B’nai Brith Canada on Wednesday formally asked Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations, to help remove Navi Pillay, Chair of the “Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories” of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
B’nai Brith urged Rae to raise Pillay’s lack of impartiality with the United Nations General Assembly as grounds for her disqualification from the post. B’nai Brith said it will also file a formal complaint with the UNHRC President, asking for Pillay to be removed.
This past July, the president of the UN Human Rights Council announced that Pillay will chair a commission to investigate what was described as “systematic” abuses allegedly committed in Israel and Palestinian Authority territories during the recent violence between Hamas and Israel last May.
Pillay has a history of anti-Israel statements. In 2014, she condemned Israel for "targeting" UN-run schools and hospitals in Gaza, while failing to mention three UN-run schools in Gaza had been used as rocket warehouses, a gross violation of international law that clearly falls within the category of war crimes.
Weeks before that, Pillay opened an emergency UN debate on Gaza by saying there is a "strong possibility" that Israel is violating law in Gaza, and that could amount to war crimes.
Israel has announced that it will not cooperate with the UN probe, noting Pillay has endorsed “the shameful libel” branding Israel an apartheid nation and backed the boycott movement against Israel.
“This nomination epitomizes everything that is wrong with the UNHRC,” said Marvin Rotrand, National Director of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights. “It’s appalling that the United Nations can appoint someone to serve as the Chair of a supposedly impartial investigation who has vilified Israel and declared it guilty of crimes that are supposed to be part of the Commission’s investigation.”
"Ms. Pillay's record of condemning Israel and publicly lobbying against it clearly demonstrates her unsuitability as an impartial head of this Commission of Inquiry," said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B'nai Brith Canada. "By not removing Ms. Pillay from her post, the UN risks further damaging its own credibility along with that of the Commission."
The appeal follows a tweet by Ambassador Rae indicating an openness to expel the Russian Federation as a member of the UNHRC, due to its brutal invasion of Ukraine. In addition to the Pillay matter, B'nai Brith also invited Rae to support a more far-reaching reform of the UNHRC, noting that many of its members comprise some of the world’s worst human-rights abusers. Among the Human Rights Council's 47 members are known human-rights violators, including China, Cuba, Eritrea, Pakistan, Venezuela and Libya.
The UNHRC is notorious for its longstanding bias against Israel. Former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the UNHRC in 2018 due to this.
However, the Biden administration returned to the organization last year, even though it acknowledged its “disproportionate focus” on Israel.