Anyone with a minimal sense of right and justice knows that Israel has literally been getting away with murder for decades. It has brazenly ignored tens of United Nations Security Council resolutions and flouted international laws and conventions just because it can — thanks to Washington’s unconditional protective umbrella.
Moreover, Israel’s massive worldwide network of propagandists ensure that anyone who dares to criticize the country’s actions is automatically labeled a terrorist supporter, a racist, an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew. In other words, as far as a succession of Israeli governments are concerned, Israel is a special case and can do no wrong.
However, a recent report issued by the “United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” shatters the carefully contrived Israeli myth of its own righteousness. Its authors, led by Justice Richard J. Goldstone, a South African judge and prosecutor of the Rwanda and former Yugoslavia tribunals, found that Israel may have been guilty of perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity during its onslaught on Gaza and is almost certainly in breach of the Geneva Conventions as well as international humanitarian laws.
Moreover, they recommend that their report be placed before the UN Security Council for onward transmission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague or, failing which, that Israel be called to account by countries that support the concept of universal jurisdiction.
It goes without saying that Israeli officials are outraged. President Shimon Peres says the report “makes a mockery of history” and “does not distinguish between the aggressor and the defender.” Naturally, this veteran of the Haganah couldn’t resist characterizing the report as giving “de facto legitimacy to terrorist initiatives...”
Israel’s controversial Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman insists that “the IDF is the most moral army in the world” while slamming Goldstone’s report for wishing “to take the UN back to the Dark Ages, where it was also determined, through the leadership of utilitarian countries, that Zionism is racism.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls the report “a prize for terror” and is both traveling around and working the phones in an attempt to warn world leaders not to support it on the pretext that their anti-terror forces could one day come under UN scrutiny.
While all of the above are sticking religiously to the usual script, none have addressed any of the report’s allegations.
Instead, they accuse Goldstone — a Jew and a self-ascribed Israel supporter — of bias. Several pro-Israel commentators have gone a step further by labeling Justice Goldstone “a self-hating Jew” rather than address his findings.
The Israeli government was vehemently against the UN investigation to the extent they barred the investigatory team from meeting with Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials. They also refused to allow the group to enter Gaza through Israel, forcing it to cross into the Strip via Egypt. If the report is, indeed, one-sided, then it’s no wonder since Israel has refused to cooperate preferring to moan and groan after the fact.
From my perspective, Goldstone’s report is a breath of fresh air. At last, representatives of a respected international body have summoned the gumption to say it like it is in a language that does not seek to prostrate itself before diplomacy’s altar.
Apart from condemning Israeli forces for using human shields, bombing heavily populated civilian areas, the inappropriate use of white phosphorus, the shelling of hospitals, ambulances and a UNRWA compound, and the willful destruction of civilian infrastructure, it states that the team found no evidence that Hamas fighters were operating from inside the UN facility or within mosques and hospitals — as Israel has always alleged.
Furthermore, it found no evidence “to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or that they forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks,” which is another Israeli fib exposed.
Citing damning accounts from Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who served in Gaza, the report heavily criticizes Israel for not properly investigating its crimes or bringing potential war criminals to justice. This lack of self-policing on the part of Israeli authorities is one of the reasons the report gives for its recommendation that Israel should answer to the ICC.
To Israel’s dismay, no doubt, Goldstone and his colleagues tackled much broader and longstanding issues. For instance, they judged that “the conditions of life in Gaza, resulting from deliberate actions of the Israeli forces and the declared policies of the government of Israel...cumulatively indicate the intention to inflict collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip in violation of international humanitarian law.”
They further considered whether the series of acts that deprive the people of Gaza of “their means of sustenance, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country...could amount to persecution, a crime against humanity.”
On the subject of the apartheid wall that snakes around the West Bank, the report is unequivocal. “The wall, which, to the extent is built inside the West Bank is contrary to international law” and is tantamount to the “acquisition of territory by force, contrary to the Charter of the United Nations.”
The report similarly condemns Israeli settlements, which are contrary to article 49 (6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and violate Palestinian property rights and the prohibition on the occupying power of changing the nature and legal status of the occupied territory.
Hamas is taken to task for indiscriminately firing rockets into Israel but, at the same time, the report acknowledges the right of an occupied people to resist the occupier.
Interestingly, the investigators do not call for the release of the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, but they are of the opinion that “as a soldier who belongs to the Israeli armed forces”, he “meets the requirements for prisoner-of-war status under the Third Geneva Convention” and, as such, should be treated humanely and allowed visits from the International Red Cross.
They say they are concerned by declarations made by Israeli officials who have indicated their intention of blockading Gaza until Shalit is released, as this constitutes collective punishment. On the other hand, Israel is criticized for rounding up and mistreating Palestinian prisoners including child prisoners. Instead of continually crying “foul”, it’s about time that the Israeli government and people looked at themselves in the mirror to see what the rest of the world is beginning to notice. They may get away with it this time. Statements from the US government indicate that it has concerns about the report’s fairness, which probably means it will use its UNSC veto if push comes to shove. But if Israel continues in the same aggressive vein, there will come a day when its Dorian Gray-type portrait becomes so ugly that even the US can’t disguise it.
