Moral Leadership, EU-Style

Jennifer wonders how 22 congressmen could be so incapable of making up their minds on the Goldstone report that they merely voted “present.” I’d say the answer is obvious: they’re applying to join the European Union.

As of this writing, EU representatives are still negotiating with Arab delegates over the wording of the pro-Goldstone resolution that the UN General Assembly began debating yesterday, hoping to find language that would let them vote in favor. But if no compromise is reached, they have threatened … to abstain. “There will be at least 60 abstentions, and only 120 votes in support,” Haaretz quoted an EU source “threatening” on Tuesday.

Now there’s a threat to strike terror into the hearts of Goldstone supporters: instead of the resolution passing by an overwhelming majority, with only Israel, the U.S., and a few others voting against, it will pass by … an overwhelming majority, with only Israel, the U.S., and a few others voting against.

Not that Arab delegates ever seriously feared that the EU might vote against: after all, when the UN Human Rights Council voted on the report last month, Britain and France could not even bring themselves to abstain; instead, they skipped the vote. And as the two EU countries with by far the most extensive military operations overseas, Britain and France are precisely the ones with most to lose should Goldstone actually become the new international bible for warfare. Thus, even though four EU states courageously bucked the party line by voting “no” in the HRC (Italy, The Netherlands, Hungary, and Slovakia), most will certainly fall in line behind Britain and France.

But the British-French hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. After the HRC vote, Haaretz reported, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to assure him that, of course, Israel has the right to defend itself — but if it wants European support in keeping its officers and cabinet ministers out of international courts afterward, it must open the border crossings with the Gaza Strip, completely freeze construction in the settlements, and resume negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas (never mind that he refuses to do so) on the terms dictated by Barack Obama — namely, a full return to the 1967 lines.

In other words, Israel has no right to self-defense unless it bows to EU political dictates — and then it still doesn’t, because these dictates require it to abandon the ability to defend itself, by withdrawing to indefensible borders and ending an embargo that has at least impeded (though certainly not prevented) Hamas’s efforts to rebuild its arsenal.

And that, in a nutshell, is what abstention means: we fully support stripping Israel of its right to self-defense, but we want to keep our hands clean while doing it. So we’ll sit back and let other countries do the dirty work instead. That, apparently, is the EU’s idea of “moral leadership”: being the “good men” who let evil triumph by doing nothing.