Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
31 October 09
The Washington Post reports:
The House of Representatives on Tuesday is poised to pass a nonbinding resolution condemning a controversial U.N. report on alleged Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip that has become a major complication in Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s diplomacy in the Middle East this weekend.
It seems this makes the Obama moral equivalence game a bit more treacherous. Hillary Clinton is meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, while the administration can’t quite bring itself to issue an unequivocal condemnation of Goldstone’s handiwork. (”The administration has previously said that the report is flawed but raises “important issues and serious allegations,’ and it has urged Israel to investigate its conduct in the conflict more closely.”) It is oh so inconvenient to have a stark statement of support for Israel and one of condemnation for yet another attempt to de-legitimize Israel’s right to self-defense.
It is making others squirm as well. As Josh Block of AIPAC notes, all the “mainstream” pro-Israel groups back the resolution. But not the J Street crowd. In a pathetic bit of projection, J Street’s head Jeremy Ben-Ami declares that the resolution ”puts members of Congress in an uncomfortable box” because of alledged inaccuracies in the resolution. Puleez. Congress feels no discomfort; it is J Street that is in a bind, caught with its sympathies showing.
J Street and the administration it seems would rather not make too much of a fuss over Goldstone’s Israel defamation. Their reaction however only highlights their own lack of understanding of the stakes not only for Israel, but for any democracy that must fight terrorists who chose to attack from behind the skirts of old women and the cribs of toddlers.
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