UN inquiry commissioner to face a Jewish audience

A member of the UN commission that accused Israel of genocide will defend its findings before a Melbourne Jewish audience next month, at an event organised by the activist group ABC Watch.

Chris Sidoti, one of three commissioners on the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, will debate military law expert Dr Brian L. Cox on Thursday, October 8 at 7.45pm.

Sidoti is a former Australian Human Rights Commissioner and a former commissioner of the Australian Law Reform Commission.

About 400 people are expected at the venue, which will not be announced in advance for security reasons.

“So far as I’m concerned, it’s not a debate,” Sidoti told The AJN.

“A debate is a game, another form of football, a verbal one. There’s a winner and a loser and cheer squads. This is no game. It’s serious. It’s not a contest. It’s a discussion or a conversation or an interaction between two experts.”

The commission found last September that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and in June that it had deliberately targeted Palestinian children.

Cox, a Cornell Law School lecturer, is a retired US Army officer who served 22 years, seven of them as a military lawyer, with deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. He disputes the commission’s findings and methodology, and the way it applied the law of armed conflict.

Sidoti said he had “great respect” for Cox.

“I have read his work over many years and regard it highly. We simply disagree on many conclusions. I look forward to discussing his views and mine with him. How could I not?”

ABC Watch’s Sharon Kuperholz said she had told Sidoti “point blank that he can have exactly zero of his supporters there” because of security concerns.

“We don’t want pro-Palestinians turning up to harass and attack the guests, nor disrupt the event,” she said.

“So Chris is coming to his credit, knowing full well that he’ll be facing 400 hostile Zionists.”

Sidoti said he did not expect a hostile audience.

“I expect the audience to be interested and respectful. I don’t expect that I’ll change their views or Brian’s. Nor will he or they change mine. But we might understand each other better and how each of us has formed views and what those views are.”

Kuperholz said she respected Sidoti for agreeing to appear and that he would know his material.

“He’s going to be debating his very own 72-page report. Nobody is going to know it better than he does.”

Kuperholz and her husband, Mark, are paying Sidoti’s travel from Sydney and his accommodation, while Cox is covering much of his airfare from Colorado. Ticket prices are set only to recover travel costs.

In a statement, ABC Watch said the commission’s reports were not legally binding but had been cited by governments, NGOs and media as evidence of genocide. It argued that only the International Court of Justice can make such a determination, and that it has not done so.

Kuperholz, who has visited Israel every year since the October 7 attacks, said Hamas “is almost omitted as an active belligerent fighting force” in the genocide report.

She pointed to IDF warnings before strikes, evacuation corridors, aid deliveries and polio vaccinations.

“The conclusion of genocide is absolutely crushed under the weight of evidence to the contrary,” she said.

Asked whether she expected anyone to change their mind, she said: “I strongly doubt there will be many people in our community who believe that a genocide has taken place.”

“One problem is that most media do not report accurately all the time and some media do not report accurately at all,” Sidoti said.

“That’s why I welcome every opportunity I get to speak directly with people and not have my views interpreted by others and mediated by others so that people hear them second, third or fourth hand. I am very grateful to Sharon for making that possible.”

The debate will be filmed and livestreamed to interstate and overseas viewers. ABC Watch said clips would be used on social media “to destroy the genocide myth”.

Asked whether the night could turn rowdy, Kuperholz said she trusted the audience but understood the anger.

“We ourselves, as Australian Jews … we’ve all been called genocidal baby killers,” she said.

“If emotions are running high, I don’t blame our community for that, but I would ask that they contain their emotions so that we can get the debate done.”

Bookings can be made here.