Goldstone Report

The specious moral equivalency argument that Israel is justified in its military actions against the Palestinians, especially Hamas is a striking example of moral bankruptcy and baseless analogies.

The UN’s Goldstone Report was commissioned to investigate the extent and consequences of targeting civilians when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip in late 2007. Critics of the report conveniently ignored several salient facts not only regarding the Report mission and findings, but about the supposed moral and practical analogy between the US and Israel on one side, and Taliban/Al-Qaida and Hamas on the other.

It should first be noted that Israel refused to assist with the fact-finding mission of the UN-mandated commission. The supposed tilt in the Report was a reflection not only of the undeniably high and asymmetrical Palestinian deaths and devastation but also due to Israel’s deliberate attempt at sabotaging the commission’s mandate. Israel did not cooperate with the investigators nor did it provide any data covering Israeli casualties.

Even if we distrust the findings of the UN Report, one needs only review several reports by Israeli based civil and media organizations which categorically exposed the deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians, schools, and places of worship. Even Israeli soldiers confessed to the clear orders by their superior to shoot at unarmed civilians.
Pro Israel supporters have long levied the self-hating-Jew- label to effectively silence Jews who, by defending what is morally right, have often found themselves castigated and outcast by other Jewish organizations. Conveniently, charges of anti-Semitism would have awaited any gentile who dared to disagree with Israel.

Crucial to the credibility of the equivocation is the absence of moral justification: Al-Qaida/Taliban attacked our country, on our soil on 9/11. The U.S. was not in Afghanistan as an occupying force. The majority of the world countries such as the UN endorsed our attacks on the suspected Taliban bases and the subsequent invasion of the entire country. We are in Afghanistan for a specific and time limited purpose. The U.S. has no aspiration of colonizing Afghanistan. American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan in order to secure the nation’s political freedom from the tyranny of the Taliban. In doing so, our land and our people here will also be saved.

Conversely, attacks by Palestinian militant groups, such as Hamas, are in retaliation of Israel’s military occupation of Arab lands it had conquered in the 1967 Six-Day war. Israel not only lacks the moral foundation but also the legal right to so oppressively maintain a systematically brutal and inhumane military regime over 5 million Palestinians. Israel, unlike the U.S., is reaping the fruits of its brutal practices against a totally subjugated civilian population, some of whom have organized and carried out equally heinous acts against Israeli targets. Before we lend Israel the moral upper hand in its confrontations with the Palestinians, let us be mindful that Israel is the aggressor. Israel is the occupier and the party that has killed and maimed over a million Palestinians, expelled millions more into exile, destroyed close to 500 Arab villages, and desecrated an untold number of religious sites, Christians and Muslims alike, and it has persistently ignored UN resolutions and even U.S. demands.

Supporters of Israel bemoan the immorality of Palestinian resistance to the occupation, deliberately avoiding the absence of moral legitimacy for Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands. Those pundits wrongly claim the cause of the war to be Hamas, for Hamas is a recent political development in the Palestinian national struggle. The cause of conflict at least since 1967 has been and continues to be Israel’s suffocating military occupation. End the occupation by satisfying legitimate Palestinian rights to sovereignty, then and only then shall Palestinian violence end.

Further, these pundits argue that had Palestinians not resorted to violence against the Israeli people and army, Israel would not have been forced to attack them, and consequently their lives would not be intolerable. Such an argument, however, fails to recognize the clear possibility that occupation itself is the highest form of violence. Israel’s military occupation is already making Palestinians' lives so miserable that some are willing to sacrifice those lives to regain their homeland, sovereignty, and dignity. Further, this argument presents an arbitrary and indeed self-serving starting point to pursue moral and political condemnation. The natural conclusion of such skewered morality is to dehumanize the victim and to diminish his ability to feel pain and injury. Palestinian blood and lives are thus of much lesser value so long Jewish lives are saved.

Coattailing on America's tragic 911, Israeli supporters thus demeans the memory of those who lost their lives. Attacks on Israel have to be judged as part of its occupation and treatment of the Palestinians. They appropriately seek our empathy towards Israel by using the in-my- shoe parable, but it is the Palestinians who should be compared to the United States. Israel- just like Al-Qaida/Taliban- is the aggressor, the oppressor, and the rouge regime.

Arabisto