This is rich, this is really rich:
Judge Richard Goldstone Goldstone told Haaretz Thursday that President Shimon Peres’ remarks criticizing him were “specious and ill-befitting the head of State of Israel.”
Peres was quoted Wednesday as calling Goldstone “a small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence,” who was “on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel.”
Shimon Peres, the senile octogenarian (I have nothing against octogenarians, just this particular one) moral midget dares call Justice Goldstone “a small man.” If Peres had half the heart and stature of Richard Goldstone he might’ve actually solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he had a chance. Instead he dithered, enjoying hearing the sound of his own voice and the adulation of crowds (mostly in the Diaspora since, until the previous president messed up by not keeping his pants on, Peres couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Israel).
And let’s not forget the racist crap he spewed at Amir Peretz, who beat him in the primary election for Labor party chief a few years ago. And the fact that he took a powder from Labor afterwards, joining the highly principled ranks of Kadima, because he was in such a snit.
Peres is the Israeli godfather sitting in his chair waiting for his adoring fans to come kiss his ring and ask for favors. Small man indeed.
Peres doesn’t have a good record in elections indeed. He is not perfect, of cause. But what he said about Goldstone is 100% trouth.
Neither Shimon Peres nor you will ever attain 1/10 the legal or moral stature of Richard Goldstone no matter how much both of you might try.
Watch the video Goldsone’s debate with Dore Gold at Brandeis. Your idol has lost completely.
I don’t need to watch that debate. I know Goldstone’s abilities and Gold’s as well. Shimon Peres at least has a few past achievements in his political career of which he can be proud (long ago though they might be). Dore Gold is little more than a hack and a bad one at that. The idea that you claim Gold bested Goldstone tells us a lot more about yr prejudices than about what actually happened in the debate. I’m certain that Goldstone mopped the floor w. him (& the floor is exactly where Gold belongs).
Calling Peres a moral pygmy is not a personal insult. It is a political and moral judgment. As for his senility anyone need but watch the Davos debate with Erdogan to understand how Peres is losing whatever little political cogency he once had. You can call it old age, senility, decrepitude, whatever you like. Peres should be in Madame Tussaud’s and not president of Israel.
So maybe you should watch the debate, before you comment.
That’s exactly what Goldstone mission did – they call Israel guilty before their investigation even begun.
That’s a lie.
I’m not a big fan of Peres as well. But it doesn’t mean, that Goldstone is beyond the critics.
Even Goldstone says his Report is not beyond criticism. Criticize away as long as you do so factually & using real evidence, which no one seems to be doing.
after Peres lost to Bibi in 96 he asked during a speech in a labor confrence “am i a loser?” and the crowd replied “YES”.
he didn’t slur Peretz, it was his brother, Gigi.
you read what Sarid wrote?
Yes, that’s right & thanks for refreshing my memory. But my impression was that his views would be very close to his brothers on this issue.
Nothing is lower than attacking someone with personal insults because you don’t like what they’ve said.
Goldstone’s report was highly critical of Israel, and so the small-minded and morally bankrupt Israeli government have made personal attacks against Judge Goldstone, as though that is going to redeem Israel in the world’s eyes. They only make Israel look worse. Peres is no political or moral giant by any means; he is a figurehead holding an honorary position and nothing more. It’s laughable that a loser like Peres has the gall to insult an accomplished man such as Judge Goldstone.
But attacking Peres with “personal insults”, like the author and you are doing is acceptable, right?
BTW, why Goldstone is beyond the critics? His took a part in apolitical show, so he maybe criticized like any other politician.
I did not make any personal insults. On the other hand, Peres attacked Judge Goldstone’s honesty and character because he didn’t like what was in his report.
Goldstone is not a politician, by the way. Your question makes no sense.
Calling Peres “looser” is not a personal insult?
What honesty? The mandate of Goldstone mission, following UNHRC and UNGA resolutions are totally one sided.
Maybe Goldstone is not a politician, but he took a part in a political game and he is being used by political forces. He knew, what he was going into.
He is a loser, literally. He never won an election.
Goldstone did not “take part in a political game.” He was tasked by the UN to investigate and make a report, which he did courageously and admirably. On the other hand, because Israel takes everything as an existential threat, they have engaged in nonstop attacks against Judge Goldstone personally and professionally. They used their lobbyists to manipulate the US congress into condemning the report. This is definitely gutter politics.
Goldstone accepted his mandate not from UN, but from the UNHCR, which is well known for its anti-Israeli bias. Even General Secretary Anan have criticized them for it.
And the Goldstone mission itself was sponsored by OIC, which didn’t find signs of war crimes in Darfur.
As for report itself – it is totally one sided and fails to mention Hamas even once. If this is not a political show, so what is it?
Goldstone crafted his own mandate for his Report and investigated & wrote the Report not according to any plan or dictate from the Council. He wrote it based on his own previous experience in such investigations. His stature is irreproachable.
Goldstone was not sponsored by anyone or anything except the Council.
You’re unbelievable ignorant. The next piece of incorrect data you add to this thread will mean your privileges will be limited. If you want to make claims they have to be factual. This means you have to actually read the Rpt. If you don’t & continue spouting untruths, you won’t be doing it here.
Go on, provide a quote from Goldstone report, where the Hamas is being mentioned. If I’m wrong, I will apologize.
I’ll make myself clear – Hamas is not being mentioned as the one who committed war crimes. That’s what I’ve meant.
I just chose a page at random – page 31, where “Hamas” is mentioned several times. Hamas has been mentioned by name, along with “Palestinian armed groups” targeting Israeli civilians with rockets.
Read the report for yourself and stop acting the fool here. Do your own reading and your own work. I will not waste time going page by page because you want to make baseless arguments.
I didn’t explain myself well. Of course there is a word “Hamas” in the report. But if you will read the findings (page 365-366) carefully, that you will see that Hamas is not accused in the war crimes. Instead of this:
“1691. From the facts available, the Mission finds that the rocket and mortars attacks, launched
by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, have caused terror in the affected communities of southern
Israel and in Israel as a whole. Furthermore, it is the Mission’s view that the mortars and rockets
are uncontrolled and uncontrollable, respectively. This indicates the commission of an
indiscriminate attack on the civilian population of southern Israel, a war crime, and may amount
to crimes against humanity. These attacks have caused loss of life and physical and mental injury
to civilians and damage to private houses, religious buildings and property and have eroded the
economic and cultural life of the affected communities.”
And it as nonsense, because Hamas is in total control of Gaza strip and is fully responsible here.
More nitwittery. When Goldstone says the rockets are “uncontrolled and uncontrollable” he is NOT talking about Hamas’ ability to control their firing. He is talking about the inability to control their trajectory & where they land, meaning that the fact that they can be fired and hit a civilian target is a war crime.
Awamori, it is obvious that you never read the Goldstone Report or else you would know that Hamas is mentioned in it many, many times.
The report is claimed to be one-sided because Israel refused to cooperate in the investigation. It has also whined many times in the past about bias whenever it has been caught in less than stellar behavior.
Prior to the Goldstone Report, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International both issued reports condemning Israel’s behavior and tactics during Operation Cast Lead. You cannot simply dismiss this.
I didn’t call him a loser except in the sense that he’s lost every major election in which he’s run for the past 15 yrs (until he won election as president after the previous holder of the office resigned in disgrace).
The Goldstone mandate was NOT one-sided & as with all critics of the rpt you simply don’t know what you’re talking about. In fact, 70 pgs. of the rpt document Hamas violations of international law.
1) The mandate of the mission was: “To investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression.”. It was never changed.
2)Goldstone report never actually condemns Hamas. Not once. It does, however, keep mentioning anonymous “Palestinian armed groups” as responsible for some of the crimes (for example, the rocket launching). There is a reason, Dore Gold said, why Hamas accepted the report. Because it didn’t implicate them at all.
3)’OIC initiated Goldstone inquiry’
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/10/20091021112649368100.html
“Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: Let me first start by completing the story of the history of the Goldstone report. What I would like to put on record is that the OIC was the initiator of this process.
On January 3, during the attacks on Gaza, we convened the executive committee of the OIC on a ministerial level. It was decided that the OIC group in Geneva should ask the Human Rights Council to convene and consider the possibility of sending a fact-finding mission to Gaza.
The OIC was instrumental in getting through this resolution and thanks to the good offices of Ms Pilay, the UN high commissioner, that she formed this fact-finding mission headed by Judge Goldstone.”
That’s a lie & that’s not what the final mandate was & it WAS changed at Goldstone’s insistence. This was widely reported & you simply have no excuse for attempting to pass off such falsehoods as truth. I simply do NOT tolerate this in this blog. You have been warned.
Yes, because there were other armed groups than Hamas & he wishes to use language that is accurate & includes all known violators. Hamas IS a Palestinian armed group, plain & simple. If you or Dore Gold are attempting sophistry to say that term excludes Hamas or that Hamas views the term as excluding them is ridiculous & isn’t supported by a single iota of evidence. Goldstone specifically says the term includes Hamas & that this was his intention. Everything else is bulls(&t.
First, this is a leader of that group seeking to take credit for initiating the Rpt. Lots of people try to take credit for lots of things that make themselves or their employer look good. You’d have to provide further corroboration of this claim fr. a credible source before I’d take it seriously. I have no idea whether this is actually true or not. But you once again have misspoken when you claim that OIC SPONSORED the Rpt., which it did not. I have never heard any claim of any OIC involvement in the Rpt. The group certainly didn’t sponsor it & certainly had absolutely no impact on the content of it. So you’ve dredged up a red herring. Typical.
I see today you have published a very large number of comments. When things like this happen I request that a commenter publish no more than 3 comments in a single day. Please abide by this request in future. That should give you more than sufficient opportunity to say anything you need to in a single 24 hr period. I don’t allow individual commenters to monopolize the threads with 5 to 10 or more comments in single day as some have done. I respond to many comments & don’t want to spend all my time publishing replies to yours.
RE: “pygmy” & “midget”
MY COMMENT: Please! We prefer being called “little people”.
PARAPHRASING TO THE BEST OF MY RECOLLECTION FROM “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982) –
Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt): The nice thing about being a ‘little person’ is that you can accomplish good/great things without being envied.
FROM IMDB:
Billy Kwan: “If it’s in focus, it’s pornography, if it’s out of focus, it’s art.”
Billy Kwan: “Starvation is a great aphrodisiac.”
IMDB SOURCE – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/
One would have thought that Peres had done enough to diminish the regard for Israel and himself through his public altercation with Erdogan in which he came up with those amazing whoppers. But apparently he always can go one better.
Fancy him criticizing Goldstone’s juridical expertise and sense of justice. Some countries who have lately supported Israel in that vote on the Goldstone report must regret being linked to this kind of smearing. Holland, for one, voted with Israel but its Minister for Foreign Affairs called Goldstone an eminent jurist of international renown and impeccable reputation whose report had raised serious allegations that deserved to be seriously investigated.
During the assault on Gaza, Peres was interviewed on Dutch television. He said (word for word):
“Many Palestinian children are being killed. Almost none (sic) Israeli children are being killed. Why? Because WE take care of our children.”
Regarding the man as senile is taking the kind view…
The problem with the Goldstone Report, and honest, sober reflection on Israeli history since ’48 (like we see in Ilan Pappe’s scholarship), is that it runs counter to the indispensable, deeply cherished narrative of eternal & intrinsic Jewish victim-hood in the face of a fundamentally evil and guilty surrounding Gentile world. This notion is central to the conviction and self-conception of people like Peres and Netanyahu, and a priori absolves anything the Jewish state does to non-Jews, whether it be 1,500 innocent Palestinians, the Brit Tom Hurndall or the American Rachel Corrie—this embedded assumption, by the way, is what many non-Jews find so deeply, radically scary about the state of Israel (Israel frankly scares me quite a bit more than Iran does, and I find the Iranian regime rather scary).
Peres is not going to look in the mirror, and I can even perhaps sort of understand the strong psychological impulse dissuading him and other Israeli supremacists from doing so, their delusional worldview is at the core of their self-identity.
I’m amused; UNHCR is part of the UN, yet I am told I’m wrong when I say Judge Goldstone was appointed by the UN.
I suspect that Awamori’s belief that Hamas was not criticized as harshly as Israel in the Goldstone Report stems from a desire to deny the extent of the war crimes and atrocities Israel committed and which are not only enumerated in the report, but in many others issued by credible organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International.
Again and again, these organizations concur with each other and with Goldstone. This should give any thinking person pause.
Once again, UNHCR is technically part of UN, but it well known for its anti-Israeli bias. And it was criticized for that many times including by General Secretary Anan.
Goldsone report is one sided, because it doesn’t mention Hamas AT ALL, and because it has completely adopted the palestinian version w/o using any Israeli information or even Western Media reports.
UN Watch criticized Goldstone’s report methodologies that allegedly dismissed or ignored much of the evidence provided in Israeli Government report from July 2009 on the one hand and on the other hand endorsed unquestionably testimonies by Gaza officials
Blah, blah, blah. You don’t know yr UN agencies. It is the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). UNHCR is the High Commissioner for Refugees. As for the Council, yes it has that reputation. But once again, the Report was not written, dictated or incluenced by the Council. It was investigated & written by Richard Goldstone, period. NIce try in attempting to smear the report w. yet more red herrings.
You’re unbelievable ignorant & yr comments are pure garbage. First, Goldstone paid to have Israelis travel to Geneva to testify. Witnesses included the mayor of Sdeort. 2nd, Israel refused to cooperate & has only itself to blame. THere are scores of Western media rpts included in the Report.
I have no idea who or what that is. But it’s likely one of the neocon groups supported by people like John Bolton who detest everything the UN stands for. Not a very credible source I’m afraid.
All of these issues have been discussed before & laid to rest before. I have very little patience for commenters who dredge up all material that’s already been resolved. As I read yr comments, if this continues I won’t be happy.
I have seen the website UNWatch. They are a Zionist group committed to criticism of everything the UN does “against” Israel’s interests.
I forgot to note that on page 32 the rockets fired into southern Israel on civilians are specifically defined as war crimes.
As I stated earlier, page 32 is specific in naming Hamas as committing war crimes against Israeli civilians.
Why are you insisting that “Palestinian armed groups” does not include Hamas, when you yourself admit it? You said, “Hamas is in total control of Gaza strip and is fully responsible here.”
Why do you insist on the literal use of the word “Hamas” when it is obvious to all that Israel was at war with Hamas? You are playing semantic games here.
Are referring to this?
“The Mission has determined that the rockets and, to a lesser extent, the mortars fired by
the Palestinian armed groups are incapable of being directed towards specific military objectives
and have been fired into areas where civilian populations are based. The Mission has further
determined that these attacks constitute indiscriminate attacks upon the civilian population of
southern Israel and that, where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars
are launched into a civilian population, they constitute a deliberate attack against a civilian
population. These acts would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.
Given the seeming inability of the Palestinian armed groups to direct the rockets and mortars
towards specific targets and given that the attacks have caused very little damage to Israeli
military assets, the Mission finds that there is significant evidence to suggest that one of the
primary purposes of the rocket and mortar attacks is to spread terror among the Israeli civilian
population, a violation of international law.”
Hamas is not mentioned. It is not me, who is playing semantic games here.
The one, who is not familiar with situation will have an impression, there is a Hamas , and there are some “Palestinian armed groups”, and they are not the same thing.
The Hamas is being mentioned only related to a statements, not to a rocket attacks themselves.
The implication is very strong in the report’s wording that Hamas is responsible for attacks on Israeli civilians, which is a war crime. Or don’t you understand that?
The reason Hamas is not in some cases specifically mentioned as the perpetrator of rocket attacks is that it cannot be proven that they were responsible for them. There are many armed groups in Gaza and some of them fired rockets during the ceasefire, as well as during Operation Cast Lead. But from the fact that Hamas is the government in the Gaza strip, they are legally responsible for the attacks even if they did not actually perform them. If you read the report, you would see that rocket attacks from Gaza that occurred during the ceasefire could not conclusively be attributed to Hamas in many cases. It is the same during the attack.
However, there is overwhelming documentation showing just how Israel performed during Cast Lead, whom they bombed, and whom they killed. Pointing fingers at Hamas, or claiming Goldstone did not criticize them as harshly as Israel, is beside the point, actually. Israel is no less guilty of war crimes and of crimes against humanity. Israel, as a so-called legitimate state, is rightfully held to a higher standard of behavior than a so-called terrorist organization such as Hamas (and not everyone agrees they are terrorists). Israel is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, and is a member of the United Nations. It should not be allowed to excuse itself from the rule of law and claim, as always, that it is nothing but an innocent victim.
Did you read the report, or did you simply watch the Goldstone-Dore Gold exchange and decide you liked Gold’s side of the story better?
Please provide a direct quote from the report, which states that “Hamas is responsible for attacks on Israeli civilians and thus committed war crimes ,” from which person, who is not familiar with our situation can guess that.
I see, what can be understood from the report -the decision about rocket attacks was made by some anonymous field commanders from several terrorists groups. But it is a simple distortion of the reality! This decision was made by Hamas political leadership in Gaza and Damascus. Hamas have built a significant military infrastructure in Gaza strip during the ceasfire. The 120 mm “grad” rockets are factory made and supplied by Iran to Hamas, not to other groups. Others operated only as subcontractors, not independently.
Boring, boring, boring. You’re done in this comment thread. If I have to read you repeating yrself one more time I might puke. I’m serious. Find another thread & move on or you may lose yr comment privileges entirely.
Are you really trying to have a discussion here, or are you nitpicking us to death?
The subject article is about Shimon Peres and his personal demonization of Richard Goldstone. We do not need to continue to hash over the Goldstone Report, especially since you obviously did not read it. You are wasting everyone’s time and trying my patience.
Why exactly is targeting Sderot called a war crime? According to the UN, resisting occupation is allowed by the UN charter, and the majority of Palestinians consider Sderot occupied territory, so they can be excused for rocketing Sderot
Awamori, I will repeat, I will not do your research for you. Read the report. I do not have time or inclination to look through all 575 pages to find something to answer a question that is not relevant anyway. You are absolutely incorrect when you make the claim that Hamas is not found to be in violation of international laws in the report. Period. I suspect that you simply watched Dore Gold and lapped up what he said without reading the report or doing any research on your own. I see no point in continuing any discussion with you because of this.