Israel is confusing victimhood with foreign policy

Israel's belief that 'the world is against it' has in recent years turned into a real obsession, a sense that we are constantly under attack, a fear of delegitimization, an insanity of persecution.

By Merav Michaeli

In an op-ed piece published in The Washington Post, Richard Goldstone wrote that if he knew then what he knows today, the report would have looked different and that it would have been best had Israel cooperated with him.

In fact, it was immediately after Goldstone's report was publicized that many here concluded that it would have been best for Israel to lend its cooperation to the UN-appointed committee, according to a study conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute. Indeed, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel made a recommendation along these lines to the government before the Goldstone commission was even formed.

But this is not the conclusion that Israel's leadership has drawn. Both Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the decision not to cooperate with Goldstone "was the correct one."

While Israel had reasons to believe that an inquiry commissioned by the UN's Human Rights Council would be hostile, in this extraordinary case, it was possible to think otherwise. Goldstone is known to be a particularly serious individual, a Jew and a supporter of Israel. Indeed, he was opposed to the original mandate which required that he focus his probe solely on Israel. Goldstone agreed to lead the investigation after he was given clearance to examine Hamas' actions as well. Israel had nothing to lose by cooperating with Goldstone.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-is-confusing-victimhood-with-foreign-policy-1.354141

:thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:

Methinks this editorial has it backwards.

Rather than the behavior being a response to the foreign policy.

Much Israeli foreign policy is based on the sort of suspicious hawkishness that I call xenophobic-isolationism. There are many very good reasons why it has developed in this way. But it is still a nonconstructive and sometimese self-fulfilling attitude.