UN Gaza Probe Seeks Delay to June After Schabas Quits Over Paid Legal Work for the PLO
• Schabas Interviews With 9/11 Truther Richard Falk, Blasts UN Watch
• Schabas and Falk Listed as Speakers at Anti-Israel Conference in UK
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New Inquiry Chief Mary McGowan Davis: “Need to adjust our work due to late resignation of former chair William Schabas”
In an unexpected development, the UN commission of inquiry into the 2014 Gaza conflict, scheduled to report on March 23rd, has requested a delay until June.
The president of the UN Human Rights Council, Ambassador Joachim Ruecker of Germany, said that he supported the request, however nothing has yet been formally decided.
Mary McGowan Davis, who replaced William Schabas as chair after it was revealed that he performed paid legal work for the PLO, said that the commission needed the delay “to adjust our work due to the late resignation of its former chair.”
Moreover, she said the probe must analyze “with utmost objectivity” a large number of submissions received over past weeks from both sides.
UN Watch was the first to formally request a delay when it met the commissioners privately in September, arguing the need for the probe to be thorough and not rushed, and to allow the parties to conduct their own inquiries without being pre-empted by the UN.
At the time, both Schabas and McGowan Davis abruptly dismissed the idea. This week, however, the commission suddenly argued that a delay was needed: the issues are “complex,” it said, and “weighing the facts and considering the legal questions that arise is something that should not be rushed under any circumstances.”
Schabas Interviews With 9/11 Truther Richard Falk; Both Blast UN Watch
Falk opened his interview by saying that “prominent individuals” who dare to criticize Israel are constantly subjected to false charges of bias.In one of his first acts after resigning in disgrace from the UN’s Gaza probe, William Schabas decided to give an interview to equally disgraced former UN official Richard Falk. He joined the 9/11 Truther in blasting UN Watch.
“This was my experience as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine during the entire period of 2008-2014,” writes Falk, “in which I was subject to continuous defamatory attacks, spearheaded by UN Watch, a notorious NGO that avoids the message while mounting a furious attack on the messenger, seeking to blacken my reputation by writing letters of personal denunciation to a variety of prominent persons, who took such tactics far more seriously than they deserved.”
Schabas agreed with Falk, saying that “UN Watch and its friends howled about the composition” of his commission, and that “charges of bias against me were nothing more than a witch-hunt, something reminiscent of McCarthyism.”
In the interview, Schabas sought to downplay his prior prejudicial statements — which include his declaration that the one person he most wants to see in the dock of the international criminal court is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and his failure to disclose his paid legal work for the PLO.
If Israeli judges were able to judge Adolph Eichmann despite their “strong views” on Nazi war criminals, argued Schabas, he too could judge the Jewish state.
Schabas and Falk Listed as Speakers at Anti-Israel Conference in UK’s Southampton U. — Then Schabas’ Name Removed
An upcoming April conference at the UK’s University of Southampton that seeks to challenge the “legitimacy in international law of the Jewish state of Israel,” accusing it of “Apartheid,” listed former UN officials Richard Falk and William Schabas among their speakers.
A newer version of the program, however, which follows an international outcry, suddenly has Schabas’ name removed.
Snapshots of the program follow below.
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