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Posts Tagged ‘goldstone report’

Wiesel, NGO Monitor Board Member

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

I was just reading a Haaretz story about the orchestrated Israeli government campaign against Human Rights Watch in response to the latter’s support for the Goldstone Report. The article noted that Elie Wiesel signed a letter to the Guardian which praised Robert Bernstein’s bitter, disjointed diatribe against HRW in the NY Times Op Ed section. But this passage really stood out:

Human Rights Watch said that the criticism has come from right-wing blogs, but also from Israeli non-profit groups, such as NGO Monitor in Jerusalem, which is funded by U.S. donors and includes Elie Wiesel on its advisory board.

I can remember when I was a teenager in the 1960s, my rabbi took me to hear Elie Wiesel speak at local synagogues throughout the N.Y. metropolitan area. In those days, Wiesel was viewed as a cross between a Jewish saint and seer. Night had just come out and he was THE Jewish witness to the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust.

But Elie Wiesel has long since ceased serving that role. He is morally conflicted about opposing the Occupation fearing that his opposition will be used against Israel by anti-Semites or some such. This perspective has long ceased to have any legitimacy if it ever did.

The news that Wiesel sits on the board of one of the most odious far-right Israeli NGOs seals the deal as far as I’m concerned. Wiesel might as well be a Likudnik (maybe he is). Henceforth, I will consider him such.

Here are the other NGO Monitor board members with whom Wiesel is keeping company : Judea Pearl, Alan Dershowitz, Martin Gilbert, James Woolsey AND Elliot Abrams. You know what happens when you lay down with dogs like these…

Tags: elie wiesel, goldstone report, human-rights-watch, ngo-monitor
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace | 12 Comments »

Congress Denounces Goldstone, Baird Courageously Dissents

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

In what universe is the U.S. House of Representatives? The rest of the world and American citizens look at Operation Cast Lead and see massacre (a Rasmussen poll during the war found 55% of Americans opposed it and only 33% supported it). Congress sees only the green of pro-Israel campaign contributions and dutifully calls the sun the moon for all the world to see. That’s why HR 867, which denounces the Goldstone Report, passed today despite the opposition of pro-Israel groups like Peace Now and human rights groups like Human Rights Watch.

Every Israeli human rights NGO denounced the Gaza war and supports the Goldstone Report. Yet, the U.S. Congress, whose members haven’t bothered to read the Report, arrogate to themselves the right to claim superior knowledge on the issue:

…Lawmakers approved a non-binding resolution that calls the report “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.”

The symbolic measure also urges President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “to strongly and unequivocally oppose” any discussion of the report or action on its findings in any international setting.

“I think the UN report is unbalanced, and unfair, and inaccurate,” said Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

“It’s unfortunate that the United Nations deals with Israel, in my opinion, in a totally biased and unbalanced way. And it is the only country in the world, Israel, that has a special focus by the United Nations,” he added.

There is one silver lining: 36 courageous lawmakers lined up against this smear (22 others voted “present” a milder form of protest). That makes 58 politicians willing to buck the wrath of the Israel lobby. Sol Salbe has also noted that there were 133 members who did not vote at all, which is an even milder form of opposition (but it’s still opposition). And who knows, if J Street’s position had been stronger, there might’ve been a few other votes in the right column. But I join Phil Weiss is praising these Congressmembers. They deserve our gratitude. Among them are:

Earl Blumenauer
Jim McDermott (my House member)
Brian Baird (another Seattle-area member)
Lois Capps
Betty McCollum
Keith Ellison
Charles Boustany
Pete Stark
George Miller
John Dingell
Dennis Kucinich
Bob Filner (who spoke at the J Street conference)
Lynn Woolsey

As I read the list, only one Jewish member opposed HR 867, Bob Filner. Even more kudos to him.

Brian Baird said this in opposition to the Resolution:

“I have been to Gaza and I have read in its entirety the Goldstone report and I will tell you he says many things, that though unpleasant, are true, and must not be obstructed,” countered Democratic Representative Brian Baird.

Baird bolstered his speech against the resolution with photographs of dead Palestinian children and Israeli children seeking shelter during a suspected Palestinian rocket attack.

How many other House members have bothered to go to Gaza? You could count them on the fingers of one hand. How many actually read Goldstone? Probably only Baird.

I read passages of HR 867 and it is utter garbage. It could’ve been written by an Israeli foreign ministry lawyer (and probably was). It mistates facts and gets virtually everything it says about the Report wrong. It regurgitates Israeli propaganda against Goldstone. It makes no attempt to be in the least fair or balanced. Which is a less than can be said for Goldstone, which bent over backwards to incorporate the Israeli narrative when it could (considering Israel refused to cooperate this was made difficult).

This is Congress at its worst. This is why U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Arab conflict has been so abysmal for so long.

The Goldstone Report seeks to end Israeli impunity. It seeks to bring international law to bear on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It seeks to place limits and constraints on Israeli behavior during war. This is a struggle on which the IDF, the Israel lobby, and U.S. Congress are on the losing side of history. This is not Congress’ finest hour.

Tags: goldstone report
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 36 Comments »

Goldstone Attacker is Confessed Felon

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

In happier days: Richard & Rochelle Maize posing with Hollywood producer, Brian Grazer

Thanks for reader Robin for exposing the seamy legal past of Richard Maize, confessed real estate broker-fraudster, who has funded what apparently is a personal crusade against the Goldstone Report replete with fake Israeli NGOs and websites which I’ve written about here.

Those of us here in the States have heard scores of stories in the past few months about greedy mortgage brokers and lenders who contributed to the country’s economic meltdown by inflating the value of properties and convincing lenders to lend them money based on the fraudulent valuations. This is precisely what Maize did in his heyday, and Lehman Bros., one of the victims of the meltdown, was his willing (though perhaps unwitting) partner in this according to an FBI press release that announced his plea bargain. In it, he confessed to five felony counts in order to avoid a possible 98-year prison sentence:

…In United States District Court in Los Angeles, federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Richard A. Maize, 53, of Beverly Hills. Maize, a co-founder of Americorp Funding, a mortgage banking company with offices in West Los Angeles and Pasadena, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and loan fraud, three counts of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement on a federal tax return.

In a plea agreement also filed today, Maize agreed to plead guilty to the five felony counts…

Maize booked more than $245-million in mortgages for his employer in 2002 alone. The FBI blames him for at least $18-million in fraud and he agreed to pay $2.75-million in restitution.

It’s certainly no accident that Maize established his family foundation just after his legal troubles arose. This is a common practice with the world’s n’er-do-wells. They seek to compensate for the evils they do by spreading a few philanthropic dollars to take the sting out of their infamy. Maize apparently did this on the very cheap. The first year his charity operated it had a mere $22,500 in assets. Hardly a serious gesture from a confessed felon seeking to whiten his reputation. It’s ironic that we have this fake PR campaign against the Goldstone Report thanks to the economic debacle into which people like Richard Maize got this country.

If you add to this that the “philanthropist” has hooked up with Joel Leyden, a rightist Israeli PR consultant who has helped him establish an NGO that milks the good name of the legitimate Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Maize-Leyden’s outfit is the Association for Human Rights in Israel), it’s a fine mess the two have gotten themselves into.

What I don’t know is whether there may be an Israeli government client behind this operation as well since the foreign ministry (one of Leyden’s PR clients) has established its own mis-information campaign attacking Goldstone, replete with online attack-advertising just like Maize’s.

Don’t get me wrong–even confessed felons are entitled to political opinions. But one would think given their past they would promote their views in an ethical manner. But given his past, we shouldn’t be at all surprised that Maize is continuing to engage in fraud of a different sort.

Tags: goldstone report, human-rights
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 4 Comments »

Anti-Goldstone Campaign Creates Fake NGOs, Human Rights Website

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Just after the Goldstone Report was released the Israeli foreign ministry began an online ad campaign offering the “facts” about Operation Cast Lead. Clearly, someone feels this campaign was too straightforward and perhaps ineffective. Now a new online ad campaign has been created by a hazy group of right-wing pro-Israel sources. The ad, discovered by reader John Dickerson to be running at at least one progressive website, Antiwar Newswire, features a link to UN Goldstone Gaza Report. This is a fairly straightforward hasbara site offering media analysis and Israeli government rebuttals of the Report.

But there are several other interesting aspects of the site. First, nowhere does it identify the specific organization behind this effort. It does credit the Richard and Rochelle Maize Foundation for financial support. The Maizes are wealthy Los Angeles Jews with real estate interests whose foundation supports mainly white bread Israeli projects like the Maccabiah. This page on their site under the “human rights” section describes their visceral distaste for Goldstone. They link to the hasbara site I mentioned above plus a second site, the Association for Human Rights in Israel.

The reason my antennae went up is that there is a legitimate Israeli NGO, the Association for CIVIL Rights in Israel, which protects the rights of Israeli-Palestinian citizens. But there IS no Association for Human Rights in Israel. In fact, the groups website was first registered on September 17, 2009. In other words, whoever is behind the anti-Goldstone campaign has created a front group that doesn’t exist and named it so as to confuse people about the true identity of the group. They seek to hijack the legitimate reputation ACRI has developed for fighting on behalf of Israeli civil rights in order to lend false luster to their own fraudulent enterprise.

Another entity credited for the campaign is Leyden Communications, which is an Israeli PR consultant, Joel Leyden. The latter’s website notes that he served in the Israeli Border Police, known as one of the most thuggish of Israeli law enforcement agencies. In addition, other clients have been the IDF, the Israel Project, Israel Aircraft Industries, Israel Military Products, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel Government Press Office, Israel Internet Terrorism Hotline, and Free the Iranian Jews.

So if we’re looking for the fingerprints of the original agent in this campaign, my first guess would be the Israeli foreign ministry or some official Israeli government body. But my eyes were drawn to an interesting link in these two sites’ blogroll, Honest Reporting. This is a hasbara site dedicated to rebutting anti-Israel coverage in the media. It is run by Rabbi Ephraim Shore and closely affiliated with Aish Hatorah, Clarion Fund and Rabbi Raphael Shore. Clarion and the latter Shore were the figures behind the anti-Muslim films, Obsession and Third Jihad. My money is on Honest Reporting being involved in, or the sole agent of this project.

Of course, it is always possible that the Maizes themselves are the culprits as this passage from a press release they distributed about their effort notes:

In an unprecedented move, California mortgage broker Richard Maize put immense efforts into creating human rights information sites on the Internet to call into question the conclusions reached in the UN Goldstone Report which was released last week.

If this is the case, then blame falls squarely on Joel Leyden as being the “intellectual” author of, and scumbucket behind this campaign.

Tags: goldstone report, ngo
Posted in Mideast Peace | 15 Comments »

Goldstone Defends Report Before Rabbis Group

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Rabbis Brant Rosen and Brian Walt have created a wonderful project, Taanit Tzedek (Fast for Gaza), devoted to awakening opposition within the Jewish religious community to the siege of Gaza and the suffering it is causing to Gaza’s 1.5 million civilians. Today, Judge Richard Goldstone spoke eloquently to 150 rabbis mostly affiliated with the group (and me, I invited myself and the good rabbis allowed me to join in) about the effect Gaza has had on his own relationship with Israel and other important questions.

Many of the questions asked of him were regurgitations of arguments raised by the Israel lobby and Israeli government against the Report. Goldstone refuted them with firmness, but respectfully. For example, to the argument that the judge allowed himself and his Jewishness to be used by enemies of Israel to smear the Jewish state–he replied that just the opposite was the case. First, he wasn’t the first person asked to chair the investigation. Second, his Jewishness in fact was an impediment to assuming his position since the Council and Hamas itself felt his religious affiliation meant he could not be objective.

Responding to the claim that his Report will destroy the peace process (a claim advanced by Bibi Netanyahu**), the human rights lawyer responds: a. there IS no peace process currently; and b. there can be no true peace without justice. If you examine similar situations in which there were egregious violations of human rights followed by blanket amnesties absolving violators of liability, almost none of these amnesties held over the long term (Argentina, Chile, etc.). So Goldstone is precisely right. For there to be true peace the victims on both sides need to feel that justice has been done in some form.

Anyone listening to the judge talk about the very real suffering of the residents of southern Israel would understand that this man is just the opposite of one-sided or Israel-hating. He spoke very powerfully of the suffering of the people of Sderot, Ashkelon and elsewhere in southern Israel. He even paid for such victims to travel to Geneva to testify for his commission. He knows that these victims cannot come to terms with the Palestinians and the crimes committed against them until justice is done.

One of the Taanit Tzedek rabbis noted an important tension that motivates Jews involved with human rights: on the one hand we have a sense of tribal loyalty represented by the phrase kol yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh (“All Israel is connected one to the other”). But on the other hand there is an indisputable prophetic call for universal human rights, not just rights for Jews. As an eminent jurist, Goldstone, if forced to choose, indicated that he would always choose universal rights and the call for justice for all, not just Jews. In this day and age, I think we must follow the good judge’s example. Any ideological movement that calls for us to betray our commitment to international law and human rights in favor of a tribal loyalty to our own (and often the worst among our own as represented by the settlers and IDF perpetrators of mayhem) is asking too much. Goldstone believes in effect, that to be a good Jew he must be true to this Jewish prophetic calling.

Listening to this discussion, I devised a proposal for Israel. We all know how politically unpalatable an Israeli investigation into potential war crimes during Operation Cast Lead would be. But what if we reinterpreted the mandate of such a commission? Instead of merely investigating and punishing IDF violators, why not incorporate the attacks on southern Israel into the mandate? In effect, do what Judge Goldstone wanted to do himself but was refused permission by the Israeli government. Gather massive amounts of evidence of Palestinians attacks on Israeli civilians. Interview victims. Determine as well as possible who on the Palestinian side might be culpable. Then present such evidence to the United Nations and demand that they act upon it. Present it as well to Hamas and demand that it act upon it.

If Israel undertakes such a project, it will place Hamas under a massive amount of pressure to do the same. This would be a very smart tactical move for Israel and place the moral onus on the other side. If Hamas responded favorably, then it might actually be possible for both sides to perform a credible investigation of their own respective potential crimes. Right now, we have impunity on both sides. Both the IDF and Gaza militants have literally gotten away with murder. It should be clear to Israel by now that the world is no longer prepared to sit back and allow such things to happen. Cast Lead was the watershed.

** Nahum Barnea reports the following in Yediot Achronot (thanks to Ori Nir) based on conversations with Bibi or a very close advisor:

Netanyahu believes that if Israel loses the battle over the Goldstone report, it will not be able to risk making concessions to the Palestinians. In other words: either Goldstone or the peace process. The two cannot go together.

Tags: gaza war, goldstone report, human-rights, Mideast Peace, operation cast lead, rabbi
Posted in Mideast Peace | 7 Comments »

UN Human Rights Council Endorses Goldstone Report

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Today in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council finally endorsed the Goldstone Report, after an earlier Keystone Cops deliberation failed to do so. The panel investigated war crimes during the Gaza war earlier this year. Oddly though, the Council refused to include in its endorsement any reference to possible crimes of the Palestinians during that conflict, singling out only Israel for fault. Such one-sidedness provided Israel with further ammunition to claim the Council (and by extension, the Report) is one-sided and prejudiced against it. That caused Richard Goldstone to criticize the Council.

The endorsement sets several processes in motion. First, it directs both Israel and Hamas pursue a serious investigation of the incidents portrayed in the investigation. If they do not, the Council has called for referrals to either the Security Council or International Criminal Court. Presumably, the U.S. would veto consideration of the Report by the Council. I presume though that it could not prevent the ICC from taking up the matter if the latter was referred to it and it chose to do so. Goldstone has also suggested that individual countries which are signatories of the ICC treaty could also pursue cases against individuals for their culpability for actions raised in the Report.

It is hard to imagine a hard-right Israeli government (or for Hamas for that matter) undertaking a competent investigation even under such pressure. But if the Obama administration and EU join in pressuring for this, who knows what could happen. What seems clear is that if Israel refuses to investigate, that some international body will do so. That is an outcome over which Israel will have little control. This further elevates the jeopardy for IDF senior officers who could be nabbed during international travel in any number of countries which might take up the case. This makes it lately that at some point, Israel may have its own Pinochet incident to deal with.

And once the ice is broken by one case, it will be that much easier to mount others and then the floodgates are likely to open. Israel has desperately tried to staunch the flow by placing fingers in the dam, with foreign ministry lawyers preparing briefs for this eventuality. But my judgment is that it is only a matter of time, unless a peace agreement comes first, before Israelis (and presumably Palestinians as well) will be sitting before the bar of justice. There should be no impunity, as there has been till now, for either side in this matter.

I continue to be amused, in a dark sort of way, by the Israeli claim that Goldstone is “one-sided.” There would have been one solution for that–Israel cooperating with the investigation. If Israel wanted the world to hear its perspective it should have cooperated. By not doing so, it has lost the right to the one-sided claim (unless it wishes to be laughed out of the box in making it).

Tags: goldstone report, human-rights, international law
Posted in Mideast Peace | 118 Comments »

Goldstone Report Arises from Dead

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Like Lazarus rising from the dead, the Goldstone Report has been given another lease on life by the UN Human Rights Council, thanks to the shame endured by Mahmoud Abbas when he withdrew support for it at the last Council meeting. Abbas was stung severely by the backlash from Hamas and other Palestinian groups. This new effort is a result and may go some way toward saving face for Abbas.

The N.Y. Times reports that the UN high commissioner for human rights is also throwing his support behind the report. This should help to nudge the process forward. The Council will vote on a resolution that will urge Israel and Hamas to perform a serious investigation of the crimes committed during the Gaza war by both sides. If either side fails to do so then the Council can return to recommend further action.

Netanyahu has threatened an end to the peace process if the PA doesn’t withdraw Goldstone. And possibly some Palestinian telecom entrepreneurs may be out $700 million due to a cell phone license which Israel is holding hostage.

I was also delighted to note that the U.S. diplomat who derided the Goldstone Report when it was last considered in Geneva was replaced by a different State Department representative who was positively sedate by comparison:

Douglas M. Griffiths, the American delegate at the meeting on Thursday, reiterated that the United States did not believe that the report was a matter for Security Council consideration and encouraged Israel to carry out its own investigations.

He said it was important to “be mindful of the larger context of ongoing efforts to restart permanent status negotiations that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state,” The Associated Press reported.

I’m presuming that there will be no last minute jawboning sessions with the American consul who last time managed to pressure Abbas into dropping Goldstone. Once burned, twice shy.

Haaretz reports that Bibi Netanyahu is desperately seeking help from any source he can to stymie the Report. But all his efforts appear destined to fail, unlike the last time. Ban Ki Moon gave him 15 minutes and then told him he could do nothing to intervene against the position of UNHCR. There was a rather uncomfortable 30 minute exchange with Gordon Brown in which the Israeli PM vainly attempting to persuaded Britain to vote “No” on the Report.

Last week, Bibi looked like a Jewish Houdini, able to break out of every “trap” set for him by his political enemies in Washington or Geneva. This week, not so much. Besides the resusitation of Goldstone, Turkey has taken its pound of flesh by allowing the cancellation of a military exercise because Israel was to be involved. Considering the tight level of coordination between the Israeli and Turkish military in the 1990s, this has to be a blow. Turkey was the only Muslim country in the region to have such close relations. Now, it’s a thing of the past.

It proves that a week can be an eternity when it comes to the Middle East. One day you’re on top of the world and the next you’re sitting in a dust heap. That’s why you have to try to keep things in perspective and never lose hope completely no matter how bleak things appear.

I was disappointed that the Times reporter who wrote this story inserted a piece of blatant hasbara that is offered by Israel and its Gaza massacre apologists:

Israel says about 400 Gazans die of natural causes every month, possibly accounting for the discrepancy in the numbers.

The reporter of course does not mention that every single Gazan death has been documented and only those war-related have been counted. This is nothing but pure, blatant, and offensive propaganda. And it’s deeply offensive. Israel killed 1,400 Palestinians of whom approximately 1,100 were civilians. Of these 300 were children. These are all facts documented by the Goldstone Report and other human rights documentation.

Tags: goldstone report, human-rights, United Nations
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 39 Comments »

Libya Forces UN Security Council to Take Up Goldstone Report

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Wow, when a nation like Libya makes your human rights record look bad, you know you’ve hit rock bottom. Barack Obama, Mahmoud Abbas and Bibi Netanyahu thought they were pretty deft at burying the Goldstone Report in Geneva a few days ago. But they neglected a few inconvenient facts, chief among them that if you try to suppress an idea whose time has come it will come back to bite you. That is true of Goldstone.

Libya not only sits on the Security Council, it also is president of the General Assembly. So that means that Qaddafi has the U.S. over a boulder twice over. If the U.S. vetoes Security Council consideration of the Report, Libya can introduce it before the General Assembly, where we don’t have veto. If Abbas hadn’t singed himself so badly in mishandling this affair, he might’ve been able to weasel out of this by telling Libya to take a hike. But Hamas already has his ass in a sling over his betrayal of the Gazans. He can’t very well dump Goldstone twice.

So Obama may have the Goldstone nightmare return to haunt him in the Security Council. It might even be passed by the General Assembly. So much for our president’s supposed political adeptness. Goldstone is the report that will not die. This time Obama has a chance to handle it better than he did in Geneva. Will he?

Tags: goldstone report
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 13 Comments »

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Posts Tagged ‘goldstone report’

Wiesel, NGO Monitor Board Member

Congress Denounces Goldstone, Baird Courageously Dissents

Goldstone Attacker is Confessed Felon

Anti-Goldstone Campaign Creates Fake NGOs, Human Rights Website

Goldstone Defends Report Before Rabbis Group

UN Human Rights Council Endorses Goldstone Report

Goldstone Report Arises from Dead

Libya Forces UN Security Council to Take Up Goldstone Report

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