The Goldstone report over Gaza is a defining document. Israel’s crimes are clear to see.
For some in the Murdoch press – such as Alan Howe writing in Melbourne’s Herald Sun (the man has form) – “Jews prove easy catch“:
The none-too-smart and ideologically unsound United Nations works on more simplistic levels – it sets angry Arabs to catch its Jews.
Works every time.
There’s no shortage of angry, resentful and underachieving Arabs at the UN, nor will it run out of like-minded Africans too soon.
By and large, Arabs and Africans are not good at democracy. They don’t do personal freedoms all that well. Many of them are fond of cruel and unusual punishments – you know, public stonings for miscreant young women wanting to marry the man of their choosing, that sort of thing.
That the UN powerlessly condemns such behaviour is, apparently, beside the point.
In a sneering perversion of logic, some Arab and African nations, to whom human rights are an unnecessary indulgence, sit at some of the UN’s top tables – the UN Human Rights Council and even the Committee Against Torture.
Sharing leg space under the UN’s influential desks are such legendary stalwarts of democratic fairness and equality as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Cameroon, Madagascar, Jordan, Nigeria, Senegal and China. Tin pots, basket cases, thugs – take your pick.
They were just some of the countries that, as members of the Human Rights Council, initiated and sat on an inquiry into the Israeli actions in Gaza, which took place almost a year ago.
Led by esteemed South African jurist Richard Goldstone, they lived up to cheeky Oscar Wilde’s putdown of Britain’s then greatest poet, William Wordsworth. Wilde said of Wordsworth’s famous bucolic lessons that “he found in stones lessons he had already put there”.
The UN Human Rights Council had its finding sewn up in January when it sent “an independent … fact-finding mission” to the “occupied Gaza Strip”.
O CCUPIED by whom? The Israelis walked away from Gaza four years ago, courageously dismantling the settlements there and controversially forcing its grumpy civilians to leave.
The only Israeli in Gaza that I can think of is the kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit, who has been held by Hamas terrorists for more than three years. Now there’s someone Goldstone might have spoken to.
Gazans paid Israelis back in spades for the long-sought opportunity to be masters of their own fate: they sent thousands of Qasam rockets over the border and on to local towns, the deadly fusillade becoming a political imperative in democratic Israel.
Israelis wanted their Government to stop the shelling and end the terror. That’s why the Israeli army entered Gaza last December in a controversial invasion in which about 1400 people were killed, mostly Palestinians. That’s the thing when you take on the Israelis; they don’t come at you with some wobbly rockets that Uncle Ali knocked up out the back last night.
Gazans deserve their fate. They should love Israel. Israel is always right. The entire world is basically barbaric except for “us”.