So you're just arguing against investigation into human rights violations on efficiency standards? I'm certain that is a position for the UN budget office to make, not the parties being investigated for violations themselves.
I'm sorry, but I believe your affinity for Israel is clouding your judgment. I find it highly unlikely that if this were any state other than Israel that you would be siding with the violating party's decision to bar international scrutiny on their illegal behavior.
Finally, while you might think the term 'gross violations' is biased, Israel has been vehemently condemned for war crimes, human rights violations, violations of the Geneva Conventions, and so on and so forth by a huge range of national and international bodies including every western nation, basically every relevant UN body, international human rights organizations like Amnesty International, the Red Cross, and so on and so on. I think it is quite a fair description.
Will you at least admit that Israel is a serial human rights violator that should be investigated, even if the HRC is not your preferred body?
And I think your lack of affinity for Israel that is a product of political leftism is clouding your judgment and causing you to be an apologist for hypocrisy. There, now that we both have that out of the way, we can discuss the substance of the matter.
The answer to your question is yes, I would support any other nation being investigated by this body, or any other body, if the body had a track record of bias against that particular nation. Even a nation like Saudi Arabia, who I believe has a far worse track record than Israel. At first I would support such investigation as long overdue. However, if the organization went on for years investigating only Saudi Arabia and ignoring everyone else, eventually I would say, enough is enough.
This particular agency was formed in 2006 and for its first three years it did virtually nothing but investigate Israel. And incidentally, I did not have any initial objection to its earliest investigations because it wasn't yet clear that this organization had only one purpose. It only started investigating other countries at the insistence of the Obama administration in 2009.
Something was wrong with this organization right from its inception. It apparently was conceived for the entire purpose of degrading world opinion of Israel, while at the same time providing distraction from the human rights violations of other nations, and it hides under the guise of the UN and a name that suggests a broader purpose. As such, it either needs to be reformed and re-purposed toward a broader goal and heightened objectivity or else disbanded.
Your explanation of the phrase "gross violations of human rights" is a fallacy and another sidestep of the hypocrisy issue. "Gross" is inherently relative. No nation has a perfect track record on human rights. Predictably, you do not cite the facts on the ground and draw a comparison with other nations on the question of human rights. Instead, you cite how many times the UN has issued resolutions condemning Israel. I'm sorry, but the UN is a political body and its actions reflect the political agenda of its member states. That much should be obvious. I don't necessarily have a problem with the use of the word "gross" in this context, so long as we are given some wider perspective to clarify what it means.
There is a serious issue of disproportion and hypocrisy that is not being addressed here by Israel's critics. The issue is not subtle but glaring, and it isn't only this particular UN agency or the UN in general. It extends way beyond the UN. Until it is answered in a substantive and logical manner, I will continue to not give Israel's critics the time of day because they are not discussing the matter in good faith. I can and am critical of Israeli policies on my own but this is a threshold issue for me.
As for organizations like Amnesty, I don't know their track records with respect to proportion but I know enough to conclude that they are at least somewhat better than the UN. They have condemned many nations. It still doesn't answer the question of why Israel's conduct is particularly egregious in the wider scheme of things. I would suggest looking over a sampling of Amnesty reports and seeing if we can really justify singling Israel out for "gross" violations of human rights. The evidence of appalling behavior on the part of other nations is right there in their reports.
