Israel after Goldstone

Indeed, the rules have changed, and Israel cannot say that it was not warned that this is an era in which international law and universal justice are being forcefully promoted as pillars of an improved world order. That was not the case when the Arab-Israeli conflict started more than 60 years ago. Now, however, the international community is bound to scrutinise how wars are conducted, and crimes of war will not be allowed to go unpunished.

Or so it should be. Alas, the new rules apply in fact only to those countries that are not world powers. The UN's Human Rights Council would not have dared to put Russia in the dock for razing Grozny, Chechnya's capital, or China for brutally suppressing the people of Tibet and the Muslim Uighur minority.