Ugly pressures to Israel from changed USA stance, Goldstone report

Armageddon Script in Action?

A phrase from the Book of Daniel reads "and the end will come as a flood." It could not have meant a flood of waters. The true meaning of God's rainbow (not the New Age 'antahkarana -- the perverted 'rainbow) was that this would never happen again. I believe that meant that it would happen so fast, we might not know what really hit us.

Whether that is the case or not -- time and events will tell -- things are happening F - A - S - T!

The "Goldstone Report" by a commissioned UN investigator charges Israel with war crimes over the Gaza operation earlier this year. Israel was given a short period of time to conduct its own investigation. Israel is caught between this and a possible referral to the International Criminal Court. The USA, it appears, will no longer be defending Israel.

It is looking like their only remaining "friend" may be Javier Solana. He says he has done about all he can do. Looking at internet press coverage, we read:

But faced with the defense establishment’s uncompromising position that no officers or soldiers should be put in the line of fire of "any inquiry commission," Netanyahu did another turnabout on Sunday evening.

At a top-level meeting he again rejected an independent inquiry, announcing instead the setting-up of special panel "to counter" the Goldstone report by offering "recommendations for action on the legal, diplomatic, and political front."

The panel, headed by a close ally of Netanyahu, Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman, is also charged with looking into the army’s own internal investigations into alleged wrongdoing by troops during the war.

That’s hardly expected to relieve the international pressure.

U.S. President Barack Obama has declared that he trusts the Israeli legal system to conduct a proper investigation. With his twists and turns, Netanyahu is increasing doubts about Israel’s political system.

The prime minister may face another difficult encounter with the U.S. president when they meet again, as they are scheduled to do in Washington in a fortnight.

So far Netanyahu has even failed to advance his argument that there is a more urgent imperative than the "flawed" Goldstone recommendations – the need to alter the laws governing international warfare. Netanyahu insists that the existing laws of warfare are no longer applicable to "the contemporary reality of having to combat terrorist entities in asymmetric wars."

That he has fallen short of convincing his international interlocutors that this should be the basis for assessing the rights and wrongs of what happened in Gaza was made plain by the EU diplomacy and defense chief Javier Solana.

In an interview with the Tel Aviv daily Ha’aretz last Friday, Solana walked the thin line between those who advocate using the Goldstone report to put Israel in the dock and those who are wary of what damage this might do both to international efforts to contain terrorism and in advancing Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

"In yesterday’s world, there were wars of armies against armies, and there were laws and conventions that dealt with the conduct of such wars," Solana acknowledged. "It is necessary to invest thought in the changing situation in which it is difficult to implement the classic rules of war."

"But," Solana stressed, "until new rules are in place, we must obey the old ones."

So, Solana essentially says that since we are in new times we must have changed laws! Sounds like something I read somewhere in an ancient book. Given this predicament, it is becoming easier to see how somebody like Solana might look like a type of pseudo-Savior to a beleaguered and increasingly isolated country.

I hope I'm wrong.

Stay tuned!

Constance