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UN Human Rights Report on Gaza: A Moral Travesty

(New York Jewish Week) Abraham H. Foxman - The UN Human Rights Council report on last summer's war in Gaza never answers one fundamental question: Is there anything serious in the real world that Israel would do to stop the onslaught of rockets against its civilian population that would be deemed legitimate by the international community? If one examines the choices that Israel faces when under rocket attack, it becomes clear that anything Israel would do would be condemned. Israel is therefore supposed to live with a situation where a party committed to its destruction would be able to choose when and where it can attack. Defenders of the report would say: Israel does have the right to self-defense, just not the way it did it. But what does that mean? In any conflict in the world, is there an alternative, perfectly clean approach to these kinds of terrorist threats? What is at stake here is Israel's right and obligation like all other nations to protect its people. All the years that Hamas was launching rockets into Israel, nothing on the international scene was said or done to stop them. The true message that comes out of these reports is that Israel really does not have the right to self-defense. The UN and other international bodies and institutions claim to be the defenders of the Palestinians but truly are their worst enemies. These reports only serve to reinforce the notion in the minds of the Palestinians that they do not have to give up their hostility to the Jewish state. Every time the world rationalizes Palestinian rejectionism, excuses Hamas, and puts the major blame on Israel, it reinforces the Palestinian fantasy that time is on its side and it just need continue as it has. Accepting the legitimacy of the Jewish state is the only path toward changing the Palestinians' own lives for the better. The writer is national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
2015-07-10 00:00:00
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