WASHINGTON, Jun 19 (APP): The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a noted Muslim advocacy group, Wednesday called on the Biden administration to take “concrete action” following a new UN report that accuses Israel of repeatedly violating the laws of war in its offensive against the Palestinians, and a UN official saying that Israeli war crimes amounted to an “extermination” campaign.
That report, presented to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (OHCHR) on Wednesday and conducted by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, concluded that Israeli forces carried out crimes against humanity on the civilian population in Gaza.
In a separate meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, the head of a UN Commission of Inquiry, Navi Pillay, a former South African judge, said that Israel was responsible for “crimes against humanity” and that the scale of Palestinian civilian losses amounted to “extermination”.
“The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimize to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
Earlier this week, CAIR said that an Associated Press (AP), an American news agency, investigation showing that the far-right Israeli government’s attacks on Gaza have wiped out “entire Palestinian families” once again proves Israel’s genocidal intent.
More than 37,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been slaughtered by Israel.
“We are at a loss for words to describe the Biden administration’s hypocritical position on Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” CAIR’s National Executive Director, Nihad Awad, said in a statement.
“The mountain of evidence exposing the far-right Israeli government’s campaign of genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced starvation in Gaza must lead to concrete action on the part of the Biden administration, which is the primary enabler for this daily suffering and slaughter,” he said.
“History will long remember President Biden’s complicity in this genocide, and it will remain as a stain on our nation’s international reputation for generations to come.”
On Tuesday, CAIR said it called on the Biden administration to demand that Israel’s far-right government explain why Dr Iyad Rantisi died under interrogation a week after he was detained by Israeli intelligence services.
Over the weekend, CAIR condemned what it called the latest “Israeli war crimes of the day” after a UNICEF official said he witnessed the execution of two Palestinian fishermen by Israeli forces.