The UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, that took place in September 2001 in Durban, South Africa, provided a key venue for promoting Israel as “an apartheid regime,” to be achieved through the use of human rights rhetoric and allegations of war crimes, thereby delegitimizing Israel as a sovereign state.

The text adopted in the NGO Forum at Durban provided a battle plan for the political war against Israel, to be led by the NGO network. The document asserts that the “targeted victims of Israel’s brand of apartheid and ethnic cleansing methods have been in particular children, women and refugees.” The authors labeled Israel a “racist apartheid state,” guilty of “genocide,” called for “an end to its ‘racist crimes’ against Palestinians,” and endorsed an international war crimes tribunal to try Israeli citizens. There were no references to Palestinian terror, or the use of densely-populated areas for sheltering terrorists to deter Israeli retaliation.

On this basis, the NGO participants agreed to

a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state ... the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel.” The NGO declaration also condemned “those states who are supporting, aiding and abetting the Israeli apartheid state and its perpetration of racist crimes against humanity including ethnic cleansing, acts of genocide.”

Thus the Durban conference provided the strategy for the ensuing NGO-led political war against Israel, using weapons derived from the rhetoric of human rights and international law, and conducted in concert and under the umbrella of the UN Human Rights Commission (and subsequent Council), the media, churches, and university campuses. The subsequent battles included the Jenin “massacre” and “war crimes” reports (April 2002), the campaign against the separation barrier (“apartheid wall”) that involved the UN General Assembly resolution referring the issue to the highly politicized International Court of Justice for an “advisory opinion”, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns, the 2006 Lebanon war, and numerous other incidents.

The Goldstone “fact finding” report on Gaza is the latest embodiment of the Durban Strategy. As a member of HRW’s board and a staunch supporter of Ken Roth, who has headed HRW since 1993, Goldstone has been active in this process of isolating and delegitimizing Israel, using questionable (at the very least) allegations of human rights and international law violations.  Goldstone’s report reflects all of the elements of the strategy, including heavy reliance on false or unverifiable “evidence” from NGOs, removal of the context of terror and the obligation of self-defense, carefully selection of cases in order to highlight allegations against Israel, and distorted interpretations of international law.

The scripts in each of these cases, including Goldstone, are very consistent. The elements include allegations of Israeli “war crimes”; removal or minimalization of the context of terror (Goldstone follows the standard HRW ratio of about 5 to 1, to create the façade of “balance”); unsupported NGO-based “evidence” and “witnesses”; narrowly and artificially defined issues, time frames, and cases to exclude attacks against Israel; totally distorted international legal claims; rejection of Israeli investigations as “inadequate”; and demands for international action designed to further the Durban strategy of total isolation and delegitimation.

This is the political context in which the Goldstone “fact finding mission” was established, and in which the report, as well as Goldstone’s justifications, can be understood.