Israel shoots UN flotilla report first but will ask questions later

Really, the Israeli Prime Minister's Office is "furious" about a report by the UN Human Rights Council condemning Israel's flotilla raid. The bizarre thing is that, from what I can gather from Ha'aretz, the Israelis don't seem to have read the report. Here's some of the story:

Israel is pressing the United Nations to postpone debate on its report on the Gaza flotilla raid until it finishes its own internal inquiry into the incident, the Israeli envoy to the UN in Geneva said on Friday.

The UN Human Rights Commission (sic) released a report on Wednesday which said that Israeli forces violated international law when they raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, killing nine activists, earlier this year.

Actually the full report is here. It's a pdf and I should point out that I haven't read the whole thing.

What I noticed about the Ha'aretz article was how it concluded after setting out complaints from three branches of the State of Israel. Here are the complaints. From the Israeli envoy to the UN in Geneva:

the outcome of the UN Human rights Commission report had been pre-determined.

There you go. The genteel language of a career diplomat.

No such restraint from Netanyahu who:

slammed the UN report on Wednesday, calling it "biased and distorted."

And no one would expect restraint from the Israeli foreign minister who said that:

the Human Rights Commission (sic) had a biased, politicized and extremist approach.

And the last words of the article?

They have since said that will "study" the report.

Oh I see. So all those complaints were predetermined by Israel? Biased and distorted maybe? Or perhaps they were politicized and extreme?

But Israel's propaganda efforts are in a sorry state when they can slam and otherwise dismiss a report condemning yet another Israeli atrocity when, by their own admission, they have yet to "study" it.

I don't know if it's worth noting as a postscript that, according to Wikipedia, the UN Commission for Human Rights was replaced by the UN Human Rights Council in 2006. Such is Israel's commitment to human rights under international law that they don't even appear to have read the headed paper. I think they must get to the bit where it says, "United Nations" followed by "Human Rights" and then they bin the thing.