Dare defend yourself from terrorist attacks and risk international war crimes prosecution.
That is the lesson of yesterday's indefensible action by the malignant UN Human Rights Council - which voted 25 to 6, with 11 cowardly abstentions, to endorse the Goldstone Report, a document that brands Israelis as war criminals for trying to stop deadly rocket-fire from Gaza 10 months ago.
Ever since Israel's 2005 pullout from Gaza, innocent Israelis were battered by thousands of mortars and missiles launched by Hamas in its war to destroy the Jewish state and kill its people.
And, straight from the devious terrorist textbook, Hamas was assembling and launching its rockets from civilian neighborhoods, near mosques, near schools, near hospitals.
Late last year, Israel finally launched a military offensive to stop the terror. Wherever and whenever civilians might be harmed, her military dropped leaflets to urge civilians to clear out. An innovative new technique of "knocking" on roofs with nonexploding noisemakers was employed as well, to give ordinary Palestinians every opportunity to save themselves.
Because it was Israel's objective to punish and disarm the terrorists, nothing more.
For this, the Human Rights Council - already infamous for its anti-Israel bias - ginned up an investigation, producing a report calling the terrorists and the Israeli defense forces equally culpable. Equally guilty of crimes against humanity.
The Council has now formally ratified this libel and urged Israeli and Palestinian authorities to demonstrate that they are investigating the alleged crimes. Or else the charges will be referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
In fact, Palestinian Authority officials yesterday visited that court to argue for its jurisdiction over these matters.
Which means Israeli commanders who set out to defend innocent people from indiscriminate attacks, with painstaking plans to protect civilians in the process, could wind up alongside the butchers of Darfur. Alongside - this is sickening - the likes of those tried at Nuremberg.
Only five nations stood with the U.S. in opposition: Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine. Good for them. We have to ask, again, what's the use of Americans sitting on the Council, spitting into its hurricane-force winds.
And 25 nations are party to the crime. Among them are, this is rich, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia. Shame on them.
France and Britain were among the abstainers. Unlike the dictatorships, the democracies should have known better, so double shame on them.
As Elie Wiesel once said, "Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor."
