The UN Human Rights Council last week endorsed the Goldstone report over Gaza. Israel may soon have its own Pinochet moment.
Leading Jewish American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg is worried, however, and his reasoning is revealing:
Tactics deployed to hurt Israel inevitably cause collateral damage. It’s a good thing that the United States, and a handful of European countries, have opposed the referral of Israel to a war crimes tribunal, but they aren’t doing enough (and, of course, France and Great Britain absented themselves from the vote). They would do more, I think, if they understood that Israel represented a kind of test run for a uniquely nefarious idea. Israel may find itself in the docket soon, but the U.S., and Britain, and other Western democracies that are battling Islamist terror, may soon find themselves in similiar straits. Who could seriously argue that what happened in Gaza was unique? Talibs hide behind civilians in Afghanistan, and often those civilians get killed. It’s only a matter of time before David Petraeus, or Bob Gates, find themselves under attack from the same forces that want to punish Israel for trying to defend itself from a state-sponsored terror group seeking its elimination.
Where to begin with this victimhood? Goldberg is saying that Western states kill civilians and the world should simply accept it. Terrorists are terrorists and we’re the good guys so how dare you find us culpable or guilty?
Israel is finally realising that it isn’t above the law. About time.