by Stan Goodenough - Jerusalem Watchman - August 23, 2006
Imnesty
International (AI) has accused Israel of committing war crimes during
the course of its self-defensive war against the Hizb’allah.
So the outed anti-Israel news agency Reuters informed us Wednesday.
Determined to prosecute such a charge while
the widespread, media-manufactured outrage against Israel for its
actions in Lebanon remains high, the so-called human rights group has
called for the United Nations to quickly establish an “independent”
inquiry into what it says were Israeli breaches of international
humanitarian law.
AI, known for the enduring hostility of its
relationship towards Israel, employed its “evenhandedness” approach by
saying that “both sides” had broken these laws.
It is a tactic that is as tried and tested as it is transparent.
As much as it wants to be seen as such, and no
matter how forcefully Egypt may insist it is – the Hizb’allah is not a
legitimate national entity.
It’s a regionally-sponsored Islamo-facist
terror machine that has consolidated its reputation and built up its
growing following through acts of violence and gangsterism in Allah’s
name.
On July 12, this Iranian-equipped and
Syrian-facilitated militia perpetrated an act of international piracy
by crossing into sovereign Israeli territory to kidnap Israeli
soldiers, killing eight IDF men in the process.
And it unapologetically committed crimes
against humanity by deliberately aiming at civilian population centers
when it rained 4,000 missiles down on Israel between July 12 and August
14.
(An inquiry we can be sure AI will never call
for is one into the responsibility of Tehran and Damascus for the
outbreak of this war and their contribution to the tragic cost in
Israeli and Lebanese civilian lives.)
No matter. What we have learned well during
the past decades here in Israel is that the world wants to see Israel
as guilty. Nations like France and England, South Africa, Russia and
China are quite happy to be deceived into believing that Israeli
soldiers and air force pilots, with the blessing of Israeli
governments, will deliberately and even gleefully inflict death and
destruction on Arab men, women and children.
Let them believe these lies. Let them
prosecute Israel for them. Let them even – in their show trials in The
Hague or wherever they choose to have them – find Israeli individuals
or Israel as a nation guilty as charged.
These journalists and lawmakers, together with
the public that believes and supports them, are set in their ways. The
truth will make no dent in their bias; it will give no pause to their
prejudice, no respite to their anti-Semitism.
This world sees modern-day Israel as:
- Increasingly a mistake at best, illegitimate at worst – created on stolen Arab lands.
- Expansionist – seeking to enlarge its borders by illegal occupation and ultimate annexation of more of those lands.
- Warmongering – ready and eager to make war on its neighboring states and against the Palestinian Arabs.
- Criminal in its warfare – deliberately targeting Arab civilians.
- Human-rights abusing – arbitrarily persecuting Arabs and employing collective punishment against them.
- Racist – abusive and segregationist towards its own Arab citizens (Israeli Arabs).
We know modern-day Israel to be:
- Wholly legitimate – both biblically and historically the rightful owners of all the ancient land of Eretz Israel.
- Excessively accommodating – has proven its readiness to relinquish claim to great chunks of that homeland.
- Sacrificially peace seeking – from the early
1900s repeatedly extending its hand towards the Arabs for peace; since
1967 demonstrably willing to take risks for peace, even at the cost of
thousands of Israeli lives.
- Incomparably humanitarian in its warfare – never
blitzing, carpet-bombing or in any other way mass-destroying its
enemies; warning civilians to vacate areas the IDF needs to strike;
placing its own soldiers repeatedly at risk in order to minimize the
risk to civilians, the majority of who are fully supportive of and
celebrate their countrymen’s attacks on Israeli civilians.
- Self accountable: As a nation repeatedly ready to
express sorrow and remorse for the excessive or unlawful actions of
individual Israelis; holding courts martial to punish and prevent abuse
of Arabs by individual Israeli soldiers, etc.
- Restrained in its actions against terrorists –
selectively targeting those it goes after; dealing with individual
terrorist’s property when it could lay siege to entire communities;
building security walls and fences to stop terrorist acts instead of
employing iron fist against entire Arab communities out of which these
terrorists come.
- Self-critical to an astonishing degree of any
latent prejudices and, through its parliament as well as its courts,
seeking to redress imbalances in treatment of the Arab minority – an
Arab minority that, even as it perpetually complains, happens to enjoy
the highest standard of living in the Arab world, the protection of its
civil and human rights, an equal vote and its own parliamentary
representatives (most of whom are openly hostile towards Israel),
exemption from military service, and many thousands of whom live in
luxurious villas and mansions that are to be seen in every one of
Israel’s Arab towns.
The world is wrong in its treatment of Israel.
It is unfair and it is unjust. But why worry about them? Let them bring
it on. All they are doing is storing up judgment against themselves,
judgment that will be poured out upon them when the God of Israel deals
with all those who hate Zion.
Thank God, He is Israel’s defender. And while
He, a holy God, will deal “in measure” with Israel for its many faults
and sins, He knows where justice and injustice lie in regard to
Israel’s conflict with the Arabs, and the world’s position on this
conflict.
The Judge of all the earth is coming soon. “He is coming to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth.” (Ps 96:13)