Thread by @HillelNeuer

BREAKING: The head of a new UN inquiry into last spring’s Hamas-Israel war was accused today of making prejudicial statements on the issues under investigation, compromising her impartiality, and was asked to resign in a legal brief filed today by UN Watch.unwatch.org/head-of-un-pro…

According to a 30-page complaint submitted today by UN Watch, Navi Pillay, a former South African judge and UN human rights chief, violated UN rules by failing to disclose numerous of her prior statements that directly prejudge matters before the inquiry.
unwatch.org/wp-content/upl…

Many of the utterances in question occurred mere weeks before she was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council this summer, leaving little room to imagine how Pillay could envisage the issues any differently so soon afterwards.

Just in June, Pillay signed a letter to President Biden decrying Israel’s “domination and oppression of the Palestinian people,” calling on the US to end “the root causes of the violence” & Israel’s “ever-expanding discrimination and systemic oppression.” nowisthetimecoalition.com

Yet this is precisely the object of the inquiry headed by Pillay.

Its mandate—in nearly identical words—is to examine “root causes of current tensions” between Israelis and Palestinians including alleged “systematic discrimination.”

Pillay has made up her mind on all of this.

Pillay said the April clashes at Al Aqsa—also to be examined by the inquiry—constituted “aggressive actions by Israeli forces” against “peaceful protesters and worshippers,” “forced dispossession of Palestinians,” the “latest evidence of a separate and unequal governing system.”

While the UN inquiry is mandated to examine “systematic discrimination” on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin, in June 2020 Navi Pillay signed a petition, organized by the South African Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Coalition, entitled “Sanction Apartheid Israel!”

The call to boycott and sanction Israel signed by Navi Pillay accused Israel of decades of “occupation, colonization and apartheid,” equated the Jewish state with “the apartheid regime of South Africa,” and endorsed the 2017 “Israel is apartheid” report written by
Richard Falk.

In a May 2021 lecture, Pillay described Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as “inhuman.”

She compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, and defended the systematic singling-out of Israel under a targeted agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council.

Interviewed in November 2017, after she addressed a Pretoria ceremony for the Palestinians, Pillay said: “Apartheid has now been declared a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute—and it means the enforced segregation of people on racial lines—and that is happening in Israel.”

May 31, 2010: Hours after the flotilla incident, then UN human rights chief Navi Pillay declared that “the Israeli government treats international law with perpetual disdain.”

She never spoke that way about China, Syria, Iran, North Korea or anyone else.

newsarchive.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/…

In contrast to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and her predecessor Louise Arbour, who had both criticized the UNHRC for its agenda item targeting Israel, Navi Pillay stood out by repeatedly trying to defend this discrimination, in remarks made in Italy, Kuwait and South Africa.

In 2009, Pillay headed the UN’s sequel to the 2001 Durban racism conference, an event tainted by unprecedented displays of antisemitism.

When Jewish community activists sounded the alarm, Pillay repeatedly demonized them at the UN and in the media as “single-issue lobby groups.”

It is astonishing that the United Nations appointed an individual as the supposedly impartial chair of an inquiry immediately after she declared one of the parties guilty in the very controversies at issue in the investigation.

The person who appointed Pillay is @nazhatskhan.

By heading this inquiry despite having repeatedly declared Israel guilty of precisely the crimes that she is supposed to investigate, Navi Pillay today embodies the injustice of the U.N. and its human rights council when it comes to the selective treatment of the Jewish state.

From her statements, it is clear that in Pillay’s eyes, Israel is a cruel and oppressive colonizer, and a racist regime. Her narrative of who is the villain is set in stone. Navi Pillay has long ago made up her mind.

Asking Navi Pillay to head an inquiry examining Israel is like asking a vegetarian to review a steakhouse.

When it comes to Israel, as our legal brief demonstrates, Pillay is the complete opposite of impartial.

unwatch.org/wp-content/upl…

The legal test is the appearance of bias, and there’s no doubt that Pillay fails the test.

We are therefore calling on her to do the right thing, and to resign immediately.

If not, we call on the President of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador @FVillegasARG, to remove her.

Navi Pillay needs to consider the principles she was sworn to uphold.

We are calling on her to respect the impartiality obligations of the UN Declaration on Fact-Finding, and her own solemn undertaking that she recently gave, on becoming chair of the inquiry, to be impartial.

As a former judge on international tribunals, Pillay must know that their precedents disqualify judges who made prior, partisan statements declaring the culpability of one of the parties, as she has done on numerous occasions, as recently as June, on the object of the inquiry.

It is frankly impossible to imagine how Navi Pillay could lead an impartial investigation into the events of April-May 2021, as well as into alleged systematic discrimination, given what she has already publicly declared on all of these matters.

A reasonable person would consider Navi Pillay to be partial, thereby disqualifying her from serving as a member of the inquiry.

If the United Nations and its Human Rights Council are to live up to their founding principles of universality, impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity, then Navi Pillay cannot be a member, much less the chair, of this Commission of Inquiry.

Accordingly, today we are calling on Navi Pillay to recuse herself.

In the event that she refuses to do so, we request Federico Villegas, the President of the Human Rights Council, to remove her.

To sign our online petition, please click here: change.org/p/navi-pillay-…