The Goldstone Report<\/a>, the UN’s attempt to indict Israel for defending itself, has failed on so many levels that only an organization as twisted as the UN could continue to hold it out as anything other than propaganda.\u00a0 Right now, the PA sees more advantage in using it to attack Hamas, but that may not last much longer.\u00a0 Daled Amos has done yeoman work<\/a> comparing the report’s absolution of Hamas with contemporaneous news accounts to the contrary.\u00a0 At the same time, Max Boot notes the report’s bizarre application of standards<\/a> that would make national self-defense impossible for Israel were they actually followed.\u00a0 Gerald Steinberg, in his laundry list of biases<\/a>, both through active hostility and laziness worthy of the MSM, comes close the uncovering the problem:<\/p>\n Mr. Goldstone’s professional qualifications are anchored in international law, but if anything, this report highlights the absurdity of a vocabulary and framework that are anachronistic. Applying classical concepts and terms to terror and asymmetric urban warfare, in which the entire population is a massive human shield and hospitals are used as command headquarters, as in the case of Gaza, is ridiculous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The report, according to Mr. Steinberg, fails because it is little more than a collection of category errors, applying what amount to civilian law-enforcement standards to a matter of national self-defense.\u00a0 If the consequences of international law producing such a document weren’t so dire, the report would be deeply unserious.<\/p>\n For a serious look at the Operation Cast Lead, look to the serious people at Azure<\/em>, a journal dedicated to revitalizing the intellectual life of religious Zionism.\u00a0 It has published a detailed analysis<\/a> of Israeli actions during the operation, according to Just War Theory.\u00a0 Asa Kasher, the author of the article, co-founder of the Journal of Military Ethics<\/em>, and a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University.\u00a0 Kasher is not seeking to address every action by every soldier, but instead attempts to place the entire operation, its goals, means, and methods as laid out by the Israeli military, in a philosophical framework.\u00a0 If the Goldstone report attempts to convict the operation by virtue of often-questionable specifics, Kasher makes the case for the overall justness of the war, and the values by which it was fought.<\/p>\n For the time being, then, we should focus on the first stage of investigation mentioned above and restrict ourselves to examining the moral, ethical, and legal requirements to which decisionmakers and participants in military actions are bound. These requirements predate and are not dependant on the specific facts of Operation Cast Lead. However, though we are not in a position to provide a comprehensive answer to all the questions raised about what took place in the Gaza Strip during January 2009, the data collected so far permits us to conclude that a significant part of the criticism directed at Israel and the IDF during and after the operation was, to say the least, based on flimsy evidence.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Just War Theory lays out eight principles forming the “basis of the standard moral discussion of war.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The principle of distinction presents the combatant with three different standards of conduct to guide him in any military action: (a) a standard he should follow when facing a group comprising enemy combatants and no one else; (b) a standard he should follow when facing a group of enemy non-combatants who are not participating in the fighting and are not in proximity to enemy combatants; (c) a standard he should follow when facing a mixed group of combatants and non-combatants.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Kasher then goes on to examine the Israeli decision to go to war, and its conduct therein, in light of these principles.\u00a0 Read the whole thing. If international law seems remote from these considerations, it is a failing of international law, not the ethical framework.\u00a0 Paul Robinson, of the University of Pennsylvania, gets it right<\/a>:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Because international law has no enforcement mechanism, it is almost wholly dependent upon moral authority to gain compliance.\u00a0 Yet the repuration international law will increasingly earn from its rules on the use of defensive force is one of moral deafness.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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