Cross-posted at www.angryyoungdem.vox.com
The Goldstone mission set out to find Israel guilty of War Crimes and it did. That was its mandate and it performed up to par. To sanitize the biased mission it turned to Richard Goldstone, an honorable and distinguished human rights lawyer. It is a shame than Goldstone allowed his integrity to be smeared by taking on such a mission. The interest of this commission was not one of international law, but one of international politics. This is a point Israel could drive home much more effectively if the messenger (Avigor Lieberman) weren't so reprehensible.
The evidence that this is not about international law comes from the very fact of the investigation. "International Law" and "Human Rights" only matter to the UN when Israel is involved. As pointed out in today's Haaretz:
The United States has killed thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the last few months encouraged Pakistan to make an extremely brutal military move in its Swat Valley. The United States was not required to account for it because everyone understands that this is the price of the terrible War on Terror. Russia committed blood-curdling war crimes in Chechnya, while China deprives its citizens of basic rights and is conducting a wicked occupation in Tibet. They are not asked to pay for this because everyone understands that you don't mess with superpowers.
But not only superpowers are immune. Saudi Arabia practices an open, declared policy of discrimination against women and the international community does not see. Sri Lanka is crushing the Tamil national movement, causing a ghastly humanitarian disaster, and the international community does not hear. Turkey is brutally oppressing the Kurdish minority, and the international community does not speak.
So now the PR war will begin. Even as Daily Kos members debate this issue over the coming days, the site itself is running an advertisement espousing the Israeli response through the MFA. The critics of Israel will now cite the UN report as "facts" merely because they come from the UN. They will not be willing to even consider that the source may be tainted.
They will not consider that the UN does not investigate war crimes by the US, China, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and on an on. They will not consider that this is the same body that pronounced "Zionism is Racism." This is the same body that has never held an emergency session to consider Tibet or East Timor or Syria, but only Israel. And how many resolutions have been passed deploring Israel and how many have been passed about Palestinian terrorism?
Is any of this a result of anti-Semitism. Yes, there is some anti-Semitism in there. This is the same body that has stood silent as Palestinians accused Israel of injecting Palestinian children with HIV, that let Syria claim that Jews used the blood of Syrians to make Matzah. But it is not really about anti-Semitism. It is about realpolitik. It is about the fact that there is but one Jewish state and many many more Arab and Muslim states.
And so we have the Israeli version of events which is going to be rejected by the international community and we have the Goldstone version of events which is going to be rejected by Israel and Israel's supporters as, among other criticisms, the selective, and often erronoeus, application of international law. The resultof the Goldstone report is going to be two-fold. First, it will be used as a bat to bludgeon Israel by those who had created the Goldstone report specifically to have a UN report with which to bludgeon Israel. And in response, Israel will strengthen in its resolve. Each of these results will inhibit peace, instead of progress toward peace.
And in the end, that is the shame of the Goldstone report. It used the imprimateur of international law to try to score political points for the opponents of Israel. It had no interest in using international law to procure justice, as Goldstone did in Rwanda and Irwin Cotler, the Goldstone Report's greatest critic, did for Nelson Mandela and countless other human rights causes. And if there is no justice, there can be no peace.
UPDATE: Skewered as I expected (although I didn't expect my tip jar to be HRed, I guess I gave the extremists too much credit). In any event, here is the US response. Looks an awful lot like that I posted:
Rice told reporters following a Security Council session that the US "is reviewing very carefully what is a very lengthy document. We have long expressed our very serious concern with the mandate that was given (to Goldstone's team) by the Human Rights Council prior to our joining the Council, which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.
"We will expect and believe that the appropriate venue for this report to be considered is the Human Rights Council (in Geneva) and that's our strong view. And most importantly, our view is that we need to be focused on the future," she said.