In recent days we have been witnessing many individuals and commentators calling the Palestinian Authority leadership names like “traitors” and “collaborators” because they agreed to the delay of the consideration of the Goldstone report by the UN Human Rights Council. Almost none of these individuals have had anything negative to say about Hamas in the context of the same report. No one seems to recall that while the PA embraced and endorsed the report when it was first issued, Hamas angrily denounced and rejected it. Moreover, the report accuses Hamas of committing serious war crimes during the Gaza war, about which no one seems to care.

So just to summarize the prevailing logic of the moment: the Palestinian organization that endorsed and embraced, but also withheld a certain degree of support for, the report are traitors and collaborators, but the Palestinian organization that denounced and rejected the report are not. This is not even to get into the whole question of degrees of culpability regarding the war in Gaza, or the issue of war crimes. I normally don’t do short postings on the Ibishblog, but some things demand to be pointed out and don’t require a great deal of explanation.