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For Biased Critics of Israel, Even Its Defensive Actions Violate Human Rights
(Christian Science Monitor) Jeffrey Robbins - Earlier this month, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof devoted an entire column to calling upon Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, while mentioning not one word about the rocketing of Israeli civilians that had brought about the blockade, and whose recurrence the blockade is intended to prevent. Indeed, for much of the past decade, Israel has been forced to defend itself from charges that defending itself is a crime. From 2000 to 2004, the Palestinian leadership organized a suicide bombing campaign aimed at killing and maiming as many Israeli civilians as possible. About 1,100 Israelis were blown to pieces and 5,000 more were wounded or maimed. This is the rough proportional equivalent of about 55,000 Americans killed and 250,000 Americans wounded or maimed. A bombing campaign whose very purpose was to take innocent human life should have triggered universal condemnation of Palestinian violence. It didn't. Similarly, from 2000 to 2008, families of southern Israel were subjected to between 8,000 and 10,000 rockets, missiles, and bombs fired at them by Hamas gunmen embedded in civilian neighborhoods in Gaza. Yet the progressive community remained largely silent. It turned out that it wasn't the 8 years of targeting Israeli civilians that was the human rights violation. It was the Israeli effort to stop the attacks from Gaza in 2009. The writer served as a U.S. Delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission under President Clinton.