Defenders of Israel's Gaza onslaught of 2008-9 can barely contain their joy. In a Washington Post op-ed on Friday, Judge Richard Goldstone offered some second thoughts about it that softened his earlier criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza as "war crimes".
In fact, Goldstone altered only one of his original findings. He now says that he has concluded that the Israeli Defense Forces did not intentionally target civilians during attacks in which 1,400 Palestinians died, of whom half were civilians and 400 were children. Rather they were collateral damage, not the intended targets but people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And this "exoneration" of Israel's behaviour has Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their defenders in Israel and the United States crazily dancing in the end zone. You see, they shout, Goldstone lied all along. We didn't kill all these people on purpose. Hooray for us. More...
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That’s good enough for me–it’s also what Goldstone could have said if he’d wanted to, but he chose not to. I don’t personally see much of a moral distinction between targeting civilian infrastructure and using indiscriminate firepower and “targeting civilians”, but I won’t quibble about it unless someone says that Hamas rockets are supposed to be worse than what Israel did. In that case, they must want Israel to suffer what Gazans suffered in the next war. I’m sure the more bloodthirsty Hamas members would be happy to accommodate if they could.
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