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The UN Goldstone Report and Moral Equivalency
Dr. Aref Assaf
Arabisto.com, September 28, 2009
Daily Record,
October 4, 2009
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.
The nearly 600-page report, presented this week by South
African Judge Richard Goldstone, accused both Israel and Hamas
of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, and
recommended that if no appropriate independent inquiry takes
place in Israel within six months, the Security Council should
refer the matter to prosecutors at the International Criminal
Court.
Critics of the report conveniently ignored several salient
facts not only regarding the Report's 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
demean 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.
Aref Assaf, PhD
President
American Arab Forum
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