Israeli Ambassador Says Richard Goldstone is Worse than Ahmadenijad
Normally New Republic content on Israel sticks to an eight or nine on the ten point insanometer unless it’s written by TNR Editor in Chief Martin Peretz itself. But Michael Oren, a frequent TNR contributor who was recently appointed as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, is really shattering through the Peretz Line here:
The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents–as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed.
Needless to say, the Goldstone Report just doesn’t say anything remotely like this.
The specifics of the outrageous slander involved here aside, the doctrine Oren seems to be trying to put forward is the idea that if a state is attacked then anything the state does in the way of a defensive response is legitimate. This just isn’t what international humanitarian law says or ever has said. I think the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan easily fit the bill as self-defense. But that fact itself doesn’t immunize the United States against the charge of war crimes. Indeed, it seems quite clear that the Bush administration’s detention and torture policies amounted to war crimes. War crimes that were undertaken in a spirit of self-defense, yes, but war crimes nonetheless. The nature of the war crimes Goldstone says Israel committed are different, but the logic of the argument is just the same. The existence of anti-Israel rocket attacks does not, as such, create a justification for anything Israel chooses to do in response. Even the fact that the rockets attacks are, themselves, war crimes (as Goldstone writes) doesn’t justify illegal or immoral responses, anymore than the fact that illegal and immoral aspects of past Israel conduct justify illegal and immoral rocket attacks. “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” as they say.
59 Responses to “Israeli Ambassador Says Richard Goldstone is Worse than Ahmadenijad”
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October 7th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Didn’t most of those “thousands of rocket attacks” resemble the Estes model rocket — a bang but no real threat? Psychological harrassment?
How many Israelis were killed by this blitzkrieg? Was Tel Aviv flattened?
October 7th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Seems to me that Oren is basically right.
The upshot of the Goldstone Report, and the basic point of the pro-Hamas portion of the US political structure such as J Street, is that it is inherently illegal for Israel to do anything in self defense. Goldstone, and groups like J Street, simply think that Hamas should be able to kill the Jews with impunity.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:26 am
That this man represents the views of the Israeli government in the capital of the counterpart in its most important bilateral relationship is shocking. I have no doubt he does in fact represent those views and is admirably performing his role as the Israeli government’s representative in order to secure that the outcome of our policy-making process is as favorable as possible to the interests of his government.
Matt has given this morally bankrupt argument a much fairer hearing than it deserves, so I won’t speak of the substance since I wouldn’t be able to do so in civility. The entire exercise serves to call into question not only our alliance with these monsters, but whether we can continue to even tolerate their policies, let alone support them.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:27 am
@Don
Liberals get really mad when people say they are anti-semetic for their criticism of Isreal. I understand that, and its often not fair. But you above arguement, which seems to be ‘eh, rocket attacks on Isreal aren’t really a big deal’ is clearly crossing the line.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:34 am
The answer is: Nazis! Holocaust! Anti-semitism!
What was the question again?
October 7th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Clearly the only people who should ever attempt to systematically document and evaluate the behavior and actions of Israeli military campaigns are Israeli military experts and Israeli PR officials and those free-form ideologues who support those campaigns. Any other type of investigation by anyone else is illegitimate and the most evil thing ever.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:42 am
How’s Obama’s tough stand against West Bank settlements going? Has Bibi given Barack the finger yet, or is that next week?
October 7th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Al: Thanks for highlighting the word “anything” in your comment. Just in case people didn’t recognize where the lie was.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
rockets fired kill 13 Israelis, Palestinians killed > 1400. Yeah, I call that self-defense. Now, go ahead and say that pointing that out is somehow equivalent to endorsing/approving rocket attacks into Israel. The attempts at rationalizing this type of violence by some people are unbelievable…
October 7th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
rockets fired kill 13 Israelis
Actually, those 13 Israeli killed include 10 soldiers, including 4 who were killed by other Israeli soldiers in “friendly fire”.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
MY has involved himself in an issue that requires about one million times the space used by his post. When a nation is defending its right to exist, you cannot expect some supposedly neutral third party to evaluate behavior on both sides and come up with an impartial judgment. There is plenty of material to refute Goldstone which he can look up if he chooses. The point is that national sovereignty is something that a people will not give up.
What I would go by is the fact that Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza and got no benefit.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Led:
I don’t think Al has any feelings about this particular issue. It’s just Michael Oren is one of the few people on earth able to reach the same heights of shameless hackery as Al. So it’s just Al giving him a nod, like LeBron James with Jordan.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
@4: I can’t believe I’m defending Don, but I think that’s an unfair criticism. He seems to consider the question “how many Israelis were killed?” important (otherwise why ask it), which simply means that an attack that kills thousands of people is different from an attack that kills no one. The latter really *isn’t* a big deal, or at least, not one that justifies lethal “self-defense”. Israel’s self-defense is starting to resemble the Monty Python sketch about how to defend yourself against an attacker armed with a banana, and it doesn’t undermine the whole concept of self-defense to say so.
If cmg’s figures are correct, then it seems pretty reasonable to pour water on claims that whatever Israel did or could possibly ever do (!) is justified by the deadly, deadly threat against them. If more people are killed in car accidents than rocket attacks, Israel should be bombing Detroit before it bombs Gaza, or better yet, not bombing anyone and coming up with a less death-toll-escalating response.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Re CMG
rockets fired kill 13 Israelis, Palestinians killed > 1400. Yeah, I call that self-defense. Now, go ahead and say that pointing that out is somehow equivalent to endorsing/approving rocket attacks into Israel. The attempts at rationalizing this type of violence by some people are unbelievable…
Ah gee, 1400 Fakestinians killed in a three week campaign. Now if the Government of Israel had decided to impose Hama Rules, given that that many people were killed in the first 10 minutes of the bombardment of the City of Hama by Hafaz Assad, then Mr. CGM would really have something to whine about. How many people have been killed by US forces in Iraq since the 2003 invasion? I have seen figures of in excess of 100,000. As mass murderers, the IDF are pretty incompetent.
Re Don Williams
I suspect that if some asshole was firing rockets into the blogs’ resident Bolsheviks’ his back yard, he would be demanding that the gendarmes do something about it immediately, if not sooner.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Like butcher a bunch of people who weren’t firing rockets?
‘Cause that would be totally emotionally satisfying.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
It’s important that truly stupid and vile things, like the above, be framed and celebrated as the reason why their authors are beneath consideration.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
“When a nation is defending its right to exist, you cannot expect some supposedly neutral third party to evaluate behavior on both sides and come up with an impartial judgment.”
Nor can you expect it when a nation is engaged in naked land grabs in violation of international law, is conducting slow-motion genocide against several million people, and have the most powerful country in the world as their enabler and protector.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
“When a nation is defending its right to exist, you cannot expect some supposedly neutral third party to evaluate behavior on both sides and come up with an impartial judgment.”
I don’t understand. Why not? If not a neutral third party, then whom? Surely the nation itself would be too emotionally invested in the matter, as Oren’s piece seems to prove.
Beyond which, it is extremely dubious that Israel’s “right to exist” was threatened by poorly-aimed rockets that did, relatively speaking, very little damage. Obviously the rockets are crimes, and some response was appropriate, but as Matt says the idea that literally any response is allowed is sheer nonsense and always has been.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
rockets fired kill 13 Israelis, Palestinians killed > 1400. Yeah, I call that self-defense.
Let’s count up how many Afghans, Iraqis and others have been killed by Barack Obama’s America, as compared to how many Americans those people have killed.
Turns out, based on such a comparison, that Barack Obama is a war criminal too!
October 7th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Re: SLC
how on earth does the massacre in Hama come into the equation? Please explain.
Are you saying that nobody should give a shit because it doesn’t exceed the “SLC mass murderer” quota? And yes, I do know all about Iraq casualties.
Fakestinians? Really? You wordsmith, you…
October 7th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I’m baffled by what Bottomfish #11 means to argue. Does his talk of Israel’s ‘defending its right to exist’ mean that in extremis, with the existence of the nation is threatened, the rules don’t apply? This is a dubious principle to begin with, but in any case it’s obviously not true that Israel’s existence was threatened by the rocket attacks (which isn’t to say that they didn’t present a problem, that Israel should have done nothing in response to them, that it isn’t a very difficult question how properly to respond and so on). Presumably he has in mind the familiar point that the people firing the rockets and their supporters would make difficult negotiating partners because they don’t think there ought to be an Israel. This is true, but how does it affect the question what kinds of military response was legitimate? And why on earth shouldn’t a neutral outside observer weigh in (with due caution and so on)? Should outsiders have refrained from commenting on the Cultural revolution in China, the purges and mass collectivizations of the ’30s in the Soviet Union, what happened in the wake of Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933 in Germany, to pick a few extreme examples? Obviously not. Does the fact that the state in question is dealing with opponents who ‘deny its right to exist’ change matters? That’s what governments faced with internal rebellions always say about their adversaries (fairly enough sometimes). Should criticism of them be off limits to outsiders? That would be a very strange and unwelcome conclusion.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Because it always comes into the equation when SLC is involved. Now all we need is abb1 to show up.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
“Re: SLC
how on earth does the massacre in Hama come into the equation? Please explain.”
Oh God. Do you know what you’ve done?
October 7th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents
Wrong. It present the IDF as deliberate murderers of innocents, based on the testimony of many witnesses and the investigations of numerous human rights organizations operating in the area. If Israel doesn’t like that, perhaps they should stop having the IDF kill indiscriminately.
The “self-defense” argument becomes incredible weak when you look at the difference between the number of Israelis killed by rocket attacks, and the number of Palestinians killed by the invasion of Gaza. The former number is in the single digits; the latter number is in the thousands.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
The Palestinians were hurling rockets into territory they were forced to vacate and for which, in many cases, they still hold the deeds.
Trying to regain the home that was stolen from you does not constitute a crime. Goldstone got that part wrong.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Re: daveNYC, tomemos
sorry about that, I should visit TP more often. I should have known from the “Fakestinians” though…
October 7th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
“how on earth does the massacre in Hama come into the equation?”
Because it always comes into the equation when SLC is involved. Now all we need is abb1 to show up.
It’s the old rationalization “everyone does it.” People like abb1 were saying it about Russia’s overreaction to Georgia’s provocations.
It depends on whether you believe that America is the Evil Empire – like most people here do even with Obama in charge – or that is the shining City on the Hill whose motives are pure as the driven snow.
Israel continues to alienate itself from the rest of the world. By blockading Gaza, by the settlements. I’m betting they attack Iran, who is obviously going for nukes and obviously won’t give them up.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Re CMG
how on earth does the massacre in Hama come into the equation? Please explain.
Are you saying that nobody should give a shit because it doesn’t exceed the “SLC mass murderer” quota? And yes, I do know all about Iraq casualties.
Fakestinians? Really? You wordsmith, you…
It comes into the equation because the Israel bashers on this blog whine and whine about how beastly the IDF is towards the Fakestinians. The fact is that the IDF is far too solicitous of world opinion when taking action against the Fakestinian terrorists and, for that reason, their actions are ineffective. On the other hand, the actions taken by the Syrian Government in the City of Hama have been very effective. The terrorists who were operating out of that town and who were planting bombs and assassinating police officers have cease and desisted from their operations (those that are still with us that is) since that time.
I would also point out the actions of the Hamas Government in Gaza a few weeks ago when faced with opposition from Al Qaeda terrorists operating out of a house in Gaza City. They surrounded the house and killed all of its inhabitants. Unlike the Government of Israel, the Assad kleptocracy and the Hamas folks don’t mess about with terrorists and thus their actions are effective.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
SLC:
On the other hand, the actions taken by the Syrian Government in the City of Hama have been very effective.
Syria is a shit country with a shit dictatorship. You want Israel to be more like them?
October 7th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Since someone is baffled, I will explain. A substantial portion of Palestinians do not believe Israel has any right to exist and the Palestine region should revert to 100% Arab control. They would like to accomplish this through wars of aggression and the only thing holding them back has been the awareness that they would lose. After all, numerous attempts in this direction have been made.
You say: Presumably he has in mind the familiar point that the people firing the rockets and their supporters would make difficult negotiating partners because they don’t think there ought to be an Israel. This is true, but how does it affect the question what kind of military response was legitimate?
The answer is not that they are difficult negotiating partners but they cannot be negotiated with at all unless we have evidence that there is no longer any support for the wipe-Israel-out position among them. Right now, as with the last 130 years, there is no evidence. Furthermore, the UN is not a neutral outside observer. Its anti-Israel bias has been abundantly demonstrated over the years; for one example look at the Human Rights Council. You cannot expect a nation to relinquish its sovereignty to the UN/Intl Law community’s supposed impartial judgment. How often has any nation done this? The examples that you cite of China and so on did not create any UN intervention. Sure, people can “weigh in.”
October 7th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
SLC
The fact is that the IDF is far too solicitous of world opinion when taking action against the Fakestinian terrorists and, for that reason, their actions are ineffective.
Well you had the Arab dictatorships beginning to see Israel as the enemy of their enemy, revolutionary Iran. And then Israel ruined that by invading Lebanon, so no I don’t see them as being overly solicitous.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Normally New Republic content on Israel sticks to an eight or nine on the ten point insanometer unless it’s written by TNR Editor in Chief Martin Peretz itself.
It seems to me that Martin Peretz is a convenient scapegoat allowing Franklin Foer to escape any and all criticism for the continuing stream of Israeli propaganda he allows into the magazine he edits. Not all of it is quite as demented as that of Michael Oren but given that all of the magazine’s material on Israel is pretty much a rehash of propaganda from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs it took only a small step to publishing the demented thoughts of the Israeli Ambassador to the US.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
I’ve always wondered if the Michael Orens (and before him the William Safires and Abe Rosenthals) ever really understand that arguments which are too over-the-top become self-refuting.
The more Orens argues that UN reports are illegitimate because the IDF is entitled to kill anyone they feel like killing, the more likely it seems that the IDF is killing anyone in their way and therefore probably ought to be stopped. If in fact the IDF is not actually killing anyone it likes, you’d never know it from him.
Personally I suspect the IDF is actually killing anyone they feel like. Seriously, why else would such a carte-blanche be needed?
October 7th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
“…they cannot be negotiated with at all unless we have evidence that there is no longer any support for the wipe-Israel-out position among them.”
You’re serious? “No longer any support”? None? This is tantamount to saying, “We can never negotiate with the Palestinians,” which I guess would be too impolitic.
They managed to end the Troubles in Northern Ireland through negotiation, despite there being plenty of support for absolutist positions on both sides. But I guess Israel is just too pure to dirty its hands with negotiations like htat?
October 7th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Since Bottlefish is baffled, I will explain. A substantial portion of Israelis do not believe Palestine has any right to exist and the Israeli region should revert to 100% Israeli control.
And we know that because about 400,000 Israelis have migrated into the Occupied Palestinian Territories in flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. And theirs is the national project of the State of Israel.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Raising the bar to “No longer any support” is ridiculous. There is likely a not-insignificant number of people in america, and in fact probably in any country that wants israel wiped off the map, should israel not negotiate with anyone? How about a more reasonable bar, like, “the palestinian leadership should recognize israel’s right to exist.” What you are saying effectively, is that there can never be any negotiation with the palestinians, ever. Even Israel’s greatest allies don’t pass by the measure you’ve set the Palestinians!
October 7th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
A substantial portion of Palestinians do not believe Israel has any right to exist and the Palestine region should revert to 100% Arab control.
Okay, so… negotiate with the ones who don’t believe that? (Oh no, nuance! Run!) Substantial portions of almost any large group will believe almost any damn-fool thing you care to name. Pretty much every negotiation in history has been carried on despite the presence of a substantial portion of extremists who believed that negotiation was treason and hostilities against the other side should be continued/renewed.
At least you’re not explicitly equivocating between “don’t believe Israel should exist as a political entity” and “want to kill Israelis”.
They would like to accomplish this through wars of aggression
You have a funny definition of “aggression”, if it applies to attempts to regain political control of the Palestinians’ own homeland. (What makes the issue so damned awkward, of course, is that by now it’s also many of the Israelis’ homeland. So they really have to either share it or commit genocide, but neither side wants to admit that.)
October 7th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
SLC,
Without the generous assistance of the United States, the State of Israel is six million people bobbing in the Mediterranean surf.
They’d damn well better be “solicitous of world opinion.” The actual Israelis living under omnipresent Arab hostility understand this very well. It’s only the sad little wanna-be Zionist six thousand miles behind the lines who have the luxury of ignoring it.
You want to be Mr. Realpolitik Tough Guy? There you go.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Re Poptarts
1. Well you had the Arab dictatorships beginning to see Israel as the enemy of their enemy, revolutionary Iran. And then Israel ruined that by invading Lebanon, so no I don’t see them as being overly solicitous.
Actually it wasn’t the invasion of Lebanon itself that ruined that. It was the sheer incompetence of the military strategy used in that invasion and the total incompetence of Olmert, Halutz, and Peretz that persuaded those Arab dictatorships that the IDF was grossly overrated and was a thin reed indeed to lean on relative to Iran.
2. Syria is indeed a shit country with a murderous dictatorship in charge but the Arab mentality requires a strong hand at the helm. The notion that democracy can flourish in any of those countries is piffle. The point is that Hafaz Assad was facing some of the same problems that the Government of Israel faces relative to Islamic terrorism and he was not shy about doing something decisive about it.
Re ron
The Palestinians were hurling rockets into territory they were forced to vacate and for which, in many cases, they still hold the deeds.
Trying to regain the home that was stolen from you does not constitute a crime. Goldstone got that part wrong.
So Mr. ron would not object if Native Americans used terrorist tactics to regain the homes stolen from them in North and South America by European settlers.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
….unless we have evidence that there is no longer any support for the wipe-Israel-out position among them. Right now, as with the last 130 years, there is no evidence.
Whoa, 130 years? Que? I’m no history major, but I don’t think there was much in the way of “wipe-Israel-out” sentiment back in 1879 inasmuch as that was over half a century before Israel existed.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
The world is ugly and the people are mad.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Have it your way.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
The problem with “If someone was firing rockets into your backyard..” kind of arguments is that work just as well if one substitutes them for “If someone was restricting the movement of foods necessary to the health of children into your neighborhood..” and they work just as well.
If one accepts arguments at that level than nobody is to blame in the region since everyone is responding reasonably to the provocations they face regardless of what they do.
Obviously the kind of ethical theory behind that is nonsense, but it is funny that if one uses it for only one side one can miss what nonsense it is.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Re SLC at 28: “It comes into the equation because the Israel bashers on this blog whine and whine about how beastly the IDF is towards the Fakestinians. The fact is that the IDF is far too solicitous of world opinion when taking action against the Fakestinian terrorists and, for that reason, their actions are ineffective.”
——————
1) I think SLC should stop being so wishy-washy and just advocate HITLER RULES! No more Mr Nice Guy. Time to take the gloves off.
2) Oh — and let’s drop the meme of “Greater Israel”. That suggests LIMITS. Let’s just go with “The Chosen People have a right to plenty of lebenst..er Living Space”.
3) Oh — and America should support this ethnic cleansing with $Billions of dollars in Aid per year because slow motion genocide of the Palestinians is how we are supposed to show that we have the moral statue to grieve over the Holocaust.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Re Don Williams
Ah, Mr. Williams is just jealous because Bibi went to MIT while he had to be satisfied with Utterly Vacuous Assholes.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
For real, do Israel hawks really want to be arguing that the existence of a legitimate self-defense cause justifies violations of the rules of war?
Really?
Because I don’t think they do.
October 7th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I think abb1 and SLC might be perfect inversions of each other. If they ever met I believe they would be annihilated like a positron meeting an electron.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
If you consider the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, American Lakes, which they are, and, as we know, we at the very least, have nominal control of Iraq and Afghanistan, then a view of the current geographical relationships of force structures in the area, the United States has an awful lot of actors in the Middle East, pretty much everybody, in fact, either flanked on two or three sides or completely surrounded.
The list would include all the big boys in the drama that have not already been physically occupied by the US; Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and, of course, Israel. It also means we have all the sub-groups in the drama virtually surrounded; Hezbollah, Hamas, the Wanahabis in the Kingdom and their sneaky little brothers, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Shias and Sunnis, Kurds and Persians, Kings and Dictators, everybody, including the Knesset and the IDF.
Now I love and defend Israel and admire their grit and courage, their determined effort to survive as a skinny little skiff in a Sea of Hostility. But it seems to me, whether or not it was the initial intended purpose, the United States has spilled out enormous blood and treasure requiring two complex invasions to physically watch out for, from close range, Israel’s back. In this particular situation, in my estimation, we need to tell Israel to SHUT THE FUCK UP. Things are complicated enough, and America is at the edge of her rope, so we don’t need things getting any trickier than they already are.
Personally, I think the US should immediately send Hillary to Tehran, scarf and all, with an army of diplomats in tow. Seek to diffuse this situation now, even if it means, despite the flotillas of ships, vast armies, hundreds of military satellites and one thousand military bases already built and deployed to surround entire continents three dimensionally, that we are perceived as weak.
Even if it means possibly losing Florida in 2012. A leader must show courage. He must bravely stare the electoral college in the face, and not waver.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
[...] Oren (who has perhaps been hanging out with equally shrill Neuer friend Anne Bayefsky), wrote that Richard Goldstone is Worse than Ahmadenijad. Oren wrote: The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by [...]
October 8th, 2009 at 2:00 am
I haven’t read either Goldstone’s report or Oren’s comment. Oren’t rhetoric as quoted doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. But given the context of the overall behavior and ideology of the UN group that chartered the report, the fact that no one gives a shit whether Hamas commits war crimes — because everyone expects them to, it’s a big part of their whole point — and so THAT certainly won’t be pursued further, etc., it isn’t hard to see exactly how this particular political football is going to be used. And it isn’t hard to see, either, even if Goldstone himself is in denial about it, that that was a big part of the point in the first place, and a big part of getting him to sign on. If pressure, sanctions, etc., are brought only against one particular agent for the war crimes it may have committed, obviously that differentially affects the perceived legitimacy of its military actions as compared with those of other actors. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:09 am
“I haven’t read either Goldstone’s report or Oren’s comment.”
Larry, are you afraid that people will think that you’re avoiding the actual subject of the discussion so that you can just repeat your standard line on this kind of thing?
October 8th, 2009 at 5:15 am
Re Joe from Lowell
Not being a law abiding citizen, I don’t believe in rules of war. Neither did Roosevelt and Churchill during WW 2. If the IDF (and Hamas for that matter) were guilty of war crimes, their violations pale to insignificance compared to the actions of Roosevelt and Churchill. Was Dresden s legitimate military target? Not hardly.
October 8th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
So what is your problem with Hamas lobbing rockets then?
October 8th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Israel’s profane ’shock and awe’ approach to it’s treatment of civilians in Gaza is morally bankrupt and indefensible. To review the FACTS it becomes clear: the overwhelmingly disproportionate attacks on Gaza are designed and executed to invoke as much fear and terror, cause as much destruction and kill as many innocent civilians as possible.
Having said that, does it mean I am anti-Israel? Absolutely not. Does that mean I am pro-Hamas? No.
It means that the facts stand as they are and reveal the IDF as it is: a military force with too much weaponry and too many trigger-happy soldiers to support a peaceful resolution with Palestinians.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
[...] Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., writing in the New Republic decides to defends the accusations of war crimes in the Goldstone report by referencing the Holocuast: [...]
October 8th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
tomemos, it’s your right to be sarcastic, of course. I simply meant, my knowledge and understanding of either the report or the Ambassador’s essay are second-hand. That doesn’t prevent me from noticing that Yglesias is being disingenuous in this post, as he often is in his thinking and writing about the Middle East. It would be interesting to know if he’s consciously aware of this.
October 10th, 2009 at 6:15 am
Sorry, maybe I missed something, but I didn’t see any report accusing US of war crimes after it’s actions in Afganistan after 9/11.
The Cast Lead operation was not an easy thing to do for Israel, prier to the operation Israel tried to handle the situation the peaseful way:
Israel repeatedly dispatched letters to the Secretary General of the United Nations and the President of the Security Council drawing attention to the rocket attacks.
Israel made numerous attempts to work through third parties, exhausting diplomatic channels in its endeavor to stop the rocket attacks.
Israel joined members of the international community in instituting economic sanctions against Hamas.
but nothing helped, Israeli cities were still under dayly attacks.
October 10th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Yeah right, Israel just went in, killed some random civilians, destroyed some random buildings, and the rocket attacks from Gaza have stopped for first time in last eight years. Makes sense, why not…
October 12th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Don’t the Israelis believe in hopey-changiness? Now the B.O. has won the NObel, Ahmadinejad will see the light and love Israel and Jews like they were his brothers. And as we all know, the Jooooooos are just a wee little paranoid. I don’t see why 75 years of their neighbors trying to destroy them gets them all jumpy. Those were “love rockets” send by Hamas. I’m sure each one had an invitation for tea and biscuits taped on. Why can’t the Jooooos understand brotherly love?