Cast Lead Conclusions

Jeremy Sharon
American Thinker
21 January '10

One of the most significant consequences of Operation Cast Lead, Israel's three-week military offensive in Gaza which concluded January 18 of last year, is the huge campaign waged by Israel's enemies to isolate and demonize the country. In the wake of her efforts to defend its citizens, Israel has been attacked on multiple fronts by determined foes intent on hobbling the country's military while at the same time backing her into a diplomatic corner.

Following the end of the operation in Gaza, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), human rights groups, and international NGOs, along with U.N. organs subordinated by the former, stepped up an already intensive campaign whose broad purpose is to force Israel into accepting the maximalist positions demanded by the Palestinians for their future state.

The strategy has two central tactics, both of which have utilized Israel's operation in Gaza last year as a springboard to achieving a broader aim. The first tactic is to handicap the Israeli military from effectively dealing with the guerrilla and terrorist threats it faces on both its northern border with Lebanon and its southern border with Gaza. The main weapon in this particular battle is the tendentious investigations carried out by human rights groups (Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in particular), as well as the deeply flawed Goldstone report, which was actually instigated by the OIC.

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Calling a Crime a Crime

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
13 December 09

(Definite food for thought in this article. One needs merely to compare the non-response to the terrorist stabbing of a young woman Motzei-Shabbat in Gush Etzion or at the gas station here 3 weeks ago, to gauge the different reactions. Terrorist attacks rarely are considered an impediment to the process, therefore ignored, free of pious condemnation by both PM and DM. Given who benefited from a defacing of the mosque, it may be more profitable to look towards those who wish to demonize an entire sector of Jews who stand in the way of a 2nd or 3rd Hamastan.)

It’s a measure of how badly the “peace process” has warped Israel’s language of values that the most intelligent response to Friday’s torching of a mosque near Nablus, allegedly by extremist settlers, came from the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Its secretary general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, correctly identified the crime as “blatant aggression against the sanctity of sacred places.”

That’s more than Israeli politicians seemed capable of doing. Defense Minister and Labor Party chairman Ehud Barak, for instance, sounded as if the real crime were the potential damage to the peace process. “This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government’s efforts to advance the political process,” he declared. Similarly, opposition leader and Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni condemned it as a “despicable act of provocation” — as if the crime were the response it might provoke.

If the perpetrators were settlers, they probably did intend to undermine the peace process by provoking a violent Palestinian response. But that’s not what made their act criminal. The crime isn’t the impact on the peace process; it’s the wanton destruction of a house of worship.

This perversion of language began when Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres deemed the suicide bombings that followed the 1993 Oslo Accord “crimes against the peace process” and the victims, “sacrifices for peace.” For them, this was a political necessity: If Oslo were seen as producing more anti-Israel terror rather than less, Israelis would turn against Oslo — and its sponsors. Hence they had to paint the attacks not as the same old anti-Israel terror, but as a new form of terror, aimed equally at Israel and its Palestinian partner — i.e., at the peace process itself.

(Full article)

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Human Rights Day 2009 - little to celebrate

Gerald Steinberg
Opinion/JPost
09 December 09

December 10 is known as International Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions. But in 2009, as in past years, there is little to celebrate - this has been another bad year for human rights. In Darfur, the Congo and elsewhere in Africa, mass killings continue, with only minor and sporadic attention from the media or the United Nations.

In Iran, a rigged election brought thousands of democracy protestors into the streets, where they were beaten and arrested (70 demonstrators, including Neda Agha-Soltan, were reportedly killed), followed by Stalinist show-trials designed to intimidate these advocates. And in Asia, the tyrannical regimes in North Korea and Myanmar terrorize their citizens daily, with no end in sight.

This bleak record highlights the abject failure of the international community to live up to its moral commitments. The United Nations Human Rights Council pursues a cynical agenda that uses the rhetoric of international law as a weapon in the political war targeting Israel.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), China, Russia and other chronic human rights abusers, constitute a majority on the UNHRC and appoint its officials. They have no interest in opening a discussion of Tibet, Chechnya, or the systematic oppression of women or minorities in Saudi Arabia.

Israel is a convenient diversion, which explains the obsessive focus on claims of "war crimes" and "collective punishment," as well as the biased composition and activities of the Goldstone inquiry on the Gaza conflict.

(Full article)
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