The United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Former New York Supreme Court Justice Mary McGowan Davis was appointed as the third member of the contentious United Nations Human Rights Council’s Gaza war crimes investigation.

McGowan Davis joins William Schabas and Doudou Diene on the three-person panel that is tasked with investigating violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in the latest Israel-Hamas conflict. She has previously served on a U.N. committee of independent experts tasked with investigating the implementations of the 2009 Goldstone Report, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The Israeli government has been highly critical of the new U.N. probe, calling it a “kangaroo court.” Its chairman, Canadian professor of international law Schabas, has made harsh anti-Israel statements in the past, including calling for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former president Shimon Peres to be indicted before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.