Lisa Goldman has drawn my attention to a reaction by David Landau to the Goldstone report on Israel’s campaign in Gaza and I take the opportunity to  do the same for readers of this blog.

Money quotes:

When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?

But that is the point - and it should have been the focus of the investigation. Judge Goldstone’s real mandate was, or should have been, to bring Israel to confront this fundamental question, a question inherent in the waging of war by all civilized societies against irregular armed groups. Are widespread civilian casualties inevitable when a modern army pounds terrorist targets in a heavily populated area with purportedly smart ordnance? Are they acceptable? Does the enemy’s deployment in the heart of the civilian area shift the line between right and wrong, in morality and in law?

It is possible, and certainly arguable, that the Israeli policymakers, or individual Israeli field commanders in isolated instances, pushed the line out too far.

But Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate - within Israel or concerning Israel. His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began.

Judge Goldstone could have contended that just as Israeli leaders themselves have frequently called off pinpoint assassinations of terrorists because civilians were in the line of fire, so too they should have refrained from bombing and shelling Hamas targets in Gaza when that bombing and shelling was bound to exact a large civilian toll.

By approaching the Gaza war, and his report, from this perspective, Judge Goldstone could have opened debate and prompted reflection in Israel. Instead, by accusing Israel - its government, its army, its ethos - of deliberately seeking out civilians, he has achieved the opposite effect.

For my own part, I’ll add a question as to whether the ridiculousness of the idea that Israel deliberately targeted civilians - as opposed to not having taken adequate care to protect them  -  has been adequately noted. Even the Palestinian Center for Human Rights only puts the total number of fatal casualties at 1,284. Pretty bad going when we note that the population of Gaza is 1.5 million. Think of how much better those dumb Jews ought to have been able to do when one considers the time and means to do some serious killing that they had at their disposal.

Perhaps simple-minded goyim such as myself strain to appreciate the subtlety of the maneuverings of  the Zionists. They killed an infinitesimally smaller number of Palestinians than was within their means to do and needlessly put their own infantry at risk in the process and that only proves that it was their intention to go after civilians all along.

At the rate things are going, the next time the IDF arrest a suspected terrorist on the West Bank without firing a shot or inflicting a scratch on the detainee, the UN, through the mouth of its Falk or Goldstone of the moment will start talking about an attempt at genocide.

There are just  so many people who are made so, so unhappy by Jews refusing to take their medicine with resignation, humility and a tug at the forelock. Long may it continue to be so.