JUST imagine: On his way to court to face serious charges of corruption, Ehud Olmert is seized by an Iranian special forces team and transported immediately to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. There he will answer even more serious allegations — that he and his generals have used indiscriminate bombing against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians as well as targeting individual community leaders for assassination.
Supposing that happened, the howls of protest and anger from the Israelis and their friends in Washington would be deafening. How dare “terrorists” abduct a head of state/prime minister and treat him in this outrageous fashion! Rather than having Olmert stand trial for the crimes that he committed against the Palestinian and Lebanese people, the Israelis and Americans would insist that the Iranian head of state, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and those in his government and military who planned the operation be tried for terrorism. Maybe to incite Iranians to rise against their government, some harsh sanctions accompanied by periodic bombings of Iran’s “infrastructure” (but killing civilians indiscriminately) would also be in order.
Of course this is not what has happened or what will happen. Because it is not an Iranian or Syrian government minister, but an Israeli government minister, Rafi Eitan, who has proposed Ahmadinejad be seized and arraigned before the international court. Yet where are the howls of protest from the White House or from anywhere in the West? Indeed where is the voice of moderation that we are told exists within Israel itself, anxious to find a way to peace through negotiations and compromise? What is more, where are the outraged protestations of the international community? The silence is absolutely and totally shameful.
Nothing could better illustrate the vicious imbalance in the way the US-ally and nuclear-armed Israel is viewed against all other countries in the Middle East and Iran in particular.
So an Israeli government minister can come out with the clear terrorist proposition to kidnap a head of state and nobody in the West protests. Where are those values of justice and the rule of law that Washington and London allegedly hold so dear? What price international law if the leader of a country can be kidnapped on the orders of the leader of another country?
The Iranian government has rightly written a furious letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanding the Security Council act. If the debate happens, it will be no surprise when Washington blocks any proper vote of censure or any demand the kidnap proposition be disowned and withdrawn by the Israeli government. With such blatant and stupid partiality, how can the Americans ever hope to broker peace in the region?
Israel believes it has history’s blank check to do anything against its enemies, real or potential, including kidnapping and assassination of individual leaders and indiscriminate bombing of whole neighborhoods. The tragedy is that the rest of the world too thinks the Jewish state can be a law unto itself. This is the only explanation why nobody felt outraged when an Israeli academic, Benny Morris, wrote — and the New York Times published on July 18 this year — an article in which he, in a matter-of-fact tone, urged the use by Israel of nuclear weapons against another country (Iran) for the first time since Nagasaki and Hiroshima!
