AP. To his horror, he recognized the men. One was a close family friend — another Syrian-American on a visit to Sweida from the U.S. The others were the friend's brother, father, three uncles and a cousin. Friends he reached told him that government forces had raided the house where they were all staying and took them outside and shot them. While Damascus vowed to hold perpetrators of civilian killings to account, some rights groups accused Syria's interim government of systematic sectarian violence, similar to that inflicted on the Alawite religious minority in the coastal province of Latakia in the aftermath of Assad's fall as the new government tried to quell a counterinsurgency there. Footage widely circulated on social media showed some of the carnage. One video shows a living room with several bodies on the floor and bullet holes in the walls and sofa. In another, there are at least nine bloodied bodies in one room of the home of a family that took in people fleeing the fighting. Portraits of Druze notables are visible, smashed on the floor. Searching for her husband Evelyn Azzam, a Druze woman, is searching the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, trying to find out what happened to her husband, Robert Kiwan. Last week, the 23-year-old Kiwan left home in Jaramana early as he does every day to commute to his job in Sweida. He got caught up in the chaos when the clashes erupted. Azzam was on the phone with him as government forces questioned him and his coworkers. She heard a gunshot when one of the coworkers raised his voice. She heard her husband trying to appeal to the soldiers. 'He was telling them that they are from the Druze of Sweida, but have nothing to do with the armed groups,' the 20-year-old Azzam said. Then she heard another gunshot; her husband was shot in the hip. An ambulance took him to a hospital, where she later learned he underwent an operation. But she hasn't heard anything since and doesn't know if he survived. Back in the U.S., the Syrian-American said he was relieved that his family is safe but the video of his friend's family being gunned down in the street filled him with 'disbelief, betrayal, rage.' He said his family and friends protested against Assad, celebrated his downfall and wanted to give al-Sharaa's rule a chance. He said he hadn't wanted to believe that the new Syrian army — which emerged from al-Sharaa's insurgent forces — was made up of Islamic militants. But after the violence in Latakia and now in Sweida, he sees the new army as a 'bunch of militias … with a huge majority being radicals.' 'I can't imagine a world where I would be able to go back and integrate with these monsters,' he said.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘Our silence didn't protect him': daughter pleads for father on death row in Iran
In late October 2022, as protests over 22-year-old Mahsa Amini's death in police custody swept across Iran, Rezgar Beigzadeh Babamiri, a father of three, was racing through alleyways in the city of Bukan, in western Iran, carrying medical supplies to secret clinics where doctors treated injured demonstrators in defiance of the state. Many of the wounded were too afraid to seek hospital care after reports of secret police patrolling wards, interrogating patients and detaining injured protesters. By helping, Babamiri, a 47-year-old fruit and vegetable farmer, did not see himself as a revolutionary but simply as someone doing what was right, says his daughter, Zhino. 'There was intense firing from the forces and many protesters were injured. Everyone was helping each other and he volunteered,' she says. 'I told him not to talk about it openly on the phone, but he said it wasn't dangerous to help injured people. He just couldn't watch young people bleed in the streets.' Babamiri was arrested in April 2023 and questioned by the ministry of intelligence in Bukan. Zhino, 24, says the family initially believed it was a brief interrogation. 'I was told [by relatives] not to worry and that he'd be home soon,' she says. Instead, he disappeared into solitary confinement and was initially denied access to a lawyer or contact with his family, the Kurdish Human Rights Network says. Last week, the family heard from a lawyer that Babamiri had been sentenced to death, along with four other Kurdish men, after being charged with 'armed insurrection', 'leading and forming an armed group' and 'espionage for Israel'. Zhino, who lives in exile in Norway, says the family have been horrified by the verdict. 'When I heard about the death sentence, I was numb. When I called my grandmother and aunt, they were crying loudly. I have never heard them cry like that.' Since his arrest, Zhino says several people have come forward with stories of how her father helped save their lives. 'These charges have been fabricated. My dad is a simple farmer who loves the people of his community and his family. He is a man who loves poems, likes watching news and enjoys working out,' she says. In July 2024, Iranian state media aired a video showing Babamiri confessing, alongside other men charged in the same case. Human rights groups say his conviction was based on a forced confession. In a letter later smuggled out of prison to the family, Babamiri described enduring more than four months of torture, including waterboarding, electric shocks, mock executions, and beatings that left him partially deaf. 'When I first read the letter, I skipped the parts about torture. I couldn't bear to see what they did to him,' says Zhino. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion Amnesty International says Babamiri's arrest in 2023 came during a wave of detentions and executions of students and activists after the 2022 protests, part of the Iranian regime's campaign to instil fear and maintain control. Amnesty has also repeatedly documented the regime's arbitrary arrest and detention of Kurds – an ethnic minority in Iran – based on perceived affiliations with opposition groups, often without credible evidence. 'My dad and the others are paying the price for simply being born Kurdish,' says Zhino. 'They told him no one would care if he died and that he'd end up in a mass grave.' Zhino says members of her family still living in Iran are fearful, and that she was advised by well-wishers to stay quiet after his arrest. 'I regret that. The silence didn't protect him and it almost broke me,' she says. She has become an outspoken campaigner, co-founding Daughters of Justice, a group of Iranians fighting to save their imprisoned fathers. In her most recent phone call with her father, he could not hear her. 'He kept saying, 'Zhino, are you there?'. I could hear him, but he couldn't hear me. I was crying. That moment haunts me.' She now waits every day for news of his fate. 'I am scared to check my phone,' she says. 'I'm terrified I'll wake up to read my father's name [on the death list].'
Times
5 hours ago
- Times
BBC inquiry into Gaza documentary was a whitewash, MP claims
The BBC's internal investigation into its controversial Hamas documentary was a 'whitewash', the shadow culture secretary has said. Stuart Andrew has written to the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, outlining concerns that five issues were overlooked by the inquiry conducted by the corporation's director of editorial complaints and reviews. On Monday, Peter Johnston ruled that the broadcaster breached editorial guidelines by failing to give audiences the 'critical information' that the narrator of Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, Abdullah al-Yazouri, was the son of a Hamas minister. However, he said that no impartiality rules had been broken. 'The findings of this report, and more notably the omissions and assumptions on which those findings rest, cast significant doubt on the impartiality of the review process and raise fundamental questions about whether the BBC should be allowed to mark its own homework in matters of such gravity,' Andrew said.
