“I looked Schabas right in the eyes throughout my entire testimony, and he kept trying to get me to look somewhere else. I felt as if he was embarrassed. At one point he looked like he was in utter shock. It was when I started to cry while talking about my wounded son and about my friends, who were killed. He didn’t ask me a single question. When I finished my testimony, he just shook my hand and said, 'Thank you.'"

In an interview with Al-Monitor just a few days before the United Nations releases its report on Operation Protective Edge, Knesset member Haim Jelin of the Yesh Atid Party re-created his testimony to the UN’s Official Committee of Investigation. Professor William Schabas headed the committee, which began its work in July 2014. Some six months later, on Feb. 3, however, Schabas was forced to resign due to claims that he had ties to the Palestinian Authority. The committee is expected to release its findings June 22. Israel is already claiming that these findings will be one-sided and that they will portray Israel Defense Forces soldiers as war criminals.

Jelin, a member of Kibbutz Be’eri along the Gaza border, was head of the Eshkol Regional Council during Operation Protective Edge. At the time, he emerged as a prominent symbol of the determination shown by Israeli civilians in the summer of 2014. Apart from fulfilling his public duties, he was also forced to contend with the injuries suffered by his son, who was in combat in the Khan Yunis zone in southern Gaza Strip, and the death of Daniel Tregerman, 4, the son of close personal friends from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, in a mortar attack. Two more of his friends, Ze’ev Etzion and Shahar Melamed, from nearby Kibbutz Nirim, also died in mortar attacks. As someone who stood at the forefront of Israel’s information campaign during the 50 days of fighting, Jelin became a familiar figure in Israel and around the world.

He decided to fly to Geneva in January so that he could testify before the Committee of Investigation. The prime minister’s office opposed his trip, claiming that the committee’s conclusions had been written in advance. Convinced that Israel had abandoned the international public diplomacy arena for years, Jelin decided to go anyway. Since then, he was elected to the Knesset, where he is the voice of a very meticulous opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic policies. He claims that Netanyahu failed to turn Operation Protective Edge into the impetus for a regional diplomatic initiative, a step he says would have reduced the extent of the delegitimization and boycott campaign now being waged against Israel.