As noted earlier, Professor William Schabas, who had been appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to head a committee charged with investigating alleged war crimes during last summer’s Operation Protective Edge, has resigned due to a previously undisclosed conflict of interest. A full copy of his resignation letter is available here.
In his continuing effort to claim that he is just a victim of the Zionist cabal, Schabas points out that he received only $1300 in compensation for the work he did for the PLO. Therefore, he claims, he had no real financial motive for bias. This argument, however, reveals more about him that what he intends.
His description of the work that he did for the PLO is a seven-page legal opinion on issues involving Palestinian statehood and the International Criminal Court. This would likely involve hours of research on obscure issues about which Schabas had a rare expertise. If Schabas had charged a fair price for such work, the bill could have easily been ten times the amount charged, or more. He basically did the work for the PLO close to free of charge.
It’s clear, then, from his own letter, that Schabas acted for the PLO not out of financial motives, but out of at least personal sympathy for the PLO, its mission and its affiliated entities such as the Palestinian Authority (if not out of personal animus towards the Jewish state). It is likely that he took on his UN role for the same reasons, for as he says, he did not receive any compensation from the UN. It could not be clearer that such sympathies have no place in what is supposed to be an impartial investigation.
Schabas’s contacts, it seems, were uncovered by the Israeli mission to the UN, detailed in this January 30 letter. (Click to enlarge and read.)
If the Israeli mission to the UN had not uncovered these contacts, they likely never would have been disclosed, and Schabas would have proceeded with his agenda-driven report. As it stands, his report and his committee have been irreparably damaged by Schabas’s bias and by his concealment of a clear conflict of interest, and can’t be thought to have any credibility whatsoever.
