Goldstone & Hassan

After the Goldstone Gaza war crimes report was released on September 15, Israel immediately asked for the U.S.’s help in “curbing the international fallout.”  Its message was don’t let a bad precedent be set, you want to be able to pursue “the war on terror” without having to worry about being hauled before the International Criminal Court, don’t you?  
 
Four days earlier, on September 11, Riaz Hassan had released the results of a suicide bomber study using the “most comprehensive compendium of such information in the world.”  The findings should be familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention, “It is politics more than religious fanaticism that has led terrorists to blow themselves up,” “People tend to have a strong aversion to what they perceive as injustice,” “Strategies for eliminating, or at least addressing, collective grievances in tangible and effective ways would have a significant and (in many cases) immediate impact on alleviating the conditions that nurture the subculture of suicide bombings.”   
 
Those we deem to be deadly terrorists we subject to summary execution via drone, but the victims of our deadly terrorism or war crimes don’t have the capability to pull of summary executions like we do and their path to international justice is curbed.  
 
For the Palestinians, in 2004 the International Court of Justice spoke with upmost clarity that Israel’s separation wall and settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal, but to no effect.   Now the Goldstone report is being thwarted, with Congress about to vote on a resolution so intellectually challenged that Goldstone has had to issue a point-by-point rebuttal. 
 
To oppose the congressional resolution and thereby the law of the jungle, go here or here.