"A few months ago, I asked William Schabas, the Canadian academic who this week resigned as head of the United Nations Human Rights Councils probe into last summer's war in Gaza because of a conflict of interest involving his work for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whether I could interview him for a magazine piece I was writing. He replied promptly and courteously, explaining that he couldn't be interviewed because his commission hadn't yet appointed a media relations officer.
"I remember being rather staggered by that admission-the Human Rights Council had already announced that Schabas, a frequent and intemperate critic of Israel, was to head an investigation into the most bitterly contested aspect of a war that electrified the world, wrought devastation upon Gaza, and spawned anti-Semitic violence across Europe. And yet that same commission still didn't have a member of staff appointed to liaise with the press.
"Convenient, I thought, if they didn't want people to know what they were up to. (Well, either that, or Schabas didn't want to give me his real reason for declining the interview.) In any case, this week the commission became considerably less opaque-so much so that Schabas was forced to resign after it was discovered that, in 2012, he'd been paid $1,300 by the PLO to write a legal opinion for them.
"In his resignation letter, Schabas said that he wasn't asked 'to provide any details on any of my past statements and other activities concerning Palestine and Israel' when he interviewed for the post. That wasn't quite the truth, but he was hoping we'd believe him so that he could present himself as having reluctantly resigned, in order to avoid a frenzied conservative media storm around the relatively harmless fact that he'd done a few hours of work for the PLO.
"But the blogger Elder of Ziyon helpfully dug out the application form that Schabas submitted to the U.N. In the section on professional ethics, Schabas answered 'no' to three separate questions asking whether there was anything-like a conflict of interest-that might compromise his independence and judgement. But we know now that he worked for the PLO and tried to hide that fact. And we knew when he was appointed that he regarded Benjamin Netanyahu not as the prime minister of Israel, but as a 'war criminal' who should be put on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC)..."