Peter Berkowitz in his The Goldstone Report and International Law argues that the larger issue is the undermining of international law in favour of politics.
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But another and more far-reaching issue, which should be of great significance to those who take seriously the claims of international law to govern the conduct of war, has scarcely been noticed. And that pertains to the disregarding of fundamental norms and principles of international law by the United Nations Human Rights Council (hrc), which authorized the Goldstone Mission; by the Mission members, who produced the Goldstone Report; and by the hrc and the United Nations General Assembly (of which the hrc is a subsidiary organ), which endorsed the report’s recommendations. Their conduct combines an exaltation of, and disrespect for, international law. It is driven by an ambition to shift authority over critical judgments about the conduct of war from states to international institutions. Among the most serious political consequences of this shift is the impairment of the ability of liberal democracies to deal lawfully and effectively with the complex and multifarious threats presented by transnational terrorists.
David Gertsman, Soccer Dad, points out that Jeane J. Kirkpatrick’s 1989 COMMENTARY essay “How the PLO Was Legitimized” demonstrates that the use of diplomacy as another means of waging war against Israel extends back three decades. Only its getting worse.
Had Israel had know that politics would increasingly replace law and sovereignty over the last forty years, it would not have agreed to what it agreed to from time to time. It always made its calculation based on the rules at the time and not the rules as they would become.
All they had to do to avoid this was believe what the the Bible says about men being liars. But even if they were secularists, history alone could have told them.
We live in a time that law is arbitrary. Law is enforced selectively, or twisted to mean whatever those in power wish it to mean. At this point, there is no averting catastrophe. Even if good men were to seize power today, the damage already done is so great and so extensive, there is no escape from the consequences.
We need good leadership now, both in the US and Israel—not to avoid what is coming, it’s too late for that, but to face what the world is on the verge of.