Today on Example of a Post we have a pro-Israel post that accurately and articulately describes the unjust double standards applied to Israel. You can read it and follow the link for discussion.
What you, and much of the world, DEMAND of Israel is what no one demands of any other country on earth.
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=63922
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/15/civilian-casualties-soar_n_425455.html
No one makes similar demands of Turkey, saudi Arabia, Russia, China, the U.S., Canada, Britain, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Germany, etc., etc.
Can you not see the irrationality, the injustice, the anti-Semitism of insisting that the Jewish state alone be subject to laws all others are left to ignore? And it is Israel alone, on earth, that is daily threatened with extermination; none of the others.
You demand that, after having been attacked repeatedly, having defended itself repeatedly, that Israel retreat without requiring that its enemies negotiate a mutually agreed peace treaty with it. You demand that Israel leave itself vulnerable to yet more attacks. And if it were to successfully defend itself again, to retreat again, and again, ad infinitum, until, one time, it does not win.
And after the country and its people are wiped out, you will no doubt be first in line to express sympathies, and suggest that memorials be erected."
WBMD is responding to the demand by "hemara" that Israel "simply" comply with international law and then "hemara" claims "that will take care of oppression".
As we talked about a lot on this blog, international law is a tricky beast. There are, in my opinion, three ways of looking at it. First is that international law is not created by God, it's created by man, which means it can be flawed or wrong. In the United States, the Constitution is always being amended, interpreted and revised, but to suggest that we add a clause to the Geneva Conventions to accomodate fighting against international terrorism is met with strong resistance and the accusation that Israel is trying to "wriggle" out of the crimes it committed. Likewise, the United Nations is not the Vatican, it's another group of people. Just as we do not agree with every piece of legislation passed by the U.S. government, we do not have to agree with a UN decision to, say, sanction Israel, or even agree with the UN's factual findings. This is true even before the numerous accusations of bias that have been leveled at the UN in recent times.
Second way of looking at international law is through it's application, and this is the point "WBMD" is making. He states that numerous countries around the world are far worse violators of international law than Israel, especially the United States, China, Morocco, etc. This is undoubtedly true, but (as we are frequently reminded by HPers) Israel is far and away the most condemned country by the UN using international law as a basis.
According to Wikipedia, as of June of last year, there were a minimum of 92,489 civilian casualties in the Iraq War! The US has suffered 4,296 casualties. And yet, where are the UN resolutions condemning the US? Where are the Goldstones of the world? Remember
the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008? There were around 593 civilian casualties there, comparable to Cast Lead, yet there were no UN resolutions about the conflict and no war crimes investigated. And that's not even getting into China's occupation of Tibet or Iraq's control over Kurdistan. The point is: there are lots of countries in the world that are far worse than Israel, but they are ignored by international authorities in favor of going after Israel. We are supposed to all be equal in the eyes of the law, and if inequality is starting to take place, the law becomes worthless.
The last way of looking at international law is accepting the hard truth that international law is in almost all cases unbinding.
Most General Assembly resolutions are not binding, "Articles 10 and 14 of the
UN Charter refer to General Assembly as "recommendations". Likewise, the only Security Council resolutions that are treated as binding are those passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (referring to "a threat to, or a breach of, the peace, or act of aggression). How many such binding resolutions have been passed to control Israel's policy?
None. There have been no such binding resolutions passed about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict since the 1948 war (and that resolution ordered a cease fire).
So you see, invoking international law to condemn Israel
sounds easy, and we see HPers try it all the time. But upon closer examination, it is clear that international law is disproportionately enforced, not binding, and not infallible in its own right. Remember that the next time you go up against someone declaring, "Israel is in violation of international law and that's why I don't like it"
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No one makes similar demands of Turkey, saudi Arabia, Russia, China, the U.S., Canada, Britain, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Germany, etc., etc.
Can you not see the irrationality, the injustice, the anti-Semitism of insisting that the Jewish state alone be subject to laws all others are left to ignore? And it is Israel alone, on earth, that is daily threatened with extermination; none of the others.
You demand that, after having been attacked repeatedly, having defended itself repeatedly, that Israel retreat without requiring that its enemies negotiate a mutually agreed peace treaty with it. You demand that Israel leave itself vulnerable to yet more attacks. And if it were to successfully defend itself again, to retreat again, and again, ad infinitum, until, one time, it does not win.
And after the country and its people are wiped out, you will no doubt be first in line to express sympathies, and suggest that memorials be erected."
WBMD is responding to the demand by "hemara" that Israel "simply" comply with international law and then "hemara" claims "that will take care of oppression".
As we talked about a lot on this blog, international law is a tricky beast. There are, in my opinion, three ways of looking at it. First is that international law is not created by God, it's created by man, which means it can be flawed or wrong. In the United States, the Constitution is always being amended, interpreted and revised, but to suggest that we add a clause to the Geneva Conventions to accomodate fighting against international terrorism is met with strong resistance and the accusation that Israel is trying to "wriggle" out of the crimes it committed. Likewise, the United Nations is not the Vatican, it's another group of people. Just as we do not agree with every piece of legislation passed by the U.S. government, we do not have to agree with a UN decision to, say, sanction Israel, or even agree with the UN's factual findings. This is true even before the numerous accusations of bias that have been leveled at the UN in recent times.
Second way of looking at international law is through it's application, and this is the point "WBMD" is making. He states that numerous countries around the world are far worse violators of international law than Israel, especially the United States, China, Morocco, etc. This is undoubtedly true, but (as we are frequently reminded by HPers) Israel is far and away the most condemned country by the UN using international law as a basis. According to Wikipedia, as of June of last year, there were a minimum of 92,489 civilian casualties in the Iraq War! The US has suffered 4,296 casualties. And yet, where are the UN resolutions condemning the US? Where are the Goldstones of the world? Remember the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008? There were around 593 civilian casualties there, comparable to Cast Lead, yet there were no UN resolutions about the conflict and no war crimes investigated. And that's not even getting into China's occupation of Tibet or Iraq's control over Kurdistan. The point is: there are lots of countries in the world that are far worse than Israel, but they are ignored by international authorities in favor of going after Israel. We are supposed to all be equal in the eyes of the law, and if inequality is starting to take place, the law becomes worthless.
The last way of looking at international law is accepting the hard truth that international law is in almost all cases unbinding. Most General Assembly resolutions are not binding, "Articles 10 and 14 of the UN Charter refer to General Assembly as "recommendations". Likewise, the only Security Council resolutions that are treated as binding are those passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (referring to "a threat to, or a breach of, the peace, or act of aggression). How many such binding resolutions have been passed to control Israel's policy? None. There have been no such binding resolutions passed about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict since the 1948 war (and that resolution ordered a cease fire).
So you see, invoking international law to condemn Israel sounds easy, and we see HPers try it all the time. But upon closer examination, it is clear that international law is disproportionately enforced, not binding, and not infallible in its own right. Remember that the next time you go up against someone declaring, "Israel is in violation of international law and that's why I don't like it"