The cause this time is the Goldstone Panel Report regarding alleged Israeli (and, almost as an afterthought, Palestinian) war crimes and crimes against humanity. Even if one is willing to assume--against all promptings of realism--that the Goldstone Panel was not following a pre-determined script and intended to indict Israel in the eyes of the world, the basic premise of the panel was flawed.
Goldstone and his fellows on the panel, not unlike the legal profession generally, is powerfully inclined against war. It is not that the Geek is in favor of war. He is not, a position commonly found among the Great Brotherhood Of Those Who Have Been Shot At. But, unlike Richard Goldstone, the Geek accepts war as an unpleasant, brutal reality of the human experience. There are times--numerous times--when the sublimated combat of the courtroom cannot substitute for the reality of bullets, blood, and destruction.
Hamas, the de facto government of Gaza since shooting its way to power nearly two years ago, undertook an unsupportable, unconscionable, and illegal campaign of terror attacks against the civilian population of Israel. That fact is incontrovertible. The Israeli government responded over the many rocket filled months with remarkable, even unprecedented restraint. That fact is also incontrovertible.
When the instruments of the "international community" demonstrated complete inability to halt the Hamas sponsored attacks, Israel had no choice beyond that of self-defense. The resulting incursion into Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, was robust. The historical record demonstrates clearly that whenever Israel uses its military, the use is full throated, full bore, and overwhelming.
On many occasions the Israeli military riposte has been disproportionate to the stimulus. The actions of Detachment 101 under Sharon back in the Fifties come to mind in this regard. However, the conduct of Operation Cast Lead does not put it in the category of overreaction.
Apparently, the fact that Hamas intentionally embedded its trigger pullers and bomb heavers in the civilian population thus hoping to blunt the Israeli attack completely eluded the lawyerly mind of Justice Goldstone. Instead, he and his colleagues were blinded by the unsupported testimony of people with a direct interest in both indicting Israel and protecting the heavies of Hamas. Instead of examining the responsibility of Hamas in its intentional placing of civilians and their property in harm's way, the lawyer from South Africa was appalled at the effect of munitions, whether small arms, artillery rounds, or air delivered ordinance.
The worthy lawyer was horrified that war causes devastation. His neat and tidy mind accustomed to the dry text of statutes and court decisions was overloaded by the up close and personal exposure to the actuality of war. He evidently went into mental overload and brain gridlock when he discovered that bombs blast all in their path into protoplasm covered rubble.
Reason fled and Mr Goldstone went to some sort of default mode. Israel is a modern, advanced country with a flourishing democracy and a long tradition of judicial independence and military accountability, therefore it must be held to some sort of otherworldly standard of conduct. The Arabs, Hamas, the Islamist jihadists, the rocket-firing, mortar-toting, bomb-heaving, trigger-pulling men were, he must have concluded, were so primitive that they could be given a pass on such niceties as protecting civilians under their sway or refraining from indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
Mr Justice Goldstone concluded on the basis of his encounter with the effects of war that Israel should have mounted some sort of bloodless operation in which buildings were not destroyed and people were neither killed nor wounded. Hamas could kill and wound and destroy without criticism beyond the pro forma since they were lacking the refinements of civility that must, perforce, confine the Israeli forces to using flower power not firepower.
War must and does have laws, customs, and regulations which limit its conduct. These have evolved over centuries and are often more honored in the breech than in the observance. Yet, these laws and customs of warfare have often prevented military operations from falling over the edge into purposeless butchery.
It is often difficult, even impossible, to determine when and if the shaky fence of law and customs has failed to restrain a particular military operation from becoming mere and quite unjustifiable slaughter. The guiding star for most military jurisprudence has been the commander's intent as distinguished from the results of a particular action or operation.
On the basis of commander's intent it is quite hard to find more than a handful of actions in the context of Operation Cast Lead which are questionable. The most notorious of these is the use of white phosphorous artillery rounds in a populated area. But, one or a even a few miscalculations, misappreciations, or inappropriate use of munitions does not constitute grounds for an accusation of war crimes let alone crimes against humanity.
War is brutal. Anyone and everyone who has been in a combat zone knows that well. War is also not tidy, neat, and clear in its conduct. Once again everyone who has been in a combat zone knows that quite well.
The nature and character of war, the realities of combat, its tempo, its overload of stimuli, its emotional content, are antithetical to the atmosphere, the nature and character of the courtroom, the judge's chambers, the lawyers pleadings. While matters of great moment, of life and death, may be the subject of both arenas, only in the noise and fury of battle do these occur in pressures of time, emotion, incomplete and contradictory information, and the ever present reality that lives are at risk every fraction of every second of every minute of every endless hour.
Mr Justice Goldstone and his coworkers on the panel would have far more credibility if they had spent time under fire, making decisions on which the lives of people actually depended. If they had spent some days or even hours trying to make sense of the battle around them and the enemy ahead of them, all with the hand of death resting on their individual shoulders.
The Goldstone Panel lacks integrity not simply because it was, arguably, a put up job, but because it was conducted by lawyers. It was undertaken by people who are not only unequipped by training, education, and experience to understand the complexities of life and decisions under fire, but who are by virtue of their orientation utterly opposed to war, even one of utter necessity.
Combat exists as one of the greatest of great divides in life. It is an experience which cannot be replicated in any other environment. As such, those who stand on one side of the divide cannot begin, cannot hope, to fathom the ways and needs of those who stand on the other. Therein resides the failure of Richard Goldstone.
