UN-conscionable as usual: Back from the dead, Israel-bashing Goldstone report must be killed

Editorial

New York Daily News

October 15th 2009

Like Jason in the hockey mask, like Chucky the killer doll, the Goldstone Report - the United Nations-ordered, 574-page horror story that excoriates Israel for defending itself from terrorists - will not die.

Yesterday, human rights abuser Libya waxed grotesque in the Security Council, a prelude to the report being reintroduced and voted in the kangaroo court that is the UN Human Rights Council.

The body, populated by the likes of Angola, Egypt, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia, will sit in judgment on the question of whether Israel's Gaza offensive amounted to a war crime - and thus possibly deserving of indictment before the International Criminal Court.

Get your head around this: Regimes that make a high art of repression will declare that Israel violated human rights for finally using force to disarm terrorists who had fired rockets by the thousands at innocent civilians.

The council's actions are part and parcel of its anti-Israel, anti-Semitic obsessions.

An esteemed group of 100 legislators from 35 countries, the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism, said it well yesterday: "The United Nations Human Rights Council - the centerpiece for UN standard-setting in human rights and international law - has been engaged in systematic if not systemic bias against Israel."

Pointing out that the council "targets some 80% of its resolutions at one member state, Israel, while the major human rights violators enjoy exculpatory immunity," the group called for "an end of the abuse of international institutions to legitimize anti-Semitism, including the singling out of Israel for discriminatory treatment."

Amen to that.

The Goldstone Report went so far as to libelously conclude that Israel targeted "Gaza as a whole" as part of "an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas."

To sustain such a finding would be to declare that Israel cannot legitimately mount any defense against terror, no matter how long-running and unabated, no matter how hard Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties. It will also give terrorists carte blanche to conduct operations from within civilian populations without fear of prosecution.

Given the slightest hint of approval, the report will set back Mideast peace efforts and tie the hands of all countries that come under attack from radical terrorists.

The U.S. has some say in this matter as a newly installed member of the council. The Obama administration's representative has committed to opposing the report, but yesterday he slipped into wishy-washy diplospeak at the Security Council.

While reiterating "serious concern" about the "unbalanced focus" of the report, Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff added, "we do take seriously the allegations in the report" and urged Israel to "seriously investigate" its allegations.

This is no time for on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand equivocation. It is a time to stand staunchly with an ally that was forced to fight back against unrelenting terrorism, that strove to minimize civilian harm and that now faces trumped-up, destructive condemnation.

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