It isn’t difficult to imagine how Western governments would react if a foreign state assassinated its scientists, blew up its military facilities, or carried out bomb attacks on army officers, while heads of that state’s intelligence agency dropped hints that ‘There are more bullets in the magazine’.
Such actions would be universally condemned as terrorism. The state responsible would be categorised as a ‘terrorist state’ or a ‘sponsor of terrorism’, whose behaviour violated international law and codes of conduct that govern the ‘international community’. Pariah status would follow. Governments might withdraw their diplomats. There would be condemnation in the UN Security Council, and calls for sanctions or even war.
But when that state is Israel the response is strangely muted, and more often than not non-existent.
Years ago, Israel’s dovish Prime Minister Moshe Sharett condemned the kidnapping and murder of 5 Jordanian Bedouin by Israeli paratroopers in 1955 and speculated in his diary that such acts ‘must make the State appear in the eyes of the world as a savage state that does not recognize the principles of justice as they have been established and accepted by contemporary society.’
More than half a century later, Israel continues to operate on the principle that it can kill who it wants, when it wants and wherever it wants, secure in the knowledge that such actions will draw little or no condemnation amongst Western governments, which are in Israel’s eyes, the only governments that matter.
Such actions would be universally condemned as terrorism. The state responsible would be categorised as a ‘terrorist state’ or a ‘sponsor of terrorism’, whose behaviour violated international law and codes of conduct that govern the ‘international community’. Pariah status would follow. Governments might withdraw their diplomats. There would be condemnation in the UN Security Council, and calls for sanctions or even war.
But when that state is Israel the response is strangely muted, and more often than not non-existent.
Years ago, Israel’s dovish Prime Minister Moshe Sharett condemned the kidnapping and murder of 5 Jordanian Bedouin by Israeli paratroopers in 1955 and speculated in his diary that such acts ‘must make the State appear in the eyes of the world as a savage state that does not recognize the principles of justice as they have been established and accepted by contemporary society.’
More than half a century later, Israel continues to operate on the principle that it can kill who it wants, when it wants and wherever it wants, secure in the knowledge that such actions will draw little or no condemnation amongst Western governments, which are in Israel’s eyes, the only governments that matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment