70 thoughts on “Goldstone’s Tawdry Turn, Israel’s False Dance of Vindication – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. The allegations of intentionality by [ed. against] Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion.

    Guilty until proven innocent?

    But presenting evidence doesn’t mean vindication or final proof that Israel’s position is redeemed. You could also read Goldstone to be saying that the Israeli investigations claim that civilians were not intentionally targeted. In other words, he may merely be conceding the obvious, that Israel believes it was not deliberately targeting civilians

    No, I’m sorry. Presenting evidence is not the same as claiming something or believing it to be so.

    Hamas’ 1988 charter makes such a claim. But the charter in no way is a statement of Hamas’ views or policy regarding Israel today. In fact, statements by its senior leaders indicate that it has de facto accepted Israel’s existence.

    Hamas needs to reform their charter if they views are truly different today. Until they do so, nobody can claim that they don’t wish to destroy the state of Israel. By the way I’ve never seen Hamas leaders recognize Israel’s right to exist. The only thing I’ve seen them say is that they WOULD recognize Israel once it withdraws to ’67 borders. But besides this point, why haven’t they changed their charter?

    I do agree with most other things you’ve said. I wonder what’s taken him so long to write this piece and why. It’s not like he couldn’t have done it months ago.

    1. Shai says “Guilty until proven innocent?”

      No, however it is highly suspicious that every Israeli general ducks and dives their chance to prove their innocence when presented with an arrest warrant.

      Shai says “By the way I’ve never seen Hamas leaders recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

      similarly I have never seen where the UK’s Labour party or the UK’s Tory party have recognised Israel’s right to exist. It is not up to political parties to recognise a country. Otherwise you would also need to get Likud, Kadima to start recognising a sovereign State of Palestine as their charters are equally obnoxious.

    2. Well, maybe Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel explicitly, and they are right not to do so. We know all too well, all the way back to 1948, that the Israelis tend to forget their own obligations (cf. Resolution 273(III), the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty etc) and to add further restrictions.
      By the way, I’ve never seen neither Likud nor HaAvoda recognize the State of Palestine’s right to exist within specified borders.

    3. Mr. Silverstein states: “This statement is completely false. Hamas’ 1988 charter makes such a claim. But the charter in no way is a statement of Hamas’ views or policy regarding Israel today. In fact, statements by its senior leaders indicate that it has de facto accepted Israel’s existence.”

      Young Mr. Silverstein, the united state constitution was written in 1787. It is still consider a valid document to date.
      The Hamas charter was written in 1988 less then 30 years ago, and until retracted in a formal way (by a religious authority accepted of the same magnitude as Hamad Yassin) it is still consider valid to date.
      The Hamas charter is not a political paper, its a religious paper based on Islam religion, and includes many quotes from the Koran.

      1. The Hamas charter was written by one guy in a dark room somewhere in 1988. It wasn’t voted on by anyone, it doesn’t govern anything, determine any policy. No one refers to it or uses it to decide what Hamas should do in any given situation. The only people who can quote from it verbatim are Al Dershowitz and Bibi Netanyahu.

        Can you say the same about the U.S. constitution?? No Palestinian considers it valid so why would they feel they needed to retract it. Do you think Hamas is bound to retract a document because you & Bibi Netanyahu say they should? Or do you think perhaps they might have better things to do like try to figure out how to survive under an Israeli siege? The charter is the least of Hamas’ or Gaza’s problems. And no, strange as it may seem, what you want Hamas to do or think it’s required to do isn’t their top priority.

        This is also about the 30th time we’ve had the exact same debate about the charter so do let’s move on to another subject.

        1. Right, whenever reality contradicts imagination, imagination takes precedence.
          Read the Interviews Hamas leaders. They explicitly say that they will continue “resistance” until the “occupation” is over.
          resistance – means killing anybody they can. They justify it by the fact that they are the weak party.
          occupation – means the existence of the state of Israel. They claim that the land belong to the Palestinians and that Israel as a whole has not right to exist.

          Again, those are not my words, but Hamas leader’s. This is why, we cannot continue further and leave the “charter” issue.

          1. @ Freeman)
            Here’s the latest interview with Khaled Meshaal that clearly contradicts your affirmations about what the Hamas’ leaders say and don’t say.

            Second question under the picture is about a Palestinian state on the ’67-borders and why Hamas does not recognize explicitly the State of Israel, but I guess his shades are too subtle for you to grasp. You could eventually ask someone to explain !
            http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharmine-narwani/hamas-chief-interview_b_700324.html

          2. I’ve just had about enough with your pseudo-liberal blog, Richard.
            Every post I make, you send someone to answer, sometimes to attack me personaly (like in this case) and disable my ability to response.

            Who issues the GAG ORDER here ? hey ? Anybody ?
            This happend already twice in this thread alone.

          3. OK, I see I can respond, there mujst be something wrong with the mechanism here. I don’t see the “Reply” button at the end of some posts, while I see it in others.
            I guess some more people have this problem as well….
            It tunrned out it had nothing to do with Richard.
            I think I can be a good candidate now for “judging Israel war crimes”. At least as good as the last one.

          4. free man,

            When WordPress reaches the 5th layer-deep nested response (this layer), you can’t go deeper. That’s when the reply button goes away and you will always find it at the top of column of comments (one comment before the last layer begins). I hope this makes any sense.

          5. Thanks for explaining that. It’s an annoying feature. I’ve tried making the nested threads longer (i.e. more than 5) but then there are so few words on a line that it begins looking weird.

          6. I read the interview with Meshal that Deir Yassin linked to.

            How about this Free Man: “I am concerned with accomplishing what the Palestinian people are looking for — which is to get rid of the occupation, attain liberation and freedom, and establish the Palestinian state on the lines of 1967.”

            How does this agree with your ideas as to their position? (I.e.”occupation – means the existence of the state of Israel. They claim that the land belong to the Palestinians and that Israel as a whole has not right to exist.”)

            Would you care to react, now that you know how to?

          7. Dear Elizabeth,
            Here is my answer:
            look at the intreview with him by the BBC (which is not favor of Israel). He is asked about the charter, and responds with anything but the subject. Calssic way of avading a hard question that will put him in a light he is trying to avoid. Clearly from his answer, the charter is very much in effect:
            Q: So does that mean then that you are not going to change the Hamas charter as the big donor countries have requested?

            A: Why doesn’t the international community ask Israel to determine its borders? Why doesn’t it ask Israel to recognise Palestinian rights? Why doesn’t the international community put pressure on Israel to implement agreements it has signed with Palestine?

            Why is pressure always applied on the weak side, the one that is under occupation and suffers from killing, assassination, the building of the wall, confiscation of land and building of settlements?

            Why does the international community always stand with the strong side, even though he is the aggressor, and stands against the weak, even though he is being attacked and has all the rights?
            http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4693382.stm
            Now lets look at his position on the 1948 borders:

            Q: Let’s get this clear – you are saying there’s no problem with a two-state solution if Israel retreats, goes back to the boundaries that existed just before the 1967 borders?

            A:If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders and recognised the rights of the Palestinian people – including the right of those in the diaspora to return to their land and to East Jerusalem and to dismantle the settlements – Hamas can then state its position and possibly give a long-term truce with Israel, as Sheikh Yassin said.

            He clearly states that they will start negotiation after Israel withdraw to that line. When the interviewer went deeper:
            : Hamas has talked about this truce before and Israel has answered that it would just be a breathing space while Hamas tried to gather its forces to attack the territory that Israel had between 1948 and 1967, the original part of Israel. Would this truce that you are talking about be a long-term thing or a permanent thing or just a respite in the war?

            A: Truce would be long term but limited because there is a Palestinian reality that the international community must deal with.

            He say lowd and clear, that this is just a step. The Hamas main objective has been and is the destruction of Israel. Such fanatism only leads to more death and more suffering from both sides.

          8. Now for another interview. He is asked about the two state solution and answers:

            http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharmine-narwani/hamas-chief-interview_b_700324.html

            SN: There is debate about whether Hamas accepts the premise of a two-state solution — your language seems often vague and heavily nuanced. I want to ask if you could clarify, but I am also curious as to whether it is even worth accepting a two-state solution today when there has been so much land confiscation and settlement activity by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem?

            KM: Hamas does accept a Palestinian state on the lines of 1967 — and does not accept the two-state solution.

            So he accepts what he can take for now, and will take the other part later. Not in my life time, sorry.

          9. @ Free man)
            You’re amazing. You start by posting an interview from February 2006 in extenso (that’s 5 years ago) and then you post the interview that I just posted by Sharmine Narwani, and that Elisabeth commented.
            So you apparently didn’t even bother to read it …

            You just cut off the interview when it became interesting. After answering that “Hamas does accept a Palestinian state on the lines of 1967 – and does not accept the two-state solution”, it continues:

            SN: “What’s the difference between the two ?”
            KM: “There’s a big difference…. I’m a Palestinian leader. I’m concerned with accomplishing what the Palestinian people is looking for – which is to get rid of the occupation, attain liberation and establish the Palestinian state on the lines of 1967.
            Talking with Israel is not relevant to me. I’m not concerned about it. It’s an occupying state, and I’m the victim….I’m not concerned with giving legitimacy to the occupying country. The international community can deal with this [Israeli] state; I’m concerned with the Palestinian people. I’m a Palestinian concerned with establishing the Palestinian state only.”

            As I said in my first comment: his shades are too subtle for you to grasp !!

          10. Dier Yassin,
            Spare me your condensating attitude.
            There are no shades there. If he does not believe in two states, why should I ?
            Now for the real thing, what you did in your post was the same as Mashaal did when asked about the charter.
            You tried to change the subject. Well the subject is too important to evade.
            Anybody who is willing to hear, heard exactly what he said, and what he did not say.
            For people who are busy with propaganda, it does not matter, cause everything is a mean to an end.

          11. @ Free man)
            I don’t care whether you believe in two states or not. What I care about is your initial comment on Hamas and their attitude to the State of Israel.

            One thing is to recognize that Israel exists (a fact), another thing is to recognize it’s legitimacy. Do you really believe Palestinians to recognize the legitimacy of a state that was built on the ruins of their villages, fields and history, and based on their own expulsion.
            To use the Shlomo Sand metaphor of Israel being the result of a rape: you’re asking the raped woman not only that the child should be given to the rapist and his family, but she should also admit publicly that she consider the act of rape legitimate. And eventually enjoyed the act !

            And if you could post the Likud Charter recognizing a Palestinian state within well-defined borders, thanks.

          12. Dier Yassin,
            The failiur of the Palestinians to recognize the state of Israel led them to the situation they are in.
            A for me, I was born in Israel, I did not try to kill anybody, but many tried to me. I was shot by rifles. Someone tried to kill me with a granade. Hamas shot Quassam missles at me, I don’t know if you know how it feels when such a thing explose close to you. Saddam tried to kill me with Skad missiles. A bus exploded near me. In short, our story of the raping, does not work on me. My reality is very different.

            As for charter, this is the Likud latest charter, written before last election. I don’t know if you can read it, it is in hebrew. http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections16/heb/lists/plat_16.htm
            But I want to refer you to the Israeli PM speech in June 2009: http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Archive/Speeches/2009/06/speechbarilan140609.htm
            Where he talks about the Palestinian state:
            “If we receive this guarantee regarding demilitarization and Israel’s security needs, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state.”

            No hiding, no saying “Ive suffered, so I expect others to recognize me, but I will not recognize them. Which is kind of childish, if you ask me. Just plain and simple.

          13. The failure of the State of Israel to recognize Palestine has led it to the situation it is in. As for you, you were born in Israel likely served in an army that tries to kill Palestinians virtually every day. Those Palestinians did not try to kill anyone. They were shot at by Israeli rifles, F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships, tank & artillery rounds. All fired by your IDF. I don’t know if you know how it feels for any of those munitions to explode close to you or to in fact rip your body to shreds. But I see this story doesn’t work on you because you only consider your own personal suffering and have no consideration for the suffering your country & the army you served in inflicts on huge numbers of Palestinian civilians.

            I have no interest in reading Bibi’s speech. It, as with most of what he says, is a tissue of empty rhetoric &/or lies. Besides no Palestinian will recognize Israel as a Jewish state just as no Israeli needs to or would recognize Palestine as a Muslim state.

            No hiding? It’s full of nonsense.

          14. Richard,
            Claiming that the IDF tries to kill Palestinians every day, is a false claim. Even Goldstone understood it by now.
            Now the Palestinians are going around the world telling how they suffer and how they are victims. During the same time they kill innocent people intentionally and the goal they vow to is to eradicate me, my kids and my country. Considering that the state they are in is due to their own aggression in 1948, I don’t see a lot of change in their intensions since.
            I do feel for them. I do feel for the boy that see his father being humiliated in a checkpoint. I know how it feels for a mother to loose her child. I know what is it like to be frightend of bombs falling. I know how it feels to see your land being robbed and a new settlement is build there.
            It is my wish, and many of my Israeli friends to end this cycle of violence and death. We are willing to take risks, we are willing to give up on things including land and resources. But will will not sacrifice our children’s life for it. Asking us to do that while Hamas is the voice of the Palestinians, is condeming my children for death, it will not be.

            As for Bibi’s speech, I did not quote it for you, I was asked for the Likud charter, so I looked it up.

          15. Spare me the sob story. I didn’t say the IDF kills Palestinians every day. I’m quoting from memory but I believe I said “virtually” every day, which is not the same.

        2. First of all, you are misinterpreting Goldstone. He has since issued a clarification of his op-ed to say that it was not his intention to retract his report. I don’t know what he was trying to do with his op-ed, and I doubt he knows himself, but at least it’s clear now that retraction wasn’t the aim.

          As for the army, I encounter IDF soldiers two or three times each week, and I daresay that as individuals most of them would not want to harm anybody. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are cogs in a killing machine. The occupying army crushes the life out of Palestinians. There are so many people here who have lost friends and close family members to illness that could have been cured if only an ambulance had been allowed to pass through a checkpoint, or if only the hospital authorities had the basic supplies necessary to give good treatment. There are other people who have lost friends and relatives to suicide because their loved ones couldn’t cope any more with the horrendous unemployment rate and the claustrophobic restrictions on the basic freedoms that you take for granted in Israel.

          All these thousands of deaths are the products of an occupation enforced by teenagers with guns, most of whom don’t want to kill anyone. That’s one of the saddest things. When an ex-soldier comes to realise what he or she was part of later in life, there is another death of sorts. As one member of Breaking the Silence told me, “Ever since I found out what I was doing over there, I don’t live, I just exist.”

          Then there are the soldiers who are not so ethical and who take pleasure in carnage. (Or maybe they’re just trying to anaesthetise themselves to it? I hope so.) These are the ones who go out on killing sprees and then get commemorative T-shirts. Then there are the ones who ‘just follow orders’, going off on the same killing spree but foregoing the T-shirt. Either way, the result is the same. More death.

          Look at the Palestinian civilian death toll for the past decade. It’s over six times higher than the Israeli civilian death toll. Israel has the most powerful and sophisticated military in the Middle East, and no Israeli is at risk of dying because of the severe deprivation caused by military occupation, and yet you still talk as though you are under grave threat. In a way, you are – a highly militarized society is not a peaceful society, it’s not a happy society. You’ll never be free from fear until you put down the guns and recognise what you’ve done to people over here.

          I think you will be pleasantly surprised to find that there are plenty of Palestinians who understand that oppression also hurts the oppressor, and they will be prepared to acknowledge your own hurt. But not so long as you pretend that no harm has been done to them.

          As for them ‘going around the world’ telling their stories, most of them are lucky if they can go to the next town. Movement is very restricted here, and their stories are not heard – often because they themselves are too afraid to talk. But not half as afraid as you are to listen, sadly.

          1. Vicky you are a treasure. I cannot express my admiration enough for the way in which you put things in the human perspective. Thank you.

          2. Vicky,
            I agree with almost everything you wrote here, and so does more than half of the Israelis.
            The question is how to find a solution to the state both of us are in. It was felt in 2000 or so, that we are about to solve it and we will be able to establish 2 states that can live side by side here. However, that hope, at least from the Israeli side, died when the second intifada was launched. Even today, we can get to such solution, but how can we talk about it when the Palstinians have split to 2 parts which Hamas as one of them ?
            Today, inorder to destroy some extreme settelments Israel will be on the brink of a civil war. We will not do it unless we know for sure, the Palestinians ambition is to create a Palstinian state that will coexist side by side with Israel.

          3. how can we talk about it when the Palstinians have split to 2 parts

            Now that’s laughable when Israel & the U.S. are DIRECTLY responsible for the split you so deplore. The Bush administration with the connivance of Israel fomented precisely the attempted coup that Fatah mounted in an attempt to oust Hamas from power in the W. Bank. Your own gov’t foments civil strife in Palestine & you moan about how it’s impossible to make peace because Palestinians are divided. The height of hypocrisy.

            inorder to destroy some extreme settelments Israel will be on the brink of a civil war.

            More stuff ‘n nonsense. Wikileaks provides a cable from the U.S. gov’t that documents a mtg with a settler leader in which he explicitly tells the Americans that the settlers will leave for a price. Civil war my tush…

          4. So I’m hypocrite and talk nonsense.
            A fine way to treat your readers.

            Now to the subject and I will try to do it without personal insults, maybe this way you will learn how:

            The notion that Israel & US caused the Palestinian division to two fractions is another attempt form them to avoid any responsibility. This argument that whatever is not right in the Palestinians (as well in the Arab countries), is blamed on Israel, does not hold. I’ve seen it used so many times to play this trick on me.
            They are the only body responsible, and it is up to them to fix this issue. You cannot use it as a carpet to hide anything you don’t like under.

            Now to the civil-war issue. It is my assessment that this is the case. I do not hide behind it to say that we need not remove the settlements, but I do stand behind this assessment. Most of the settlers can be returned to Israel with an appropriate compensation. However there is a growing party of them that is lawless and is looking for conflicts. When they will be moved, they will fight together with a large number of supporters which can lead to a blood bath. Just like the Palestinians will have to deal with their fanatics, we will need to deal with ours.

          5. Palestinians are responsible for resolving the factionalism in their society (they’re the only ones who can sort it) but they are not at fault for it. The political splintering that led to Hamas’s creation was provoked and exacerbated by Israel and the US, as a way of responding to the threat posed by secular Arab nationalism. This is well-documented, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you – divide and rule is hardly a radical new strategy.

            Conflicts across the globe have shown that factionalism and extremism both get worse during times of severe hardship. In keeping Gaza and a besieged and impoverished state, Israel is fostering extremism. Life in the West Bank, while nowhere nearly as hard as life in Gaza, is painful enough to push people into complete political apathy/disillusionment (and this is getting common here, sadly). Life is tough and the PA has no real way of alleviating it. Apathy, extremism, and fear are tearing Palestinian society apart in the same way that the wall is tearing the land into pieces.

            If you want to eradicate extremism within Palestinian society, then you also need to eradicate the difficulties that make it possible to flourish. This is an Israeli responsibility. This is not the same as saying that the hardships are the direct personal fault of individual Israelis. It’s just that you are in a much better position to do something about them than the Palestinians are, as you have greater freedom and power. Yesterday, for example, I went to the South Hebron hills with a group of Israelis to do some ecological work there. We repaired a water hole that had been damaged by settlers in the village of Susya, and built a playground for the children of a neighbouring Bedouin community that faces settler harassment. To reach these villages, we had to pass through checkpoints. The soldiers searched our buses to make sure that we had no Palestinians on board. Even though Palestinians are technically allowed to travel between different areas of the West Bank, in practice they often can’t, not without hassle. The Israeli Jewish activists move around more easily, and they are less likely to be attacked by settlers or stopped by the army when they are working. This is why their presence is needed. And they do so much more than restore safe access to water – they restore hope. Thanks to them, the people in Susya feel less alone, and Susya’s children are growing up to know Israelis who are not settlers and who aren’t in military uniform. It’s not easy for extremism to flourish in these circumstances. It’s much easier in desperately poor communities that receive no support and that only ever see Israelis who are violent.

            At present, Palestine is very distant for most Israelis. They talk about how much they want peace with Palestinians, yet they have no relationship with Palestinians. If you have no relationship, how will you understand where peace comes from, and how? If you want peace you have to be a part of it. Everybody has got a share of the responsibility: to do as much as they practically can to bring peace about. Palestinians in villages like Susya can’t get to you without difficulty…but you can get to them. So go to them. Talk to them. Work with them. Let your children play with theirs. You will soon discover that they don’t want you dead. You can help to give them some practical peace, such as clean water; and they can give you peace of mind.

            As for the extremist settlers, the connection between poverty/deprivation and extremism applies to them too. They may not be materially deprived in the way that the Palestinians are, but their own narrow and possessive fixation with the land is itself a form of poverty. They value stone and earth over people. That’s worse than not being able to get to school or drink clean water. They need to be dealt with compassionately, not removed by force. It will be difficult, but I think it can be done without a bloodbath.

  2. I read Goldstone’s article as soon as it appeared in the ‘Washington Post’, without having seen any of the reactions to it. As soon as I read it, I guessed what those reactions were going to be…and I knew that Goldstone would also have guessed. Even though he himself doesn’t renounce his report, he must have realised that supporters of Operation Cast Lead were going to treat it as a renunciation. He must also have known that writing such an article would make it less likely for alleged perpetrators to go to court.

    Secondly, a judge of his calibre must be perfectly aware that it makes no sense to jumble criticism of Hamas’s response to the report’s recommendations with the Itamar killings. In lumping together different atrocities and different perpetrators, he is reinforcing the same myth that gives rise to collective punishment – this idea that a Palestinian in Gaza can be held responsible for the actions of a Palestinian in Nablus. I know he is not explicitly linking the two, but he is muddying the waters and enabling others to make that link – and he knows it.

    Richard Goldstone is too knowledgeable and competent as a judge to genuinely believe that this idea is legitimate, which leads me to question his motives in writing this article. I did wonder whether he was trying to buy back some respect from the worldwide Jewish Zionist community, especially as he has been pilloried in South Africa. But that explanation doesn’t make much sense, as why would he do such a thing now, when the furore over the report has died down? He’s all but retired, so it can’t be damaging his career. I can only presume that he stands to gain something that I can’t see.

    1. Vickie, you forget another possibility – that he was threatened by something not as obvious as his own career. Maybe a threat to his loved ones?

      Israel has a long memory and is very vindictive.

      1. No, I don’t think it was anything as overt as that. He wouldn’t allow himself to be intimidated by a physical threat or similar fear. I think it was something equally troubling but more subtle. I think he’s just grown tired of ostracism from a community in which he used to find himself accepted, comfortable & esteemed. Once you’ve grown accustomed to such things it’s hard to find yourself traveling in the wilderness.

        1. He probably has other grandchildren whose Bar Mitzvah he would like to attend without too much trouble.

        2. I wasn’t necessarily thinking of something physical, but more that people close to him also had careers and other interests to think of.

          If Goldstone was afraid of ostracism, why did he agree to write the report in the first place? The reaction wasn’t impossible to predict.

        3. “The big news this weekend is the apology of Judge Goldstone for his infamous report on Cast Lead, suggesting that if he had known when he delivered the report what he knows now, he would have written it differently. The MSM ran with the story, as did many bloggers who tried to justify his retraction. I felt it was rather a weasel out in order to take pressure off him for the all the attacks the original report received from the pro Israel community. My skeptical instincts tell me that hasn’t really changed his mind, but pressure was put on him inside Israel because, as it is well known that he still still has family (a daughter) living in Israel, and the government possibly used threats to them if he didn’t retract the worst parts of the report. I cannot believe he did it for reasons of change heart. See especially Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam and Bernard Avishai and the comments attached. I am not convinced he did this voluntarily.”

          1. Avram Kriegel, chairman of the South African Zionist Federation said that the Jewsih Lobby (not my words ! ] in South Africa had a part in Goldstone’s surprising confessions. “We met him about a year ago, and during the meeting he insisted on his stance. We, on the other hand, told him why we were angry with him …”
            Kriegel added “Goldstone was very quiet months after this …”

            Kriegel seems proud of his ‘fine work’. Poor Goldstone, I really pity him, seems like a new Spinoza 🙂
            http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4051403,00.html

          2. Dier Yassin: The ynet link is enough to make me want to barf. If it’s true, it shows Goldstone as a man without principles. Hardly a valid comparison with Spinoza, who gave the Jewish community the finger!

          3. @ Gene)
            You’re right. I didn’t want to compare Goldstone to Spinoza, but rather the ostracism they’ve experienced !
            I read somewhere else a longtime friend of Goldstone saying that he’s been insulted constantly the last two years, received dozens of death treath, had to change his phone number etc.
            “It shows a man without principles”
            Well, Gene, we haven’t walked in his shoes, have we ? I really feel empathy for this guy. Can you imagine what he’s been through ? After all, he loves Israel, and is a Zionist 🙁 Maybe, he’ll change on that in the time to come 🙂

            Bonne nuit 🙂

    1. You mean you have a Hebrew translation of an English saying that started off from a French Christian saints writing that was then translated into English and disseminated around the globe.

  3. What’s particularly absurd about Goldstone’s op-ed is that his arguments, such as they are, are rebutted by the Goldstone Report itself. Take, for example, this nonsense about Israeli internal inquiries calling the intentionality findings into question. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that these investigations would never have occurred had Israel not been publicly shamed into them by the Goldstone Report, if we turn to the ‘Accountability’ section of the Goldstone Report, we find a detailed discussion of the sort of ‘investigations’ Israel conducts, which discusses in some detail the fact that the IDF’s investigative procedures are specifically intended to improve operational effectiveness and NOT accountability, and that the mechanisms that exist are neither timely, nor transparent, no credible.

  4. Washington Post reports;- “In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise. So, too, the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.”

    Goldstone has lost his mind or does Golstone expect the HRC to condemn every civil murder around the globe?

    There is no proof that any Palestinian is involved in the killings, until such time Goldstone should stick to commenting on evidence presented and not concentrate on rumour and speculation.

  5. Nothing in this report exonerates Israel from the killing of 320 children in Gaza and over 100 women. It does, however, confirm the non-co-operation of the IDF with the UN Fact Finding Commission. Targeted killing of civilians is a war crime under the provisions of the Geneva Conventions on Human Rights.

    It is not possible for 320 children to be killed ‘by accident’ or by collateral damage within 5 days. No western army targets children or women..

      1. American misconduct in Iraq does not negate Israeli misconduct in the Gaza Strip. All it means is that American troops committed war crimes as well, and saying, “Yes, but they did it too!” is not a legitimate defence for anybody.

        1. I’m not going to apologize to lies spread by a commity led by Kadafy. You are not interested in my view anyway.
          I was responding the prev. poster claim.

          1. I don’t think that your views make sense logically, but I’m interested in them nonetheless. I wouldn’t say anything if I weren’t.

            Your response to Colindale didn’t address his main point: that it would be very difficult for a military to accidentally kill over three hundred children in such a short period of time. Bringing up the coalition’s conduct in Iraq doesn’t change that.

  6. I’m open to new evidence emerging that changes an existing picture. But his Op-Ed is particularly strange for two reasons:

    First, the Op-Ed tries to imply that his report would have been different if he had the information that he now has. Put in this form, it is almost a truism, most people who have ever written something can say that about their work. But more importantly, he can give only one example of what may have been different in the report, namely, the al-Samouni case which he agrees an officer might still be prosecuted for. For the Israel apologists to generalise from one example to the whole report is incredible. What about the systematic destruction of property; the original report goes into a lot of detail on how, for example, a cement factory was brought down over a period of days by planting explosives in the walls. No accident, is it? And what about all the cases of dropping drone missiles on children playing on roofs, or white phosphorus used in built-up areas, or targeting and bombing the government buildings and civil police? Citing one still inconclusive example makes no difference to the rest of the pattern, and he could cite no more evidence than just that one case. So as far as I can see, almost the whole report stands unchallenged, even though he tries to draw a stronger conclusion and the Israel apologists try to read it as such.

    Second, the Op-Ed implies that, according to the McGowan-Davis report, Israel’s investigations have been more or less credible. But that’s precisely what the McGowan-Davis report denies. In fact, it goes so far as to conclude that the IDF is incapable of investigating its own planning and policy-making. So Goldstone misrepresents the McGowan-Davis report in order to push his prefered conclusion through. He either did not read her report properly, or he deliberately misrepresented it. And I suspect that even if Judge McGowan-Davis published an Op-Ed to correct his misreading of her report, it is likely that American papers will not publish it.

    As I commented on Mondoweiss earlier, one thing that this demonstrates once again is the type of strategy that Western societies use to prevent freedom of speech and inquiry: savage emotion-driven attacks, vicious character assassinations, destroying careers and even throwing people out of their communities so they become alienated from family and friends. It’s vile. I cannot see what else could have been responsible for the Op-Ed, it’s intellectually sloppy at best, dishonest at worst.

  7. It is sad that when something serious happens in the world hundreds of so-called experts appear and try to convince us that only their ideas are the right ones. What is more, international organizations such as UNHRC support them. I think it is not only Goldstone who lost his credibility now but UN as well.

  8. I have lately filmed interviews with 3 known Israel military analysts, regarding the killing of 4 U.N. Military Observers at the Al-Khiam Patrol Base, on 25 July 2006, by an ISAF F-16 hurled JDAM bomb. Here is what they said:

    * AMOS HAREL of Haaretz, who wrote the book “spiderweb” [Kurei Akavish] – the story of the 2nd Lebanon War.
    – “Israel doesn’t show much respect, towards the International Community‪… As a journalist‫,‬ I have seen this time and again‫.‬ It is characteristic of the Israeli military behavior to refuse to cooperate with external investigations‫.‬ If you have outside-investigators, you may face a demand to punish the officer who made the mistake‫.‬ So the IDF approach is to entrench itself in ‫”‬We’ll investigate‫.‬ We know best‫ ,‬and we won‫’‬t allow in foreign bodies, which may have foreign interests‫,‬ when we examine harm to innocent p‫eople‬”. / Had Israel examined itself better, it could have saved itself from such mistakes.

    * AMIR RAPOPORT, former Maariv Military Analyst. Author of “Our Forces Under Fire” [Esh Al Khohoteinu] and researcher at the Begin-Sadat institute of Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan U.
    The IDF tried best to avoid own casualties. So they launched a SOFTENING ACTION which was undoubtedly very extreme. They dropped many bombs… I think that they looked at the U.N. as a nuisance.

    * OFER SHELAH, of NRG and CH 10 (recorded in Achava College)
    The Army’s solution is –as we saw in operation CAST LEAD, and in the SECOND LEBANON WAR, and as the Chief of the [IDF] Northern Command and the Gaza Division said in my presence– “This is only the PROMO for what the next war is going to be “… “the Army calls it The DAHIA DOCTRINE = If they shoot from a village, we will regard the entire village as responsible. They don’t say: “We shall wipe it out” – because it doesn’t sound good – but that’s what they’ll do. Brigadier Zvi Fogel, who was in charge of the FIRING HQ in CAST LEAD –whom I interviewed after CAST LEAD told me that ON RECORD: “Our Fire Policy was: Having announced and called on people to vacate, whoever remained there is either a fighter, or someone who understands the implications.” It seems that 256 children and hundreds of innocent civilians did not understand the “policy” or had nowhere to flee too.

    Shelah: “We may have lost in Cast Lead the most important value: That the sense of morality is not some sort of favor we are doing to the world.”

    My point is: The world did hardly criticize Israel for the “Second Lebanon War”. This may have encouraged Ehud Barak to launch CAST LEAD, and commit horrendous crimes. In this link your can find my old comments about the steps that led to CAST LEAD.
    http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=30771

  9. Well, Goldstone is a committed Zionist, and SA has a powerful Zionist lobby.

    I wonder how Rabbi Lerner and the Tikkun crew feel about honouring him now?

  10. Studies of genocide and other war crimes and crimes against humanity indicate that many if not most atrocities against civilians are not so much the products of specific orders as of a culture cultivated by civilian and political military leaders.

    It is fairly easy to demonstrate that Zionists have been cultivating a genocidal culture among ethnic Ashkenazim since the 1880s.

    Ex post facto a drone operator might justify his interpretation as merely faulty but the real issue consists of the racist murderous genocidal thoughts that could not help but flood his mind during the IDF Rampage through Gaza.

    In situations like these the examples of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda require that guilty until proven innocent must be assumed.

    The Goldstone Report is simply wrong to have assigned equal responsibility to investigage to Hamas and to the Israeli government. Nuremberg Tribunal Law says the exact opposite, and to ignore the Nuremberg Tribunal renders the outcomes of Nuremberg Victors’ Justice as Goering accused.

    Those, who believe it is important to bring murderous genocidaires to justice whether they are German Nazis or Zionists, must insist that investigators thoroughly learn Nuremberg Tribunal case law and apply it.

    Not one individual of the anti-Nazi resistance in Occupied Eastern Europe was tried for attacking German civilian personnel, military personnel, or German colonists. This position applies throughout the post-1967 Occupied Territories (Occupied Palestine). Pre-1967 Israel (Stolen Palestine) is in possibly the same legal position as the annexed Sudetenland but almost certainly a good deal less legitimate.

    The Nuremberg Tribunal did not distinguish attacks on German military and civilians in the Sudetenland from attacks on German military and civilians in Occupied Europe. Today by Nuremberg Tribunal precedents we must consider attacks on Zionist military and civilians completely legitimate throughout Stolen and Occupied Palestine.

    1. “Today by Nuremberg Tribunal precedents we must consider attacks on Zionist military and civilians completely legitimate throughout Stolen and Occupied Palestine.”

      How about attacks on Zionist military and civilians overseas? Would it be ok to attack, say, the annual Israel Day parade in New York? But back to both “Stolen and Occupied Palestine,” how about attacking a Birthright Israel trip? Is that ok? And what of the recent action where a bomb was set off by the central bus station in Jerusalem? The woman that died was a non-Jewish bible scholar. I’m sure the bomb makers wanted to kill Zionists, but how would international law characterize this death? Unfortunate but still “completely legitimate” collateral damage?

      1. I was trying to confine myself to what Nuremberg case law says, but I suspect the United States government would not have been happy if Nazi Germany had offered a Birthright Germany program to German Americans so that they could get in touch with their inner Aryan. As for attacks outside the theater of combat, haven’t the Zionists been doing that since the 1940s at least?

  11. I dont know why Goldstone wrote the article that he did. While he may have been ostracized by the Jewish community, he was well on track to win a Nobel Peace Prize. This article will probably diminish Goldstones chance to win this prize.

    BTW, you warn Mr Martillo frequently, but never do anything about it.

    1. I’ve put him on moderation. I was going to delete the comment entirely (& btw, I have refused to publish several of his comments). But I felt it was more important to go on record as opposing his outrageous views.

      1. Very interesting article Gene. What do you make of Pappe’s conclusion:

        “Palestine should choose its friends with care: they cannot be faint-hearted nor can they claim to be Zionists as well as champions of peace, justice and human rights in Palestine.”

        There are many here, including the owner of this blog, who assert that they are Zionists.

        1. What do I think? Of course, I agree. I am not a Zionist, never have been, and believe Zionism is the cause of all the trouble. I just do not understand how anyone who believes in justice and democracy can consider him/herself a Zionist. Prior to the founding of Israel as a state, most Jews wanted nothing to do with Zionism. It only caught on because of the propaganda surrounding the Holocaust. Yes, the Holocaust happened. But it is not a justification for what Israel has done to the Palestinians.

          1. Saying “prior to the founding of the state most Jews were anti-Zionist” is a gross distortion.

            You might be able to say that prior to the rise of Nazism most Jews either disagreed with or had no opinion about Zionism. But that’s what you said.

          2. Pls. don’t put words in my mouth, Richard. I said most Jews wanted nothing to do with Zionism,not that they were anti-Zionist. I know it’s difficult for you to understand because you were brought up on Zionism. I was eighteen years old when the Israeli state came into being, and I had friends who gave up their US citizenship to go and fight for the cause. I couldn’t understand why, and we had many discussions about it. Zionism, per se, seemed to be the wrong reason. I still feel, like Hajo Meyer and Alan Hart, that Zionism is the enemy of the Jewish people.

            I’m sure Ilan Pappe knows he doesn’t doesn’t speak for you. He’s not trying to, merely relating history. Also, you have expressed admiration for Avraham Burg. I’m sure his most recent article in Haaretz doesn’t speak to you either. It is anti-Zionist.

          3. I am not the issue. I said he is anti-Zionist. Be cool, Richard, I am not your enemy.

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