Former UN "expert" and notorious Israel-basher Richard Falk, has come to the defense of William Schabas. Schabas was the UN expert heading the Gaza inquiry that was launched by the UN Human Rights Council this past summer. He was forced to resign in early February after it was discovered he had worked for the PLO.
In an interview published on Falk's blog, Falk defends Schabas by describing him as "a modestly paid consultant" who wrote "a short technical report for the PLO." The so-called "technical" report was on the use of "the International Criminal Court (ICC)" to deal with alleged Israeli war crimes - the very subject of the UN's supposedly "independent" inquiry. Moreover, the existence of a conflict of interest does not turn on how much money changed hands. Which is why Schabas quit before the UN legal office rendered a formal opinion on his obvious breach of ethical standards.
Falk's interview reinforces the conclusion that the report, due in March, will be the fruit of the poison tree. Schabas's fingerprints are all over it, and all the evidence he amassed for his pre-determined anti-Israel ends was gathered almost entirely in secret. Here's Schabas: "...the Commission has not been very public in its activities. It has gathered a huge amount of material. It has also met with many individuals – victims, experts, human rights activists, UN officials, representatives of governments, diplomats – but these 'hearings' were not open to the public...[A]s a general rule, the identity of those who met with the Commission has not been divulged."
Schabas also admits to being present at the start of shaping the report, while attempting to minimize his involvement; he tells Falk about "the drafting of the report" - "that job was only beginning at the time of my resignation."
As Falk has done in the past, he supported Schabas by analogizing Israelis to Nazis and apartheid South Africa. He asked him: "...would a person who had been critical of Nazism or apartheid be rendered unfit to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity or racism?"
Schabas' response to the charge of a conflict of interest - having taken money as a paid legal advisor to the PLO - includes: "From beginning to end the whole matter lasted a couple of weeks. I received the request by e-mail and delivered the opinion by e-mail. I was paid a modest amount for my work. This is not a conflict of interest." We might call this new rule for lawyers like Schabas, the "William Schabas definition of a conflict of interest:" I was only a legal advisor to one side of a dispute that I was hired to judge impartially for a little while. Sure, I was paid by one side of the dispute, but what's a little grease? And emails don't count.
In another moral obscenity, Schabas analogizes his bias against Israel, and his unrepentant view that Netanyahu should be indicted by the ICC, to the bias of Israeli judges of German descent against Adolf Eichmann: "...the argument raised by Eichmann against the Israeli judges. There was never any suggestion that the three judges, all of them German Jews, did not have strong views about the Holocaust. It was assumed that they did."
In the Falk interview, Schabas casts himself as the poor victim, rather than the morally-challenged lawyer who has brought discredit to the UN, the Human Rights Council, and the entire Gaza "inquiry." Perhaps what stands out above all is the hubris of a man who literally claims, it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. In his words: "This is a nasty, toxic matter. But the job must be done."
Schabas concludes by telling Falk: "What I would like to see is more pushback on these wrong and unfair charges of bias and conflict of interest. Some clarification on what is and what is not acceptable would make things clearer. I would like to see some UN guidelines..." Keep in mind, it was Schabas himself who prevented the UN legal office from issuing a legal opinion on the conflict of interest charge that would certainly have disqualified him.
He sums up his innocence this way: "...providing a legal opinion in the past on a matter not directly related to the subject-matter of a commission is not a conflict of interest."
Actually, the Schabas commission was charged with recommending measures of "accountability" for war crimes. The Schabas legal opinion encouraged Palestinian use of the ICC to further accountability for war crimes. The fact that Falk and Schabas do not see any conflict of interest here is a testament to the moral bankruptcy of the UN Human Rights Council and the people who appointed them UN "experts" in the first place.