Israel Matzav: Why Israel should not form a commission of inquiry to examine the Goldstone allegations

Why Israel should not form a commission of inquiry to examine the Goldstone allegations

Here's yet another article arguing that Israel should not form a commission of inquiry to examine the Goldstone Report, this one by former Chairman of the National Security Council Giora Eiland. Eiland gives four good reasons why Israel shouldn't set up the commission, but he leaves out the most important reason of all. Here are Eiland's four reasons.

The first reason has to do with the subject matter. Operation Cast Lead can be examined according to military-professional criteria, moral criteria, or diplomatic criteria. It must not be examined in line with international law criteria, as Goldstone wants, for the simple reason that it’s irrelevant. International law that pertains to wars is premised on three assumptions: The war pits states against each other, both sides deploy soldiers in uniform, and both sides are committed to the same codes. None of the above conditions was present in Gaza.

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The second reason is the timing. Israel just handed over to the United Nations a detailed document that responds to each and every claim made by the Goldstone Report. Don’t we believe our own document?

The third reason is political. Those who appointed the Goldstone Committee are trying to push Israel into a situation whereby any effective military operation will be considered illegitimate. Goldstone specifically said that Israel can only utilize precise commando operations against the rocket threat. Adopting this approach completely contradicts the American interest. As opposed to the negative predictions, whereby the US won’t back us should we fail to establish a commission of inquiry, the US and other Western countries will be supporting us, if only because of their identical interests on this front.

The fourth reason is domestic. The Israeli public accepts the need for a commission of inquiry and even demands it when it turns out that the army’s and political leadership’s performance was disappointing (as was the case in the Yom Kippur War and in the Second Lebanon War,) or when genuine concerns emerge as to the army’s morality (as was the case in Sabra and Shalita.) The public will justifiably resist an inquiry aimed at appeasing the gentiles and placing the IDF at court for no good reason.

But the most important reason of all for rejecting a commission of inquiry is that a commission of inquiry won't change anything. The world doesn't want a commission of inquiry - it wants IDF soldiers court-martialed, kicked out of the army and put in jail so that the next time the IDF won't fight a war against terrorists because its officers won't want to risk their careers and their freedom to fight war that will result in their spending the rest of their natural lives in jail. The world wants a commission of inquiry so that the IDF will no longer be in the terror-fighting business, and therefore there will soon no longer be a Jewish state (God forbid). That's the real reason behind the calls for a commission of inquiry, led by a self-hating Jew who is willing to sacrifice his people for his own boundless personal ambition.

A commission of inquiry that confirms that IDF soldiers are innocent of war crimes will solve nothing.

And that is why the calls for a commission of inquiry should be rejected.

Israel Matzav: Why Israel should not form a commission of inquiry to examine the Goldstone allegations