Goldstone’s timing may have been significant. He offered his reassessment a few days after the UN Human Rights Council, which appointed his fact-finding mission, recommended that the General Assembly refer the Goldstone Report to the Security Council. In doing so, the council initiated a mechanism designed to move the report to the ICC as a prelude to a possible war crimes tribunal.
Goldstone Report
A panel discussion dedicated to examining the reality and consequences of Israel’s war and siege of Gaza. The panelists are Norman Finkelstein, Rashid Khalidi, and Peter Weiss. Columbia University, New York – 2 May 2011.
IOA Editor: An outstanding and memorable event with each of the participants excelling. This was another successful, informative event organized by Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies.
Video recording of the event can be found HERE
Goldstone miscalculated; he has given the report a second life. It may still languish in the UN system, thanks to the geopolitical leverage being exerted by the United States to ensure that Israeli impunity is safeguarded once more. But this new controversy surrounding the report has provided civil society with renewed energy to push harder on the legitimacy agenda which is animating the growing Palestinian solidarity movement.
Many of those calling for the nullification of our report imply that the final report by the follow-up committee … somehow contradicts the fact-finding mission’s report or invalidates it. In the light of the observations of this committee such claims are completely misplaced, and a clear distortion of their findings.
I asked Goldstone to help point out even a single word in the two reports that could justify his vague statement about the non-existence of the policy on harming civilians – while both reports repeatedly criticize Israel for not having investigated this issue at all. Apologizing politely, the South African freedom fighter said he had imposed media silence on himself. A pity…
Anyone who honored the first Goldstone has to ask him: What exactly do you know today that you didn’t know then? Do you know today that criticizing Israel leads to a pressure-and-slander campaign that you can’t withstand, you ‘self-hating Jew’?
Most important, Israel has failed to investigate adequately the policy-level decisions that apparently lie behind the large-scale indiscriminate and unlawful attacks in Gaza. Those decisions are obviously the most sensitive because they involve senior officials, not just troops on the ground.
Israeli leaders have barely hidden their jubilation at an opinion article … by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone reconsidering the findings of his UN-appointed inquiry into Israel’s attack on Gaza in winter 2008… Israel would certainly like observers to interpret Goldstone’s latest comments as an exoneration. In reality, however, he offered far less consolation to Israel than its supporters claim.
Comment by Deputy PM comes as Israel sets out to embark on a diplomatic and public relations campaign seeking to leverage in its favor the article published by Judge Richard Goldstone.
IOA Editor: For a ‘reality check,’ see Richard Silverstein: Goldstone’s tawdry turn, Israel’s false dance of vindication
[Goldstone] writes that if he knew then what he knows now, the report would’ve been different. Note, he didn’t say the report would’ve vindicated Israel’s conduct. That’s the message the Hasbara apparatus is crowing from every treetop and it’s simply untrue.
Several of the most dramatic instances of war crimes, which previously stirred Israel’s defenders into fits, are now publicly admitted by the IDF in the recent update to its official response. [Including: The use of] white phosphorous in urban areas … the murder of two unarmed Palestinians carrying white flags … the Al-Fakhura Street incident … the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields … the Al-Samouni family massacre … firing on Al Maqadmah and other mosques during prayer time.
Brigadier Ilan Malka is not alone. More than 550 [IDF] officers and men of IDF who participated in the “Cast Lead” operation have been interrogated by the investigative military police of the IDF in the last 18 months.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem will remove Judge Goldstone from its Board of Governors, for the “technical” reason that he has not attended Board meetings… Substantial political pressure has been exerted by American and European donors on Hebrew University President Professor Menachem Ben Sasson and the university administration to remove Judge Goldstone following the report issued by the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which Goldstone led.
Defense Minister Peres, 1974: “This cooperation [Israel – South-Africa] is based not only on common interests and on the determination to resist equally our enemies, but also on the unshakable foundations of our common hatred of injustice and refusal to submit to it.”
President Peres on judge Richard Goldstone: “A small man, devoid of any sense of justice.”
At the end of the day, after Goldstone is finally exorcised as a witch and Israel’s human rights NGOs shut down, what then? Won’t accountability still be a cornerstone of the rule of law? Putting the diversions aside for a moment… are we not still left with alarming suspicions, partial information, and a very real need for a credible, independent investigation into Cast Lead?
A well-known American Jewish attorney who worked to deport former Nazis from the US is urging American officials to bar former judge Richard Goldstone from entering the country over his rulings during South Africa’s apartheid regime.
IOA Editor: Revenge… He was allowed to attend his grandson’s Bar-Mitzva, but we’ll block his entry to the US.
Retired chief justice of South Africa Arthur Chaskalson said it was “disgraceful” to put pressure on a grandfather not to attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah. “If it is correct that this has the blessing of the leadership of the Jewish community in South Africa, it reflects on them rather than Judge Goldstone. They should hang their heads in shame.”
“These organizations are trying to help Hamas in [its] fight against Israel,” argues Im Tirtzu chairman Ronen Shoval. “They are slandering the State of Israel and the Israeli soldiers around the world.”
UN team find remains of aircraft-dropped bombs, contradicting Israeli report on military conduct during three-week conflict.
IOA Editor: UN evidence vs. Israeli propaganda. Who’s going to win?
“The Goldstone report is a defamation written by an evil, evil man,” Dershowitz said.
IOA Editor: The use of the term “traitor” is important: a Traitor loses a good deal of protection provided by civil society, and may become a target of assassination. Such a declaration is as close to a Fatwa as Jewish society gets – including secular, “Western” Jewish circles.
