UN Human Rights Official Condemns US, Israel for Not Sharing Iron Dome

The top human rights official of United Nations has condemned Israel and the United States for not agreeing to share Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, which shoots down deadly Hamas rockets, with the organization firing those rockets — Hamas.

Breitbart News reports that in a meeting with journalists following a meeting called to discuss the raging war in Gaza, Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, condemned the United States for helping to fund Iron Dome, and said, "No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling."

Pillay also said, "There is a strong possibility that international law has been violated in a manner that could amount to war crimes."

Such condemnation is nothing new for the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Commission. Breitbart reports that the agency blasted Israel at least 47 times between 2006 and 2012, and Israel considers the UNHRC to be blatantly anti-Israel.

While the UNHRC threatened to launch an investigation into the alleged violations, Reuters reports that Israel's Justice Minister Tzipi Livni wrote on her Facebook page, "Get lost." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "The decision today by the HRC is a travesty. The HRC should be launching an investigation into Hamas's decision to turn hospitals into military command centers, use schools as weapons depots and place missile batteries next to playgrounds, private homes and mosques."

Anne Bayefsky, of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, accused Pillay of spending her six years as commissioner being "dedicated to the demonization of Israel," The National reports.

The Iron Dome system is crucial to Israel's defense. The Jerusalem Post reported that while Hamas has blasted 2,968 rockets at Israel since June 8, when the war began, 547 have been shot down by Iron Dome missiles before they could strike Israel.

The U.S. Senate, meanwhile, blocked a request from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to provide $225 million to replenish the system, Politico reports, largely because of Republican concerns that the proposal, tied to the $2.7 billion border aid package and $615 million to fight forest fires in the West, would increase the national debt.

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