Israel’s critics strangely silent on Obama’s targeted killings in Pakistan, no sign of a Goldstone Report against NATO

by Robin Shepherd

Remember the uproar in 2004 when the Israelis took out Hamas terror bosses Ahmed Yassin and Abdelaziz Rantissi in targeted assassinations? Referring to the latter, the French foreign ministry sniffed at the time that “extrajudicial executions are contrary to international law and unacceptable…”. EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana described the killing of Yassin as “extremely terrible”, while as David Hornik reminds us in a recent piece on Pajamas Media, even the Bush administration tended to describe Israeli actions as “unhelpful”.

But hold on a second, just what is the politically correct and impeccably multilateralist Obama administration (with the help and complicity of many EU governments) doing right now in Pakistan with all these drone attacks? According to Yediot Aharonot analyst Ron Ben-Yishai (again quoted in Hornik’s article), since entering the White House Obama has authorised 122 assassination raids by unmanned drones on senior people in Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructure.

The figures are rising fast. In September, the number of publicly admitted drone attacks was 22. And they are extremely deadly too. In 2009, more than 700 people were killed, many if not most of whom will have been civilian bystanders. By the end of this year, the death toll is likely to have far exceeded the 1,400 or so estimated to have died in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

So where’s the Goldstone Report against the United States and its NATO allies? And where is the uproar against Obama’s policy of mass targeted assassinations? Of course, I’m not suggesting either course of action. And, to be fair, the Obama administration has been resolute in opposing Goldstone at the United Nations which is a lot more than can be said for the brazenly hypocritical Europeans.

But charges of hypocrisy and double standards are too obvious to spend much time on. The more important point is that we have here a perfect illustration of how western governments risk undermining their own national interests by joining the anti-Israeli chorus. If Israel was violating international law in killing the likes of Yassin and Rantissi, then Barack Obama and his allies in Europe must be guilty of the same thing in Pakistan today.

If Britain supports the passage of the Goldstone Report against Israel’s actions in Gaza through the UN, then it is legitimising a principle which could easily lead to the creation of a Goldstone Report against Britain over actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where thousands of civilians have died in combat operations involving British soldiers.

I never tire of making this point, especially to my compatriots in the British Foreign Office. Every British official who joins forces with the anti-Israeli brigade at the United Nations is undermining his own country’s national interests and its long term national security. That is not what they are paid to do and not what they think of themselves as doing.

But, with our new Western policy of targeted assassination by unmanned drones in mind, they need to be reminded of the consequences of their behaviour at every turn.

Robin Shepherd

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