I have a problem. While reading over the 2015 UN Report on the 2014 Gaza-Israel war, I got frustrated. It's badly conceived. It's badly executed. It's what Israelis call, a 'balagan'--a mess.
I ended up doing something I’ve never done: I found myself writing three different essays at the same time, going back-and-forth between them as I found more ‘evidence’ in this and that part of the Report.
That’s
called multi-tasking. That normally doesn’t work for me and it certainly didn't work for me here.
In the end,
I finished the day with none of the three essays completed. I found myself with my own 'balagan'—my own mess.
I hope to
sort through that mess tomorrow. But my schedule tomorrow takes me away from my
work for part of the day; I don’t know if things will turn out any better tomorrow.
So I’ll
share this with you: based on what I’ve seen so far, I’d say that the Commission that
wrote this Report doesn’t understand how the laws of war (called, International Humanitarian Law, or IHL) work in the real world and, as a result, builds a damaging-sounding but flawed case against Israel. The Commission also doesn’t understand history and, as a
result of that, misuses history to make an anti-Israel assertion upon which to build
that flawed anti-Israel case.
On top of
all that, the Commission makes a recommendation that could, in theory, create
havoc for Israeli officials and diplomats. It’s an uncalled-for recommendation. It doesn’t
promote peace in the Middle East; instead, it floats the idea of all-out legal war—against the Jewish state.
I’ll talk
about these accusations in those essays I’m trying to finish. In the end, I hope to
suggest that, as a result of pure incompetence, this Commission has produced a
document that will not delegitimize Israel. But the
incompetence will have an unintended consequence: it will so soil the reputation of the United
Nations, it will begin the process of delegitimizing the United Nations itself.
That’s how
unprofessional this Report is.
Stay tuned.
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