UNDERSTANDING
THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

This past Friday, Judge Richard Goldstone wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Washington Post, backtracking on conclusions reached in the Goldstone Report.

A copy of the op-ed, as well as articles assessing what Goldstone’s recanting means, can be found in the Goldstone’s Path section of the site.

Of course, there are also posts in the blogging section of the site that deal with the Goldstone op-ed and its implications as well.

by The PostWest

Richard Goldstone’s sort of disowning his report caused a lot of brouhaha.  That he did disown it, even if in an insufficient manner is, of course, positive. But I am not as excited and appreciative of it as others are.

First, in his article in the WaPo (Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes) he somehow scapegoats Israel for what is his own utter failure and cluelessness. He argues that had Israel cooperated with the “investigation” the results would have been different.

But the reality is that he was a useful idiot who lent his name to the UN and the group of anti-semites and anti-Israel team who were appointed to his committee and who actually wrote the report. He was thoroughly alerted to this before he decided to take the job, yet he took it anyway. And he should have known, from the way the investigation was conducted, that he was being used; yet he never exercised any quality control over the investigation. On the contrary, he kept defending it.

Second, even during the investigation and immediately after the report was published tons of evidence were published proving that the report was an insidiously fallacious hatchet-job. But in his reactions he systematically ignored and/or dismissed this evidence as if it did not exist. Had he recanted then, instead of now, there might have been a chance to attenuate the damage. But no.

Third, because it took him so long, the damage was already done and it is not likely to be reversed. I can guarantee that the report will continue to be much more cited against Israel from now on than his lame mea culpa, as if the latter did not exist. This is only in part due to the fact that the report is an official UN document while his recantation is just an article in the media. The main reason is that this how the anti-semites and anti-Zionists operated in the past and this is how they’ll operate now.

I don’t know why he decided to publish this, but whatever his reasons, I am reasonably sure it was not due to moral considerations. Perhaps he finally realized that his cluelessness, naivete and vanity were being exploited and he wanted to put an end to that. Perhaps he realized that the status he aspired to when he accepted the job is not the one he ultimately obtained.

In my judging his record I cannot avoid considering what is known about the man in his native South Africa: he was part and parcel of the apartheid system when it suited him and switched sides when it could benefit him. I would be surprised if the same kind of calculation has not occurred now.

The man cares only about his career and reputation, but is not smart enough to advance it cleanly, without playing the useful idiot.

By the way: I am waiting for Hamas and/or its allies to accuse Goldstone that, as a Jew, he could not remain honest for long. Let’s see how he feels then.

UPDATE: Melanie Phillips (Richard Goldstone recants. What price the Israel witch-hunt now?) puts it right:

By his own admission, the man stands revealed as at best an abject idiot and at worst a moral and judicial bankrupt. His report blackened Israel’s name for defending itself against existential attack; encouraged its attackers to ratchet up their onslaught safe in the knowledge that the international community now had official confirmation that Israel was morally beyond the pale; put Israeli civilians, along with Israel’s very survival, at increased risk by helping delegitimise Israel as a global pariah; and fuelled the pressure on Israel not to defend its civilians by military means against the attacks which have relentlessly increased in audacity and scope.

Regardless of its manifest moral and intellectual inadequacies, however, his recantation carries inescapable consequences. All those who have used Goldstone’s report as a basis for their own delegitimisation of Israel now also stand revealed as having endorsed one of the worst officially sanctioned international falsehoods in history. All their attacks on Israel which relied upon Goldstone’s report are now shown to be equally baseless and discredited. Any future such attacks which use this report as an authority will be demonstrably false and malicious. The UN should now declare the Goldstone report null and void. Any less will make it knowingly and demonstrably party to a travesty of justice.

But of course, like all previous blood libels against the Jews, the poison this one has injected into the global bloodstream has no antidote. The damage is done - and no amount of self-serving recantations by Richard Goldstone will undo the terrible harm he has done.

UPDATE: Sure enough, both Hamas and Ken Roth of HRW have assigned his recant to “Jewish pressure”. My only hope for him is that he finally realizes what he got himself into. For his own sake.

by Israel Matzav

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone. This is the first post I am doing live on Saturday night - the previous one was prepared before the Sabbath as was the next one.

In an article published in Saturday’s Washington Post - about a year and a half too late - South African Judge Richard Goldstone starts to walk back some of the horrific lies he told about the Israel Defense Forces in the infamous report that bears his name (more comments from Memeorandum here). He still criticizes Israel for not cooperating with him - as if it would have helped. But the findings of a UN Commission that Israel is conducting real investigations into incidents that took place during Operation Cast Lead have forced Goldstone to backtrack.

Israel Radio report that in response, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has stated that the Goldstone Report should be tossed into the trashbin of history, citing the absurdity that the United Nations ‘Human Rights Commission,’ in which Libya was an honored member, having commissioned the Goldstone Report.

Here’s part of Goldstone’s article with my comments appended. In a word, it’s too little, too late.

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

Funny, I don’t recall any acknowledgment in the Goldstone Report like that. Maybe it was there, but it sure wasn’t emphasized.

The allegations of intentionality by 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. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

‘Intent’ is not a default state in criminal law. ‘Intent’ requires mens rea (bad intentions). It must always be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and can never be assumed. Sometimes, people do something that is so reckless (like shoot a missile in an unprovoked manner into a civilian area) that it leaves no doubt about intent. But those instances are rare. The bottom line is that Israel does not, as a matter of policy, target innocent civilians. Even Goldstone has now been forced to admit that.

For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly.

Real investigations in which the accused have a chance to defend themselves take time. Goldstone didn’t conduct an investigation. He conducted a smear job.

Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn’t negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.

Goldstone was offered that evidence by unofficial bodies. It was not offered by the Israeli government because the Israeli government was not going to cooperate in an ‘investigation’ in which all three ‘investigators’ had condemned Israel before they were ever appointed to the panel. But the information was offered to him by unofficial sources (like Noam Bedein of the Sderot Media Center - whose testimony Goldstone slept through). In fact, had Israel cooperated with Goldstone, it is highly unlikely that the McGowan Davis Commission would ever have been appointed. After all, why would it have been necessary? And that was the best of reason of all for Israel not to cooperate with Goldstone.

As to the question of what might have influenced Goldstone and his commission, if the man had one ounce of integrity, he would have reconvened his commission and repudiated its findings seventeen months ago, after Dore Gold mopped the floor at Brandeis with him. But Goldstone continued to defend his ‘findings’ since that debate, refused to debate others, and even attempted to defend his ‘findings’ on Capitol Hill with the help of J Street.

Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants. The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).

So Goldstone took Hamas’ numbers instead. No, not the ones to which he now refers. The earlier numbers which claimed Israel killed mostly civilians. In November 2010, Hamas admitted (in effect) that Israel’s numbers were accurate. In the five months since then, Goldstone has not previously spoken out.

As I indicated from the very beginning, I would have welcomed Israel’s cooperation. The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel.

And for the umpteenth time, he did not change the mandate and could not have done so on his own. The mandate was never legally changed.

Some have charged that the process we followed did not live up to judicial standards. To be clear: Our mission was in no way a judicial or even quasi-judicial proceeding.

Then why did his report have a section called “findings of fact and conclusions of law?” Only judicial processes purport to make “findings of fact and conclusions of law.”

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations.

Yeah, right. Go here to see how well thought out that was. Watch the video and see him criticize Israel for not doing enough and then watch what he says when they ask if he really expects Hamas to investigate. He’s so disingenuous it reeks.

Read the whole thing if you can stand it. Like the Page 1 headline that is corrected on Page 18 a week later, it’s too little, too late to undo the damage. We will not forgive and we will not forget Richard Goldstone.

by My Right Word

by Yid With Lid

The Goldstone Report was named for Judge Richard Goldstone who led the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) inquiry into Operation Cast Lead, the Gaza War, provoked by thousands of missile fired by Hamas into Israel’s Negev communities.

Goldstone’s report to the HRC concluded there was a deliberate policy by Israel to target civilians. It claimed to have found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by the Jewish State.

In a spectacular reversal, this past Friday Goldstone published a mea culpa in the Washington Post. He no longer believes that Israel deliberately targeted civilians, and now believes Hamas was the war criminal.

“We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

Sorry Judge, when first published it should have been a different document.

Goldstone’s investigative committee threw any standards of investigation out the window. The report violated international standards for inquires, including UN rules on fact- finding. The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates including Hamas, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case. For example it ruled that Hamas did not use its own citizens as human shields despite a wealth of video evidence. The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel (such as Human Rights Watch); and reproduced earlier reports and claims from these agencies.

What precipitated Goldstone’s “Oops never mind?”

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Our report found evidence of potential war crimesand “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

That was one of the problems with Goldstone’s report. It went without saying.

The allegations of intentionality by 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. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

Goldstone goes on to scold the organization which sent him on his mission, the UN Human Rights Council and urged them to condemn terrorism:

“I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of even handedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.

… I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes; Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms.

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.”

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.

It’s a positive development that Goldstone has decided to correct the record, but it doesn’t absolve him of producing an inflammatory biased investigation. Like the al Durrah hoax, Goldstone’s slander is used by Israel’s opponents to incite terrorism and de-legitimatize the Jewish State.

Judge Goldstone uses Israel’s lack of cooperation with his investigation as an excuse but he admits that the HRC’s “history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.” Why would he expect Israel to cooperate with an investigation authorized by a biased organization? And if he knew that the HRC is biased against Israel, why would he agree to participate in the investigation and why would he publish a one-sided report to give the HRC more ammunition?

One  explanation may be Ken Roth, the disgraced head ofHuman Right Watch (HRW) Roth has a vested interest in the Goldstone Report. He put him up to taking the HRC investigation in the first place. Goldstone was on HRW’s board until NGO Monitor exposed the conflict of interest.  Roth’s rabidly Anti-Israel positions have even been criticized by HRW’s founder.

In October 2009, HRW founder Robert Bernsteinpublished an article in the New York Times, strongly criticizing the organization for ignoring severe human rights violations in closed societies, for its anti-Israel bias, and for “issuing reports…that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.” In a lecture at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (November 2010), Bernstein expanded on these ideas and noted that “Human Rights Watch’s attacks on almost every issue [have] become more and more hostile [toward Israel].”

In the end doesn’t matter, as an adult the Judge needs to take responsibility for his own actions. Despite correcting the record, he didn’t take responsibility in last week’s op-ed. The Judge seems to be saying, Israel didn’t cooperate so I wrote a biased report and now I am sorry.

Judge, you should be very sorry.

by Melanie Phillips

In an extraordinary article in the Washington Post, Richard Goldstone has now admitted that his infamous report was wrong. Having fuelled the blood libel that in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza Israel had targeted civilians and possibly had committed crimes against humanity, he now says that, as a result of the final report of the UN committee of independent experts and other evidence that has emerged since his report was published, he accepts that

civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy

and further states that

if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

What self-serving rubbish. There was ample evidence at the time from numerous sources that Hamas was telling lies about the number of civilians who were killed by Israeli fire. There was ample evidence that Hamas was deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way. There was ample evidence that Hamas does not operate under the rule of law or uphold human rights. There was ample evidence that Israeli rules of engagement required the IDF to avoid hitting civilians wherever possible. There was ample evidence that Israel always investigates allegations of misconduct made against its soldiers and holds them to acount under the rule of law. Yet Goldstone, having accepted the poisoned chalice from the UN Human Rights Council to subject Israel to a show trial whose verdict preceded the evidence (despite his protestations that he modified this odious remit), chose to believe the propaganda put out by Hamas and its proxies among NGOs with a long track record of malevolent hostility to Israel.

Even now, in this purported mea culpa, Goldstone does not take responsibility for the Big Lie he helped perpetrate with such terrible consequences in putting rocket-fuel behind Israel’s delegitimisation as a pariah in the eyes of the world. Instead, he blames his false conclusions upon Israel’s refusal to co-operate with his inquiry.

So for the second time, he is again blaming Israel for its own victimisation – first at the hands of Hamas, and now at his own hands.

Ludicrously, he now says that his report’s

allegations of intentionality by 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.

The protestation that he had no alternative but to believe Hamas is quite astounding. Hamas is a terrorist organisation with a solid track record of lies, distortions and ‘Pallywood’-style fabrications as a strategy of aggressive warfare.  Israel, the victim of that aggression, has a solid record of telling the truth. Yet Goldstone chose to believe the Hamas version of events. Nor was this all. As he says in the Washington Post:

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel….

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.

I continue to believe in the cause of establishing and applying international law to protracted and deadly conflicts….Regrettably, there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Can you believe this? He appears to have expected genocidal aggressor Hamas to behave in a civilised fashion by investigating its alleged abuses — while he chose to throw the book at its democratic victim, Israel. And now the most he will acknowledge is that expecting Hamas to do so

may have been a mistaken enterprise.

By his own admission, the man stands revealed as at best an abject idiot and at worst a moral and judicial bankrupt. His report blackened Israel’s name for defending itself against existential attack; encouraged its attackers to ratchet up their onslaught safe in the knowledge that the international community now had official confirmation that Israel was morally beyond the pale; put Israeli civilians, along with Israel’s very survival, at increased risk by helping delegitimise Israel as a global pariah; and fuelled the pressure on Israel not to defend its civilians by military means against the attacks which have relentlessly increased in audacity and scope.

Regardless of its manifest moral and intellectual inadequacies, however, his recantation carries inescapable consequences. All those who have used Goldstone’s report as a basis for their own delegitimisation of Israel now also stand revealed as having endorsed one of the worst officially sanctioned international falsehoods in history. All their attacks on Israel which relied upon Goldstone’s report are now shown to be equally baseless and discredited. Any future such attacks which use this report as an authority will be demonstrably false and malicious. The UN should now declare the Goldstone report null and void. Any less will make it knowingly and demonstrably party to a travesty of justice.

But of course, like all previous blood libels against the Jews, the poison this one has injected into the global bloodstream has no antidote. The damage is done – and no amount of self-serving recantations by Richard Goldstone will undo the terrible harm he has done.

Half a cheer for Goldstone

Richard Goldstone backtracks somewhat concerning his already infamous report in a Washington Post op-ed:

Allister Sparks owes an abject apology to his readers

In his July 21 article in Business Times, titled “The chief rabbi owes Judge Goldstone an abject apology” Allister Sparks wrote, “after  carrying out its own investigation into last year’s Gaza War, the Israeli military has finally confirmed several of the most serious incidents committed by its troops in that 22-day assault”. These words are only partially true, and there lies the rub. Like most partial truths used by propagandists, the real truth lies in the vitally important inconvenient information that has been omitted.

Allister Sparks owes an apology to his readers for departing from sound journalistic practice by failing to identify the report from which he quotes. Had he done so, readers would have been able to refer to it and judge for themselves, rather than being restricted to his interpretations. The cherry picked snippets he chose to quote, give a grossly distorted picture of the huge amount of serious investigative material contained in the 34 page Israel report, “Gaza Operation Investigations: Second Update July 2010″ that is readily accessible athttp://tinyurl.com/38xexqn.

Readers are entitled to be told about the report’s description of the multiple layers of review in  Israel’s investigative system that ensure impartiality and independence as well as the fact that Supreme Court review can be initiated by a petition of any interested party, including Palestinians who live in Gaza.

The seriousness with which the IDF treats the enforcement of humanitarian behavior is reflected in the fact that the report refers to 47 criminal investigations relating to the Gaza Operation.  Rather than vindicating the Goldstone report, as claimed by Mr. Sparks, these indictments reflect an admirable determination to ensure that even in the midst of intense warfare, violations of the IDF’s strict code of purity of arms are not tolerated.

The blatant flaws in the Goldstone Report that Mr. Sparks defends, include

a) The Goldstone Mission’s obstinate refusal to consider available expert evidence that contradicted its preconceived opinions. For example, my suggestion that Colonel Richard Kemp be invited to give expert evidence was flatly rejected despite his formidable experience of the type of warfare conducted in Gaza. And it was rejected  for the implausible reason,  “..there was no reliance on Col. Kemp mainly because in our Report we did not deal with the issues he raised regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers in the fog of war.”

(Colonel Kemp had told the BBC that in the Cast Lead Operation, Israeli forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in the combat zone, than any army in the history of warfare).

Other highly relevant professional memoranda were also ignominiously ignored such as those from a group of fifteen Australian lawyers, NGO Monitor, Bnai Brith and Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs among others.

b) Its failure to recognize that the IDF is a citizens’ army. Like all populations in the world, Israel’s citizens regrettably include some rotten apples among those who are drafted into the army. Consequently grossly objectionable aberrations from standard behavior inevitably occur to the shame of the IDF and the country. It is however indefensible to generalize from these exceptions.

c) Abject failure to recognize that despite the greatest care, civilian casualties inevitably occur in situations where combatants merge with the civilian population. And this applies not only to the Israeli army, but equally to NATO and British forces in Afghanistan and most significantly to US forces even during President Obama’s watch. The following examples are not quoted in order to claim that it is OK for Israel because others do it, but rather to forcefully show that responsible journalists must recognize the realities of clashes with forces like Hizbulla, Hamas and the Taliban who make callous use of civilian populations.

For example, on May 12, 2010 The Nation reported that Obama praised US forces for their restraint in Afghanistan, saying, “Because of Gen McChrystal’s direction, often times they’re holding fire, they’re hesitating, they’re being cautious about how they operate even though it would be safer for  them to go ahead and take these locations out.”

Despite these precautions, the same article reports that US Special Forces killed five people, including three women who collectively had 16 children. The US military tried to cover up and blame it on the Taliban, but later, General McChrystal’s command admitted US-led forces had done the killing, saying it was an accident. The article also refers to an incident when US warplanes bombed civilian houses in Farah province killing more than 100 people? The dead, according to the Red Cross, included an “Afghan Red Crescent volunteer and 13 members of his family who had been sheltering from fighting in a house that was bombed” in the air strike. US Military sources floated the story to NBC and other outlets that Taliban fighters used grenades to kill three families to “stage” a massacre and then blame it on the US.

British forces are not exempt. The Guardian on July 25, 2010 reported the US army’s archives contain descriptions of at least 21 separate occasions in which British troops are said to have shot or bombed Afghan civilians, including women and children.

The logs identify at least 26 people killed and another 20 wounded as a result. Some casualties were accidentally caused by air strikes, but many also are said to involve British troops firing on unarmed drivers or motorcyclists who come “too close” to convoys or patrols. The number of dead and wounded alleged to have been caused by the British include 16 children, at least three women and a mentally ill man. The number is a small fraction of the 369 civilian casualties listed in the logs resulting from coalition – mostly US – action in total.

British troops at a checkpoint in Sangin killed four and wounded three civilians in July. In August a  Para squad rocketed what it thought were insurgents, killing three civilians and wounding four. And in September an unarmed motorcyclist was shot dead by a British patrol.

When Guardian correspondent Declan Walsh, interviewed victims in hospital, witnesses described a shooting spree in which vengeful or scared UK soldiers shot at bystanders, killing two and wounding five. Unlike the IDF’s detailed investigations, the MoD never publicly investigated these allegations.

In these circumstances, an unprejudiced reader who examines the complete report of the Israeli military investigation cannot but conclude that Allister Spark’s claim that it vindicates the Goldstone commission is plainly absurd.

Judge Goldstone is not criticized because he criticized Israel, but because the report that bears his name is deeply flawed as rationally analyzed on a web site based on empirical evidence and cogent reasoning under the title “Understanding the Goldstone Report”. It urges readers to agree or disagree, not because of how they feel about Israel or the Palestinians, but because of the evidence. Unlike Mr. Sparks, the site invites readers to examine the arguments without prejudice, make up their own minds and, where they see problems, to challenge them. (http://www.goldstonereport.org/ )

Mr. Spark’s insinuation that Rabbi Goldstein suggested that “it is a Jewish person’s inherent duty either to set aside his professional ethics and find in favor of the state of Israel regardless of the merits of a case” ignores the facts. It is a baseless accusation that demands an abject apology from Mr. Sparks

From Writing Rights:

GAZA WAR CRIMES: WHO WILL STAND TRIAL?

At least twenty-six members of the Al-Samouni family in Gaza were deliberately murdered by the Israeli armed forces. Ten of the dead were children. Who are those responsible for the war crimes against the people of Gaza? This post contains three articles.

The first is an article by veteran liberal journalist Allister Sparks (Business Day 21 July 20100 demanding that the neo-conservative South African Chief Rabbi Goldstein and the South African Zionist Federation apologises to Justice Richard Goldstone.

Sparks points out that the Israelis cannot hide the evidence of war-crimes in Gaza any longer and that the UN Commission headed by Justice Goldstone was justified in its findings.

The second article is from the Al Haq Center for Human Rights in Ramallah and it carries a report on the Al-Samouni family tragedy.

The third article is an interview from Haaretz with Yehuda Shaul an Israeli army veteran and human rights activist who is worried that a few soldiers will be scape-goated while the commanders of the armed forces and their political masters will get away with war crimes.

The real justice for the war crimes against the people of Gaza will be the economic, military, diplomatic, sport sanctions against Israel that must include a targeted cultural and academic boycott.

Chief Rabbi Goldstein, the South African Zionist Federation and their allies are morally complicit in crimes against humanity because they agitate for war against the people of Palestine, they justify Israel’s crimes and promote the unlawful Occupation of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. They also support the discrimination and oppression of Palestinians in Israel and the repression of Jewish dissenters in that country and internationally.

They will fail.

Zackie Achmat

ALLISTER SPARKS: At home and abroad
The chief rabbi owes Judge Goldstone an abject apology

AFTER carrying out its own investigation into last year’s Gaza War, the Israeli military has finally confirmed several of the most serious incidents committed by its troops in that 22-day assault, which a United Nations commission of inquiry, headed by our own Judge Richard Goldstone, reported on last September.

In a low-key report released two weeks ago that seems to have escaped the attention of the entire South African media, perhaps because of its preoccupation with the Fifa World Cup at the time, the military has confirmed that three of the most serious findings of Goldstone’s egregiously vilified report were true.

It has confirmed the fatal shooting by a marksman of an unarmed man (the Goldstone commission said a man and a woman were killed) walking with a group of Palestinians waving a white “surrender” flag; the shelling of a mosque during a prayer service, causing casualties among the worshippers; and the ordering of a criminal investigation into a fatal air strike on a house where about 100 members of an extended Palestinian family, the Samounis, were sheltering on the advice of the Israeli Defence Force.

The Samouni case caused particular outrage worldwide because Israeli forces prevented Palestinian paramedics from entering the house for days after the strike.

When Red Cross workers eventually got into the house, they found four emaciated Samouni children, who had been trapped there for days with their mothers’ corpses. In all, 30 Samounis died.

The Israeli military has also indicted a battalion commander for authorising Israeli troops to use a Palestinian man as a human shield when entering a Gaza house.

The military report gives few details of its findings in these cases and goes to some lengths to minimise the culpability of its soldiers, saying for example that the shelling of the mosque had been aimed at an individual “terror operative” who was standing outside the mosque and that the injuries to the worshippers had been “unintentional and caused by shrapnel that entered the mosque”. It gives no casualty figures, but the Goldstone commission said 15 civilians died.

Similarly, the charges and disciplinary action appear mild. Deliberately shooting an unarmed civilian waving a white flag is normally regarded as murder or, in formally declared wartime, a war crime. But the sniper is being charged with “manslaughter” and will be tried by a military court.

A battalion commander who authorised the human shield has been indicted for “inappropriate Israeli Defence Force behaviour” and deviating from authorised procedure. The officer who ordered the shelling of the mosque has been “rebuked” and will not be allowed to serve in a similar position of command again.

But the real importance of this military investigation is that it vindicates the Goldstone commission. It is worth recalling that Israel refused to co-operate with the commission. It also resisted calls by Israeli and international human rights organisations for an independent Israeli investigation outside the military framework.

In the circumstances, the four members of the fact-finding mission, which Goldstone chaired, called on the Israeli government and the Palestinian authorities to use the information they had gathered to carry out serious independent investigations — failing which the matter should be referred to the International Criminal Court. One can only wonder how much of a whitewash there would have been had the Goldstone commission never done this preliminary work.

For Judge Richard Goldstone, particularly, this is a personal vindication, for he was excoriated by leading members of the local Jewish community for chairing the commission. He was told his commission’s findings were lies; that he was naive and gullible for accepting the version of events given by terrorists; and that, since he is a Jew, he was a traitor to his people.

His critics were given support by Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, who chastised Goldstone for “doing great damage to the state of Israel”. He should have recused himself instead, Goldstein said, and taken no part in the investigating mission.

I have had difficulty understanding what the chief rabbi meant by this.

Goldstein is a trained lawyer as well as a rabbi. Did he mean that no Jew, however professionally disciplined — and Judge Goldstone’s legal reputation is among the highest in the world — can be objective when it comes to a matter involving Israel?

And if so, does that involve Jews individually or collectively as well, or just the interests of the state of Israel? Or did he mean that it is a Jewish person’s inherent duty either to set aside his professional ethics and find in favour of the state of Israel regardless of the merits of a case or, if that is unacceptable, to recuse himself? But that for a Jew to find against Israel is traitorous?

What are the moral priorities being expressed here?

We are not dealing with an ordinary individual in this matter, but with the head of a major religion in a multiracial, multireligious and constitutionally secular state.

We secularists need to know what a religious leader in our community means when he seeks to impose such an ethical dictum on a prominent member of his faith — someone who was a founding father of our Constitutional Court and an interpreter of our infinitely important national constitution in this new democracy.

I am reminded here of the conflict between the Dutch Reformed Church and Beyers Naude over the issue of apartheid.

I attended the Dutch Reformed Church service in Linden, Johannesburg, at which Naude had to respond to the church leaders’ demand that he choose between the church’s doctrine of support for apartheid and his commitment to the nonracial Christian Institute he had founded.

In other words, Naude was forced to choose between his moral principles and his loyalty to his own people and their church.

I heard Naude announce his decision that memorable day before the glitterati of Afrikaner nationalism in the packed pews before him. Smilingly, boldly, he told them simply: “I choose God before man.”

In other words, principles, truth and justice before ethnic or group loyalty. It was the defining moment of that great man’s life.

So I ask the chief rabbi that same question today: what is your choice? Then, at the level of plain human decency, don’t you think, Chief Rabbi Goldstein and those members of the Orthodox Jewish community and the South African Zionist Federation whom you lead, that you owe Judge Goldstone an apology? A public, abject apology.

Leaders of the federation went to the extremes of cruelty when they took their religious war against Judge Goldstone (dare I call it a fatwa?) into the heart of his family by trying to ban him from his grandson’s bar mitzvah. Eventually, but it seemed to me somewhat reluctantly, negotiations enabled the family to celebrate this important event together.

But I’m sorry, that wasn’t enough. In this land of ubuntu, this land of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, you must stand up, Chief Rabbi Goldstein, and on behalf of the co-religionists you supported in this calumny, bow your head, apologise and, like the man of God I’m sure you are, beg forgiveness of Judge Richard Goldstone.

Read the background Goldstone Bar Mitzvah saga here.

The Goldstone Commission Report can be read here.

- Sparks is a veteran journalist and political analyst. This article was published in Business Day

Al Samouni Family in Gaza: In Their Own Voices
Published Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Al-Haq Center for Human Rights

The story of Al Samouni’s family of Gaza is tragic and appalling. According to Al Haq’s field research members, the story began on Saturday, 3 January 2009, with Israeli incursion into and firing at the Al Zaytoun neighborhood.

The following day, on 4 January 2009, Israeli occupying forces bombed the same area killing one Palestinian.

On Monday at 7:00 Am, 5 January 2009, again Israeli occupying forces bombed the very same area of Hay (neighborhood) Al Zaytoun. One of the missiles struck the third floor of Tallal Hilmi Al Samouni’s home. Traumatized, the family nonetheless managed to extinguish the fire. Earlier the 16-member family—including the grandfather, grandmother, their children and families—had evacuated into the first floor in fear of the bombs that were striking Gaza.

As the situation deteriorated and the shelling intensified, three additional Al Samouni families sought refuge in Tallal’s home. The families included: Ibrahim Al Samouni (12 members), Rashad Al Samouni (11 members), and Nafiz Al Samouni (10 members). Altogether 49 members of Al Samouni’s family gathered at Tallal’s house.

Later on Monday, the Israeli occupying forces knocked on the door of Tallal’s home and asked the congregated family members to move to Wael Al Samouni’s home (11 members). The Israeli occupying forces also asked the men to lift their shirts on their way out (a dehumanizing gesture across all cultures), then surrounded Wael’s home and left the 60 members of Al Samouni family without water for 24 hours. As for electricity, it has been cut off entirely in the strip since Israel’s bombardment began on 27 December 2009.

The next day, 6 January 2009, the family heard shooting nearby, followed by calm. Some thought that the Israeli occupying forces had withdrawn from the neighborhood, and so one of the men left the front door to bring water from a tank placed in front of the house for the children, who were thirsty. To his surprise, the Israeli occupying forces and their tanks were still surrounding the house, which made him immediately turn back inside.

Five minutes later, the tanks shelled a missile into the house and injured seven people. Only three minutes later the Israelis aimed another missile close by, which killed many Al Samouni family members—predominantly children and women.

About 22 of the survivors, many of whom were injured, left the house raising white banners and carrying four bodies of those killed. The Israeli occupying forces began shooting around them, but they continued to walk, and tried to call the ambulance to pick them up and save the injured among them. But the Israeli occupying forces informed them that they have banned emergency services from reaching the area. Indeed, Israeli soldiers, with their heavy weaponry, vehemently prevented medics and ambulances, including the Red Cross, from entering. However, at a crossroad about a kilometer and a half further on, an ambulance managed to collect the injured.

Back at the house, where the dead bodies of Palestinians lay, there were thirteen family members who were still alive. Eight of them were children, some of them injured, who had been locked in for three days with the bodies of their dead parents and family members, with no access to food or water.

The Red Cross was only allowed entry three days later to evacuate the dead and injured, the majority of whom were so critical that they were taken to Belgium, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia for treatment.

Overall, 26 members of Al Samouni family were killed, including 10 children and 7 women.

The questions that remain include: who will account for these innocent civilians? Who will hold Israel responsible for their war crimes against humanity? Who will compensate—and clearly, nothing can—for the lives of children, women and men? Will there ever be a time when these children, who were surrounded by the dead bodies of their parents and family members for three days, ever forgive the international silence over the grave violations that struck them and their families? Al Samouni survivors will need answers to these questions including justice to be done.

Names of Children Killed
Azza Salah Al Samouni, 3 years of age
Waleed Rashad Al Samouni, 17 years of age
Ishaq Ibrahim Al Samouni, 14 years of age
Ismail Ibrahim Al Samouni, 16 years of age
Rifka Wael Al Samouni, 8 years of age
Fares Wael Al Samouni, 12 years of age
Huda Nael Al Samouni, 17 years of age
Ahmad Atieh Al Samouni, 14 years of age
Mu’tassim Mohammed Al Samouni, 6 years of age
Mohammed Hilmi Al Samouni, 5 years of age
Names of Women Killed
Rahma Mohammed Al Samouni, 50 years of age
Safa’ Hilmi Al Samouni, 25 years of age
Maha Mohammed Al Samouni, 22 years of age
Rabbab Azzat Al Samouni, 32 years of age
Laila Nabih Al Samouni, 40 years of age
Rifqa Mohammed Al Samouni, 50 years of age
Hannan Khamis Al Samouni, 36 years of age
Names of Men Killed
Tallal Hilmi Al Samouni, 55 years of age
Attieh Hilmi Al Samouni, 25 years of age
Rashad Hilmi Al Samouni, 42 years of age
Tawfiq Rashad Al Samouni, 23 years of age
Mohammed Ibrahim, 26 years of age
Ziyad Izzat Al Samouni, 28 years of age
Nidal Ahmad Al Samouni, 30 years of age
Hamdi Maher Al Samouni, 23 years of age
Hamdi Mahmoud Al Samouni, 70 years of age

Head to Head / Breaking the Silence founder Yehuda Shaul, is there a crack in the Israeli army’s wall of silence?
By Nir Hasson

Yehuda Shaul, 27, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, which collects and publishes eyewitness accounts of soldiers from the territories, is cealebrating a minor victory over the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF spokesman and the wall of silence that Shaul says surrounds the events of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The cracks in that wall are decisions by Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit to file an indictment against a soldier from the Givati Brigade on suspicion of killing two Palestinian women during the Gaza fighting, to subject an officer to disciplinary proceedings over questionable conduct, and to investigate the bombing of the al-Samouni family home, in which 16 people were killed.

But Shaul is afraid that this time, too, the IDF will try to isolate a few low-level scapegoats to continue to conceal the really important things – the orders that were given to the soldiers during the operation.

Shaul, a skullcap-wearing Jerusalemite, founded Breaking the Silence in 2004, after his discharge from combat service in the Nahal Brigade. He and his friends organized an exhibit about their experiences. “We wanted to bring Hebron to Tel Aviv,” he says. The success of the exhibit gave rise to the organization, which has collected more than 700 eyewitness accounts from soldiers and commanders about their service in the territories.

Is the IDF’s decision to investigate a crack in the wall of silence?

“I see a crack in the wall of silencing, mainly in light of the IDF attempt to keep things quiet. But as long as the blame falls on the little guy, it’s very convenient for the system and very convenient to continue to remain silent. The IDF campaign against us stemmed from a desire to conceal the truth from the public. That’s not a proper professional consideration or a proper democratic consideration.”

“The question is what we as a society allow to be done in our name, and what we don’t allow. That’s why the investigation must be held outside the army. There’s a reason for the insane campaign against us and against other organizations, because they’re busy covering their asses and preventing the citizens from knowing what happened there. The minimum they owe us is to give an accounting in an independent committee.”

“What’s really disturbing about Operation Cast Lead is not the ordinary soldiers. The true problematic situation is the general policy, that they tell soldiers ‘Go in and shoot, you’re at war – whatever moves should be taken down.’ They were also told ‘Don’t fire on women and children,’ but when you tell the the air force that before entering a neighborhood you survey the area and any man, even if he’s unarmed, is a legitimate target, that’s problematic.”

“Take, for example, an incident that took place on Salah al-Din Street, in the Zeitoun neighborhood [of Gaza City], the southernmost house that the IDF seized in the war. A Givati soldier sees someone approaching 200 meters from the south. The order is that it’s forbidden to cross from south to north. The sergeant looks and realizes right away that he’s not a threat. He’s an old man who’s walking with a flashlight turned on. The sergeant gets on the two-way radio and requests permission to fire warning shots. The company commander refuses and asks him to wait, gathering the soldiers on the roof in the meantime. The old man is 150 meters away, the sergeant once again requests permission, the company commander once again refuses. The same happens at 100 meters.”

“The sergeant is tense because he knows that if the old man approaches, he’ll be killed. When the old man is at a distance of 80 meters he asks permission again, and again is refused. When he’s at a distance of 35 meters, they open fire on him and he falls and dies. The company commander gets on the radio and says: ‘We have a nice start to the evening.’ We have two eyewitnesses to this story and another two who heard the conversation on the radio.”

To what extent do such cases represent what happened in Operation Cast Lead, as indicated by the eyewitness accounts?

“When the operation began I remember that we sat in the office and watched the broadcasts and said that this time it’s a different story, and it turned out that we were right. To date we have collected testimonies from 26 soldiers who served in Operation Cast Lead – half of them in the regular army and half of them reservists. Operation Cast Lead was the first time the IDF admittedly crossed lines that had not been crossed before. The soldiers were told not to risk their lives at all. It was the first time that the IDF said ‘I don’t care about the other side.’ It’s not that they wanted a lot of casualties, but the familiar criteria of targets – a person with the means and intention of causing injury – were overturned. From the moment they tossed down flyers calling on the civilians to go outside, anyone who stayed inside was an enemy; it’s enough for you to be male or to move near a window, and you become a target.”

“You can’t say that you don’t know in advance that you’re going to harm civilians. You can’t fire artillery at neighborhoods and say that you didn’t mean to fire on civilians, and the worst thing is to continuing lying to civilians.”

Meaning what?

“Take the story of the ‘neighbor procedure,’ because of which the military advocate general decided to put an officer on trial. This case appears in the brochure we published. It was a case of armed men inside the house. [IDF soldiers] sent the owner of the house several times to ask them to surrender. The IDF claimed that it was done at the request of the owner of the house, who was afraid they would demolish his house. But according to the information we have, there was far more than one human shield in that area. It was a regular procedure to send Palestinians to check houses. The code name for that was ‘Johnny.’ They would say ‘Johnny is entering to check that the house is clean, and then we go in.’”

“When we published this evidence, the IDF spokesman jumped on us and denied it and they tried to impose a silencing campaign. Now there’s a story here that you said didn’t happen and suddenly it turns out that it did happen. You lied brazenly to all the Jewish people. Someone has to pay the price for that lie.”

Your organization’s credibility was attacked after Operation Cast Lead. How do you defend yourselves?

“Since founding Breaking the Silence, we have understood that there are two things that will put an end to the project. The first is if they catch one of the soldiers providing testimony and send him to jail, whether because he talked or whether because of the things about which he testified. That’s why we’re extremely cautious regarding the identity of the soldiers.”

“The second thing is credibility. For every significant story we demand two eyewitnesses, we conduct an investigation [by speaking] with other soldiers, record conversations and verify with B’Tselem and other organizations. There are lots of stories that we’ll never publicize because there isn’t enough verification. But today we are seeing that the first time the IDF tried to attack our credibility, it failed”

As a Nahal fighter and as someone familiar with Hebron, what is your opinion of the Internet video clip showing Nahal soldiers dancing in the streets of Hebron?

“I see it mainly as a reflection of your loss of sensitivity as a soldier, of boredom, of the nothingness in which you find yourself. It’s an entertaining way of reducing the boredom. But what mainly drives me crazy is that it’s causing such an uproar in the media.”

“In Hebron there are Palestinian families who have to climb a ladder in order to leave the house, because their street has been defined as a sterile street, and the story we see is soldiers dancing in the street for a video clip. Mainly it seems absurd to me.”

Link to report.

Goldstone: Asymmetric legal warfare