Posts Tagged ‘United Nations’

NewsHour Poses a Moral Conundrum

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

PBS's NewsHour's  Gwen Ifill (9/15/09), quizzing Richard Goldstone on his U.N. fact-finding mission that found that both Israel and Palestinian fighters had committed war crimes in the Gaza conflict:

The term "even-handed" is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of the Palestinians. Why is that?

CBS News (9/9/09), summarizing a report by Israel's leading human rights group:

Well over half of nearly 1,400 Palestinians killed in Israel's Gaza war were civilians, including 252 children younger than 16, a leading Israeli human rights groups said Wednesday, challenging Israel's claim that most of the dead were militants.... The Israeli rights group B'Tselem on Wednesday published figures it said were compiled in months of research, including visits to families of victims. It said 1,387 Gazans were killed, including 773 civilians and 330 combatants. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.

So why would the U.N. be more interested in the war crimes that killed nearly 200 times as many people? Thanks to Ifill and the NewsHour for challenging this strange moral reasoning.