An American politician acquitted of corruption charges years ago asked: “Which office do I go to get my reputation back?” Israel is asking that same question now that a U.N. commission’s report accusing it of war crimes has been retracted by the panel’s leader.
Richard Goldstone, a South African jurist who headed the commission, has disavowed the allegation that Israel intentionally killed civilians during its offensive in the Gaza Strip two years ago. Israel launched the operation to put a stop to thousands of rockets being fired by the Hamas overlords of Gaza into southern Israel.
It was ugly urban warfare. The terrorists, as they always do, hid out among civilians. Despite extensive Israeli efforts to warn civilians with thousands of phone calls and leaflets dropped from planes, civilians were among the 1,400 Palestinians killed during three weeks of fighting.
After it ended, the U.N. Human Rights Council launched a “fact-finding mission.” The council is notorious for devoting its energies to denouncing Israel while giving a pass to the habitual human rights abusers in the Muslim world and in Cuba, China and Russia. Israel refused to cooperate with what it knew would be a kangaroo court and launched its own investigations into messy and tragic aspects of the operation.
Recently another U.N. panel found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” and bring charges against officers guilty of misconduct. These investigations, Goldstone acknowledges, “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”
The outlandish charges in the Goldstone Report are discredited, but they will live on to be used by Israel’s enemies. It’s still part of the U.N. record, and Palestinians continue to push the U.N. to condemn Israel for “war crimes.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging the United Nations to nullify the Goldstone Report. The Obama administration should back this effort in the strongest terms. As we have learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pursuing terrorists means going after them where they live — among civilian populations. The Goldstone Report is nothing less than an attack on civilization’s right of self-defense against barbarians.
