Israel, the United States and international law

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Israel, the United States and international law
28 October 2009

Israel has responded to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s
endorsement of the Goldstone report accusing it of war crimes during
its assault on Gaza in 2008-2009 by denouncing the UN and seeking to
overturn existing international law.

The explicit aim of Tel Aviv is to give the Israel Defence Forces
(IDF) carte blanche to do as it likes in the name of “combating
terrorism.”

The report by South African Judge Richard Goldstone said the war on
Gaza was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish,
humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its
local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to
force upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Goldstone said that the UN Security Council should refer the case to
the International Criminal Court if Israel failed to carry out an
independent investigation into the military’s conduct. Those countries
that were signatories to the 1949 Geneva Conventions had a duty to use
their powers of “universal jurisdiction” to search for and prosecute
those responsible for war crimes, he added.

President Shimon Peres and Premier Binyamin Netanyahu rejected the UN
Human Rights Council’s vote outright, denounced the report as biased,
and refused to comply with its recommendations. Ehud Barak, defence
minister and architect of the assault on Gaza, refused to even permit
a cabinet discussion about setting up an inquiry. The government
wanted to give the Israeli military “the full backing to have the
freedom of action,” he said.

Netanyahu insisted that no Israeli official would stand trial for war
crimes and promised that the resolution would be vetoed at the
Security Council—that is, by Washington. He instructed his government
to draw up plans for a “worldwide campaign” to lobby for changes in
the international laws of war “in the interest of anyone fighting
terrorism” and to ensure that countries remove or water down their
universal jurisdiction legislation.

Israel enjoys the unconditional support of the Obama administration,
which called the Goldstone report unbalanced and lobbied to secure
rejection. Since the report was endorsed, Washington has repeatedly
reiterated its support for Israel and publicly criticised the UN.

This reached its high point last week, when President Barak Obama sent
Peres a fawning greetings video for the 2009 Presidential Conference
in Jerusalem, which was attended on his behalf by Susan Rice, the US
ambassador to the UN.

Speaking at the conference, Rice spelt out explicitly Washington’s
attitude towards the UN, an institution that she branded as “evidently
imperfect.” She made clear that the UN’s authority is to be invoked
only as and when it suits US interests, and dismissed when it does not.

“There is no substitute for the legitimacy the UN can impart or the
forum it can provide to mobilise the widest possible coalitions to
tackle global challenges, from nonproliferation to global health,” she
said.

“But the United Nations is an institution comprised of nations,” she
continued. “It rises or falls according to the will of its members.
And the UN must do more, much more, to live up to the brave ideals of
its founding—and its member states must once and for all replace
anti-Israel vitriol with a recognition of Israel’s legitimacy and
right to exist in peace and security.”

For Obama, like President Bush before him, the UN is a useful tool
only when it supports and legitimises Washington’s geopolitical
interests, as when UN resolutions provided a pretext for waging an
illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

Thus, when a UN body attempts to call Israel to order, its action is
denounced by Rice as “basically unacceptable.” This is in stark
contrast with Washington’s attitude towards Iran.

The US is even now seeking to invoke the UN’s authority, in the form
of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Security
Council, to threaten Iran and press ahead with its ambitions for
economic and strategic dominance in the energy-rich regions of the
Middle East and Central Asia.

When it comes to Tehran, which is not accused of war crimes but of
seeking to develop a nuclear programme in accordance with the terms of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—a programme that the IAEA says
has to date revealed no clear evidence of having nuclear weapons
aims—Obama declares baldly, “The Iranian government must now
demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held
accountable to international standards and international law.”

The policy of Washington, along with London, Berlin and Paris, is
determined solely by imperialist ambitions to control the world’s
resources and markets, for which the UN functions merely as a cover
and negotiating chamber. The present regime in Iran is seen as an
obstacle to these aims.

Israel has long served as the custodian of US interests in the region
and is today a likely conduit for launching a military attack on
Tehran and its nuclear facilities, should Washington decide on such a
course.

As well as seeking to protect a strategic ally, the US and Europe are
determined to avoid setting a dangerous precedent that could lead to
prosecutions of their own war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Netanyahu knows this very well. As he warned the major powers in
response to Goldstone’s report: “It’s not just our problem. If they
accused IDF officers, IDF commanders, IDF soldiers, IDF pilots and
even leaders, they will accuse you too. What, NATO isn’t fighting in
various places? What, Russia isn’t fighting in various places?”

Such shared political concerns explain why Israel has been given free
rein by Washington to defy the UN, while Iran is proclaimed a global
pariah. That is why Obama declared Israel and the US to be
“democracies” that “can shape their own destinies,” even as Netanyahu
seeks to legitimise war crimes, while Iran is subject to sanctions and
threats.

And it is why British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President
Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to Netanyahu declaring their recognition of
Israel’s “right to self-defence” following the adoption of Goldstone’s
report, while Brown demands the drawing of “a line in the sand” when
it comes to Iran’s “breach of international commitments.”

Jean Shaoul

Copyright © 1998-2009 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pers-o28.shtml

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