David Landau, a former JTA correspondent and ex-editor of Ha’aretz, is not shy about criticizing the Israeli government.
But on Sunday he took to the opinion pages of The New York Times — to slam Richard Goldstone and his U.N. report on Israeli actions in Gaza.
… When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?
But that is the point — and it should have been the focus of the investigation. Judge Goldstone’s real mandate was, or should have been, to bring Israel to confront this fundamental question, a question inherent in the waging of war by all civilized societies against irregular armed groups. Are widespread civilian casualties inevitable when a modern army pounds terrorist targets in a heavily populated area with purportedly smart ordnance? Are they acceptable? Does the enemy’s deployment in the heart of the civilian area shift the line between right and wrong, in morality and in law?
These were precisely the questions that Israeli politicians and generals wrestled with in Gaza, as others do today in Afghanistan.
It is possible, and certainly arguable, that the Israeli policymakers, or individual Israeli field commanders in isolated instances, pushed the line out too far.
But Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate — within Israel or concerning Israel. His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began. … Judge Goldstone could have opened debate and prompted reflection in Israel. Instead, by accusing Israel — its government, its army, its ethos — of deliberately seeking out civilians, he has achieved the opposite effect.
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