For some reason the United States and the rest of the western world is doing their best to bury the Goldstone report on the war crimes of Israel and Hamas last year. The main argument I hear against the report is that Hamas’ launching of missiles at Israel from civilian areas made it necessary for Israel to kill civilians in self-defense. Let’s take a hard look at why the current US administration as well as a large portion of the “civilized” world is in search of reasons to justify the killing of civilians in self-defense.
Last month the Obama administration pressured Mohammed Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to drop their draft resolution endorsing the Goldstone report at the UN Human Rights Council. This was an attempt to prevent peace negotiations from collapsing again, but the actual fallout turned out to be quite strange. Obviously a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t, the US administration has been labeled as an agent of Israel for successfully pressuring Abbas to drop the Goldstone report. This also completely delegitimized Abbas who was arguably the best partner for peace on the Palestinian side yet. Then Obama gets attacked from the Israeli side when Anne Bayefsky from Israel Insider asks “Does President Obama plan to use the opportunity to extract concessions from Israel in exchange for putting the Goldstone report permanently to rest?” So now the US administration is “using” the Goldstone report “against” Israel as leverage by having Abbas suppress it until March, instead of dismissing the report outright because it’s obviously a complete falsehood.
Some critics go so far as to argue that this report is an attack on Israel’s right to self-defense and therefore an existential attack on the Jewish state itself. Yes, they’ve pulled the existential threat card again, so watch out Richard Goldstone; some Israelis have you on the same mental list as Iran. The Israeli government only brings up “existential threats” in order to justify doing nasty things and a complete denigration of the reputation of Richard Goldstone and anyone having to do with his commission’s report is already underway. It seems that the attempt to protect negotiations by preventing the Palestinian Authority from endorsing the report resulted in just the opposite; Israel and Palestine got more pissed as they both continued to cover their respective asses.
Unfortunately, we have a crystal clear picture of the problem when we look at how the Goldstone report is being handled within the international community. The truth is that it doesn’t matter how many members of the UN believe Israel has committed war crimes. Just the prospect of an official report condemning Israel’s actions is enough for Israel to threaten to take its ball and go home.
That ball is the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The ability of Israel to warp the global perception of a balanced report on war crimes committed by both Hamas and the IDF is proportionate to the international community’s desire for peace in Palestine. The more the UN Security Council members are desperate for progress in the sixty year knot that has entangled the entire region the easier it is for Israel to suppress the Goldstone report and its findings.
There are many critics of the Goldstone report, but most of them have been responding to the report without actually reading it. Among this group of seemingly illiterate critics is the United States House of Representatives and their embarrassing Resolution 867. Resolution 867 is a good summary of the many criticisms of the Goldstone report, but Richard Goldstone’s letter of response to this resolution is an even better summary of the misleading, incorrect and falsely characterized nature of these criticisms.
When it comes down to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 (badly in need of an update after WWII), specifically article 33, it must be said that Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes. Article 33 states that “No protected person (i.e. civilians; see article 4 of convention for definition of “protected persons”) may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” Many would argue there’s a difference between the Nazis collectively punishing a village for hiding and supporting a resistance force as opposed to Israel collectively punishing civilians in Gaza for hiding, supporting and shielding a terrorist force. The differences, however, are only in perception.
Those protected persons referred to in the 4th Geneva Convention, whether sixty years ago in WWII or today in Gaza, supported the causes of their respective resistance/terror groups. The villagers punished by Nazis did everything they could to support those fighting for them and the civilians in Gaza did everything they could to support those fighting for them against Israel. If collective punishment against civilians is wrong then Israel and Hamas are responsible for carrying out war crimes. Hamas argues they have no choice but to attack civilians, so they have already openly admitted this is a standard tactic. Now we are seeing Israel do its best to justify the same. Is Israel not contending that they have no choice but to attack civilians? If Israel admitted that these military actions were wrong, but necessary, then fine, but Israel and the west is dangerously close to claiming that the killing of civilians by a democratic government in self-defense isn’t a war crime at all. Why should they be able to make that leap?
This inevitably leads us to the labels. The Israelis call Hamas and the Palestinian’s terrorists and the Palestinians call the Israelis Nazis. It’s worth taking another moment to hash this nonsense out. First of all, just because you are able to label a group of people terrorists doesn’t justify killing the members of their families (i.e. women, children and the elderly). Secondly, the terrorist label is easy to throw around these days and if any country uses the term for propaganda purposes, it’s the Israelis. It sure stood out when Isreal’s Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, explained how Israeli could never deal with Hamas because they are terrorists. It turns out that Tzipi Livni’s father, Eitan Livni, was the Chief Operations Officer for Irgun Zvai Leumi. Irgun was a Jewish terrorist organization before Israel was established that bombed the King David Hotel killing 91 people. Livni’s father organized that bombing mission as well as other operations, among them one that hung two British soldiers followed by the booby trapping of their bodies.
The widely known and heavily contested massacre at Deir Yassin may or may not have been complete propaganda, but there’s no doubt that millions of Arabs fled the newly minted Israel in terror with that destroyed town’s name on their lips. It could be argued that many Israeli “heroes” took part in terrorist actions intended to first eject Britain from Palestine and then ethnically cleanse the interior of Israel before they were attacked by outside countries. However you look at it, the British were thrown out and whole Arab villages ran in fear. Once the 1948 victory was complete, the Israeli “terrorists” became heroic “freedom fighters” within their new country.
Sir Gerald Kaufman , a member of Britain’s parliament, lost much of his family to the Nazi holocaust and he found many tales of Palestinian horror to be identical to his family’s experiences. No, the Israelis are not and they probably never will toss people into ovens in an attempt to physically eradicate their problems in an efficient assembly line process the way the Nazis did. However, walking into a Palestinian home and shooting a grandmother dead in her bed is exactly what happened to that British MP’s grandmother at the hands of Nazis. This comparison is hard to deny and the actions themselves are impossible to justify. Maybe it closes people’s ears when they hear a nation of Jews being labeled Nazis, but I don’t think they would be any less guilty of evil if we labeled Israel differently.
The Israeli government is democratically elected by a militaristic society that maintains deprived ghettos and carries out acts similar to oppressive regimes of the past such as South Africa, Iraq, Angola, Uganda, Cambodia, Indonesia; and yes, Nazi Germany. No need to pick bones, here. Call them what you like, but the Israelis are wrong and they are doing things that other governments have been condemned for in the past. They walk a fine line and they know it. Many believe that because Israel is fighting a nation of people that have democratically chosen to defend themselves with a “terrorist” army means disproportionate use of military force is justified and necessary for victory. In reality, however, we are finding that such disproportionate use of force is not justified and it keeps victory as well as peace far from anyone’s grasp.
The Goldstone report is part of a growing opinion that anti-terror campaigns and the “hammer vs. fly” style they are fought with are not only illegal, but they are at best useless and at worst compounding the problem. As a society, the west is realizing that not only don’t two wrongs make a right, but they actually keep the wrongs coming. Something Obama is probably considering right now with regard to his Afghanistan policy. In addition, many believe that the way we have fought the whole war on terror is a failure for us and a success for the terrorists. If you are curious how somebody could think this, then look into Thomas Ricks and his work. All of these opinions are valid and should be discussed and acknowledged, not suppressed and ignored.
But like I said, none of the war crimes committed by the Israelis and Palestinians will be successfully investigated. The world is so desperate for peace that we think it’s necessary to do anything to bring it about. Even allowing ourselves to be held hostage by two nations that have gone insane with an anachronistic biblical rage that nobody gives a damn about anymore.
Frederick,
The Goldstone Report is NOT a complete fabrication as you said. There are parts of it, many take exception to, but, let not hyperbole hijack an objective critique of the reports, authors, their motives, the methodology, premises, and conclusions.
So, which parts do you believe are false by implication, premises, methodology, or conclusion?
Whether or not war crimes in Israel and Palestine are subjected to some judicial process or not, is a matter for the United Nations, and the U.S. should generally support the prosecution of war crimes. However, the U.S. has a superordinate goal to justice in the Middle East, and that is Middle East peace, the absence of which is costing humanity more crimes, and American tax payers enormous sums of money otherwise needed to be spent here at home.
It is about priorities. Get peace, and the war crimes stop. Ergo, peace is a higher priority than prosecuting war crimes, which in itself would perpetuate the absence of peace, in part.
Posted by: David R. Remer at November 16, 2009 03:42 AM
Comment #290855
As for terrorism, it is a crime. NOT AN ACT OF WAR if committed by a group of people who are not affiliated with any nation state. War is between nations, or people’s of a nation over the control of that nation. International law and treaties are premised on this definition.
GW Bush and Dick Cheney attempted an end run around our own Constitution and international law and treaty in declaring 9/11 an act of war. It wasn’t.
They were just too unimaginative and dumb to figure out how to justify invasion of Afghanistan under any other definition. And as history unfolded, Afghanistan was never their real objective in the first place, it was Iraq. And without linking Iraq to 9/11, they had no predicate for invading Iraq.
It is important to not allow the Bush Administration’s false definitions to acquire historical currency. They were lies. Lies should not be allowed to become the definitions we live by.
Posted by: David R. Remer at November 16, 2009 03:50 AM
Comment #290860
FF
You deserve a deal of credit for speaking out. With this report Israel runs the risk of losing some of the high moral ground that underpins their vast US support.Perhaps they should. The military imposition of a 2000 year old land claim has no place in the modern world.If BHO is actually useing suppression of the report to exact some compliance regarding Zionist settlement activity,for example, then more power to him.Thats harder ball than he usually plays.
Posted by: bills at November 16, 2009 06:57 AM
Comment #290868
How many hundreds of billions of dollars has it cost the U.S. taxpayers to start that conflict in the Middle East and keep it going for 60 years?
The atrocities we have committed are justified by the atrocities committed against us.
Posted by: jlw at November 16, 2009 01:02 PM
Comment #290872
And without linking Iraq to 9/11, they had no predicate for invading Iraq.
Wow, this is an interesting rewrite of history, I must say…
Iraq was invaded because they invaded Kuwait. When their army was expelled, a cease-fire was agreed to by the UN and Iraq on certain conditions. Those conditions were never met by Iraq’s leadership and, in addition, Iraq continued supporting international terrorist groups AND continued to shoot at US and UK planes on an almost daily basis.
There are a lot of emotions about whether we should have or shouldn’t have invaded Iraq, but to attempt to make the suggestion that there was no basis in it at all seems a bit ludicrous. Before 9/11 the US was firmly behind removing Saddam from power (a gallup poll showed over 72% support) so 9/11 was not needed for the invasion of Iraq to occur. So this theory of ‘using 9/11 to get into Iraq’ when we could have done it without 9/11 in the first place is an incorrect assessment as well. There was already a tie between al Qaeda and Iraq through al Shifa made by Clinton, Clarke and Berger (who stand by their assertion to this day, interestingly enough).
To be honest, there was more reason to invade Iraq than there was to bomb Kosovo and remove Milosovich from power… Are we going to revist that and called it an ‘illegal war’ as well?
Posted by: Rhinehold at November 16, 2009 01:33 PM
Comment #290873
How many hundreds of billions of dollars has it cost the U.S. taxpayers to start that conflict in the Middle East and keep it going for 60 years?
An unbiased look at history will show that the ‘conflict’ was not started by the US and has been lasting longer than 60 years… That the UN, under urging from countries like the US, decided to create the state of Israel surely helped increase tensions, it was not the most peaceful area of the world before 1948…
Posted by: Rhinehold at November 16, 2009 01:36 PM
Comment #290898
Rhinehold, you are the one rewriting history. Iraq was contained by our forces during the Clinton Administration and into the GW Bush administration, posing no threat to the U.S. homeland nor even its neighbors in the region. There was speculation without proof that the WMD we provided Hussein might still be around for use, but, speculation hardly constituted justification for the costs America bore in invading Iraq.
No, Bush and Cheney made the case of IMMINENT threat to the U.S. by way of alliance connections to al-Queda (untrue) and the raw resources (yellow cake uranium) for making atomic weapons, also UNTRUE.
The premises for invading Iraq were fabricated and UNTRUE. Ergo, my statement “And without linking Iraq to 9/11, they had no predicate for invading Iraq” is true, though I should have added the word, justifiable to predicate.
With Hussein in power, we had, for the reasons you cite, justification to maintain forces in the region of Iran to act as a check on Iranian potential for WMD and regional aggression. Now, we are pulling out of Iraq, making our military forces in the region justifiable only in terms of Iran – which Iran must rebuke and counter in any way it can, since there is other reason for our military presence there. And this fact will not be lost Iranian sympathizers throughout the Muslim World. In other words, we are going to continue to pay steeply in treasure at least, for ever having invaded Iraq on false and fabricated pretenses.
Logically, if your stated reasons were sufficient, there was no need for the Bush administration to fabricate, cherry pick, and falsify data to justify the invasion, including the imminent threat and ties to al-Queda. Ergo, you stated reasons were wholly insufficient as a matter of historic record of the Bush administration’s actions.
Posted by: David R. Remer at November 16, 2009 08:32 PM
Comment #290904
David,
I don’t believe I said any part of the report is a fabrication. The report highlights war crimes by both sides and they are crimes that both committed, period.
Yes, the US made peace a priority over investigating war crimes further, but the point was that doing so was useless.
Obama applied pressure to hold up adoption of the Goldstone Report by the UN and the Israelis didn’t give a damn. It made them and the Palestinians more angry because that’s the only way they seem to know how to emote at all.
One could write a book about the Goldstone report, its authors, their motives, the methodology, premises, and conclusions, which I’m sure many are, but I wasn’t looking to carry out a point by point judicial review of the Goldstone commission’s findings. I’d have to be paid for that one.
I pointed out why I think the Goldstone report is being suppressed and how this highlights why the Goldstone report is basically useless in a world that purposefully turns a blind eye to war crimes as long as they are committed by the right people.
Posted by: Fred at November 16, 2009 09:34 PM
Comment #290905
David,
That’s an old argument you’re pulling out, though.
I nation of people can be defined in strange ways, but I don’t think a democratically elected Hamas defending the Palestinian people is anything but a nation, sorry.
Here is just one definition of nation; a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own.
So any group of Muslims from the Middle East that consciously seeks an Islamic state under a Caliphate is pretty much a wannabe nation. Those that deny this are simply the one’s fighting them and they wouldn’t necessarily be the final arbiter for that said nation.
I’m not perpetuating any false or Bushy definitions, just the dictionary ones.
Posted by: Fred at November 16, 2009 09:45 PM
Comment #290906
bills
True, well put.
Posted by: Fred at November 16, 2009 09:47 PM
Comment #290907
Rhinehold,
I don’t know what gallup poll you’re talking about, but I really don’t think the American public would’ve approved an invasion of Iraq that easily.
Not without first 9/11 freaking us all out and then attaching 9/11 to Iraq in the mind of the most freaked out and scared Americans. This made the second gulf war possible.
From a strategic point of view, it made no sense to open up the Iraq box at the time we did. It was contained until we cracked it open and started the biggest Al Qaeda recruiting drive up until that point. If you think it made perfect sense to stir up the Iraq hornets nest, then you should take another look at the past eight years we wasted in Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred at November 16, 2009 10:16 PM
Comment #290908
jlw,
“The atrocities we have committed are justified by the atrocities committed against us.”
Don’t agree with that one bit. Those acts may feel justified, but they ain’t. They may even feel good, but like I said; two wrongs don’t make a right, they keep the wrongs coming until one side is all dead.
So, by your strategy for moving forward, we have a lot of civilians to kill before we’re done with this war on terror
Posted by: Fred at November 16, 2009 10:26 PM
Comment #290969
Fred, sorry for the confusion, that was meant to be an observation. I was attempting to paraphrase a quote I once read in a book. The quote was worded differently, more like— Remember the atrocities committed against us that justify the atrocities we are committing. According to the author, this is the long version, the politically unacceptable version of sayings like remember 911.
Posted by: jlw at November 17, 2009 07:01 PM
Comment #290997
Right on jlw, I was confused.
It does seem a part of the human condition that we can’t shake. Short sighted revenge still runs the Earth
Posted by: Fred at November 18, 2009 11:33 AM