Richard Goldstone’s Washington Post op-ed retracting the central conclusions of his earlier report is something of an earthquake. Despite his attempt to apologize for his 2009 report by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which caused a modern-day blood libel and one of the deepest rifts between Israel and the international community. Its bottom line was simple and conclusive: Israel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Operation Cast Lead, by intentionally targeting civilian population.
Goldstone’s Jewishness gave the report special weight and an aura of objectivity. All supporters of Israel should reject Goldstone’s pathetic attempt to correct the irreparable damage done to Israel when he paved the way to demonize and delegitimize Israel across the globe. The United Nations, which has consistently and obsessively condemned Israel at every opportunity in recent years, has shown that it can no longer fulfill its historic mission and should not be funded by the American taxpayer any longer.
Read the report and you will clearly see that Goldstone gave an erroneous picture of what it is like to face an enemy that is devoid of any humanitarian considerations, and he gave no indication that Israel has the right and the duty to defend its citizens. After the years of incessant shelling of Israel’s south, drastic action was inevitable. Goldstone never even mentioned Hamas’s use of its own civilian population as a hiding place for weapons and terrorists and as human shields, or its booby-trapping of buildings with civilian inhabitants. Hamas established military command centers in hospitals and UN-affiliated schools.
Hamas also exploited the relative weakness of the rockets that it sent into Israel; due to Israel’s home-front preparatory efforts, physical damage was manageable, yet the world never showed interest in or took note of how deeply the Kassam attacks terrorized the population in Israel’s south, making the extent of Israel’s retaliation seem disproportionate.
Goldstone willingly created the impression that Israel was acting cruelly out of choice, never presenting Israel’s actions as a response to Hamas’s systematic targeting of Israeli civilians.
Goldstone, being only the most recent example of a “useful idiot,” enabled his biased and dishonest investigation to have a toxic effect everywhere in the “soft power” battlefield—in diplomatic and legal forums, in the print, broadcast, and Internet media, throughout University campuses, and in the global public discourse. Goldstone poisoned Israel’s name. In the physical battlefield, where the IDF’s finest put their lives on the line, the Goldstone Report gave moral support to our enemies, encouraging them to believe that they could kill us not only with impunity, but with active international empathy and support. Goldstone endangered the lives of all of Israel’s citizens on the battlefield as well as in the major population centers in the south of Israel. So much for Goldstone’s penitence.
As the UN prepares for the next major anti-Israel event this September, when the nations of the world plan to cooperate with the enemies of Israel and vote in favor of a virtual Palestinian Arab state, the members might want to consider that the one-sided anti-Israel resolutions over the years have led to the point where the majority of Israel’s citizen and politicians have absolutely no trust in the UN.
The public in Israel will dismiss the expected resolution concerning the Palestinian Arab state and demand of its political leadership to respond to this latest attempt to attack Israel in the spirit of the Goldstone Report. The UN’s credibility and impact will be seriously weakened, keeping in mind that the Muslim revolt in the majority of the Arab nations in the Middle East is a byproduct of the hypocrisy and neglect of UN institutions.
The very nations that sit on the UN Human Rights Council are the ones whose leaders have attacked their own people with jets and tanks, refusing to respect the most basic human rights of their citizens.
In response to this expected development, the Obama administration has the opportunity to send a message to the leaders who are undermining American interests and disregarding the expectations of Obama, who has led the demand of respecting the democratic rights of the masses demonstrating for change and democratic reform in the Arab nations.
Obama can show the world that he is serious about his administration’s intentions by acting consistently and proactively. Halting American funding of the UN will send the right message, that America no longer condones the use of the UN for attacking Israel exclusively, rather than using the resources of the UN to promote democratic reform and upholding human rights in all of the nations that surround Israel.
It has become clear to all that the UN has dealt with Israel as a means of distracting the focus from the nations that are the worst offenders of human rights. Obama, instead of ushering in an era of freedom in the Arab world, will enable Islamic radicals to benefit from the UN’s continuing obsession with the only democratic nation in the Middle East, Israel. Now is the time to halt American funding of the United Nations.