Here’s a good editorial at the Jerusalem Post spelling out why Israel is refusing to cooperate with the UN “fact-finding” mission: Guilty until proven guilty.

The great diplomatic accomplishment of the Arab world has been to transform global forums into nests of Israel bashing. The UN General Assembly resolution declaring “Zionism equals racism” is the classic example of such mob behavior, but there are countless others. Though that infamous resolution was repealed, last year’s UN Durban Conference was if anything a more vicious and blatant hijacking of an international humanitarian forum. That conference, after all, was supposed to have dealt with racism, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred, and was transformed into a vehicle of hatred itself.

The UN’s Jenin “fact-finding” committee is clearly poised to repeat this ugly pattern. The whole idea of the committee is entirely unprecedented. There was no suggestion to appoint a similar committee to investigate how the United States fought in Afghanistan, how UN forces fought in Somalia, or international culpability for standing by as Bosnians or Rwandans were massacred by the thousands. The premise of the UN team is that there is doubt between the Palestinian claim that there was a massacre and Israel’s insistence that there was not.

Now even Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – two organizations that could hardly be more vitriolic toward Israel – admit that there was no massacre. The charge, according to Amnesty secretary-general Irene Kahn after her visit to Jenin, has been reduced to “serious violations of international humanitarian law.” But why should Israel subject itself even to slightly watered down form of diplomatic lynching? The evidence that the jury is in before the trial has begun lies in UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s April 27 letter to Israel laying out the ground rules of the Jenin committee. Though the letter has not been released, it reportedly states that the committee may make “observations,” even though the UN resolution that created it speaks only of “fact-finding.” The committee also reserves the right to call any “witnesses” it wishes, meaning that Israeli officers could open themselves up to indictment by a future international tribunal.