All hope not lost

Part 2 of analysis

There is no doubt that the Goldstone Report marks the gravest assault on Israel in the area of human rights and war crimes. The one-sided and hostile conclusions presented by the report are boosted by the fact that the inquiry committee was deliberately headed by an honorable judge; a Jew who characterizes himself as a Zionist and friend of Israel, and who also happens to be a South African national known for his objection to the apartheid regime.

This move hinted to global public opinion that Israel and the apartheid regime should be handled the same way, and that Israel should face the same sanctions that brought down the racist South African regime.

We can debate now whether the Israeli government was right to decide not to cooperate with the committee. Indeed, the committee decided on the guilty part in advance, when the initial mandate it was given was defined as probing Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. In addition, appointments to the committee included figures who in advance voiced their anti-Israel views. In the wake of criticism, the UN amended the mandate and ordered the committee to also look into Hamas’ action.

It is possible that had Israel cooperated, it could have prompted a more balanced report, and more importantly, it could have dragged on the discussions to the point of blurring the impression of the operation in public opinion.

Yet we cannot turn back time. At this point, the Israeli government and mostly the Foreign Ministry must engage in a difficult battle in order to minimize the report’s damage. All hope is not lost, should the campaign be managed intensively and with determination on three fronts simultaneously - the diplomatic theater, the media front, and the military-legal arena – and while enlisting all the support Israel can get from the United States and from European states. These countries understand well the damage which the report and its conclusions may cause to their war against terrorism and Global Jihad. For that reason, the struggle on the international diplomatic front is expected to be the easiest.

Meanwhile, on the media front, Israel will need to come up with a broad and creative effort vis-à-vis public opinion leaders worldwide.

Finally, for the legal-military arena we need a special task force, which would comprise any international attorney willing to enlist to the cause – and there are quite a few of those. The Foreign Ministry along with the IDF already prepared a comprehensive 160-page document on this matter. The problem will be to convince international elements to review it in a manner that will affect decisions made at the Security Council.

The campaign has only just started. This will be the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s first real and significant test for a long time now – it may be Israeli diplomacy’s most important battle since the struggle in the 1970s and 1980s that prompted the annulment of the UN resolution comparing Zionism to racism.