This Is How Democracies Behave

Not that I think this will go any length toward silencing critics, Israel has done what any responsible democracy does when its soldiers commit war crimes or engage in misconduct in a war zone - they handle it internally, fairly and justly.

For all the blather from the "International community" and from the ridiculously biased Goldstone report about Israel's atrocious actions in Operation Cast Lead, the 2008 military incursion into Gaza as a result of a year of constant rocket attacks and the cross-border kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, these indictments demonstrate that Israel is serious about conducting itself appropriately. This is more than can be said for the terrorist organization Hamas, which now controls Gaza, who committed such war crimes as stashing munitions in civilian locations like schools and mosques, hiding behind civilian shields, and disguising themselves as civilians. Lest we forget, these are all crimes under the Geneva Conventions.

But no one ever talks about war crimes committed by terrorists. The reason is that democracies and the UN know they have virtually no control over such groups. They would reveal themselves as feeble by drafting a resolution against Hamas because Hamas is going to pay absolutely no heed to it. However, drafting resolutions against Israel and accusing them of war crimes gets the attention of lots of people and serves to delegitimize Israel as a sovereign nation until people have this backwards idea that Israelis are the "real terrorists" in the Middle East and Hamas is a democratically elected government just trying to survive and bring peace.

Uh-huh. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.