One Set of Rules for Israel, None for Hamas

Last April, the U.N. appointed a Fact-Finding Mission on Israel’s three-week war on Gaza, in retaliation for eight years of Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli settlements.

Heading the Fact Finders was former South African Supreme Court Justice Richard Goldstone, a self-described Zionist who was a former chief prosecutor of war crime tribunals in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Three members of his mission were an international law professor from the London School of Economics, a Pakistani judge, and a former colonel of the Irish Armed Forces, who’s now with the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.

Last week, the National Post published a statement delivered to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council by Dr. Mirela Siderer, an Israeli gynecologist whose medical clinic was hit by a Hamas missile last May, wounding 100 and severely disfiguring her.

Her testimony was largely ignored in the Goldstone report. She says only two pages of the 500-page report focused on eight years and thousands of Hamas rockets fired at Israeli settlements.

A New York Times article by Goldstone, laments Israel’s “disproportionate attacks” on Gaza and says “Israeli Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as laws of war strictly require.”

He says three Israeli civilians were killed by Hamas rockets, while hundreds of civilians were killed in Gaza. The implication is that since Hamas rockets killed “only” three Israelis, a proportionate response would have been for Israeli forces to kill only three Palestinian civilians.

The Goldstone report is another eloquent reason why Israel (and the U.S. and other nations with good judgment) should be wary about subscribing to things like the International Criminal Court (to which Goldstone feels nations should forward complaints, instead of fighting back).

Goldstone draws a parallel between genocide in Darfur and Israel’s attack on Gaza. He says if we push for accountability in Darfur, we “must do the same with Israel.”

If you think about it, this report is nonsense.

Dr. Siderer has it right when she asks Judge Goldstone: “Why did you choose to focus on the period of my country’s response, but not on the attacks that caused it?”

Why indeed?

Any rational look at that ugly little “war” (if you can call it that) shows clearly that Israel would not have attacked Gaza (territory it had withdrawn from), had not Hamas fired eight years of rockets into Israel.

Judge Goldstone is one of those who feels the international community – that is, foreign governments – must act if local authorities cannot (or do not) provide justice for civilians. More nonsense. Appeasement, compromises, concessions, promises, have little effect on predators like Hamas, whose stated goal is not co-existence with Israel, but the destruction of Israel.

In fact, his stress on obeying the “laws of war” seems evidence of Pollyanna thinking. In wars today, Western democracies are the ones that mostly subscribe to something resembling a code of military behavior – and punish violators.

In the Gaza war, as Goldstone acknowledges, “all sides flouted that fundamental principle” that  “civilians to the greatest extent possible should be protected from harm.”

Tell that to Hamas which provoked the Israeli attack — and which benefits when UN and “independent investigators” like Richard Goldstone condemn those who fight back, of “violating the rule of law and laws of war” that the other side routinely ignores.