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Ad Hominem

There are two kinds of ad hominem: the conventional attack on an argument by attacking the reputation of the author, and the less frequently identified inverse ad hominem, where one supports an argument by invoking the good reputation of the author. Neither are necessarily fallacious -- one can reasonably trust or mistrust a source based on past performance. But in the case of the Goldstone report, both these arguments must receive close scrutiny. Supporters consistently dismiss criticism by claiming that the attack on Goldstone is ad hominem when, as in the case with this site, most criticism focuses first, and above all, on substantive arguments; and, at the same time, consistently defending the report not by an analysis of its content or reasoning, but by an appeal to Goldstone's sterling reputation. We contend that, once one has systematically explored the pervasive flaws of the Report, the question arises: What happened to Goldstone? How did a man known for his courage and fairness end up becoming the chief architect of such a travesty of justice? Our argument runs ab re [absurdo] ad usque hominem ipsum: from the deeply flawed argument to a questioning of the judgment of the man who articulated it himself.

Dershowitz, Goldstone Report is an ad hominem, JPost, 27/9/09

Dershowitz argues about the multiple ways that ad hominem arguments are involved in assessing the Goldstone Report, which is itself an ad hominem attack on Israel.

Sunday Sep 27, 2009

Double Standard Watch: Goldstone report is an ad hominem attack

Posted by Alan M. Dershowitz

The definition of the ad hominem fallacy is to respond to substantive arguments solely by attacking the person who offered them. The mirror image of this classic fallacy is to try to bolster arguments solely by praising the person who offered them. This is what is happening with respect to the notorious Goldstone report regarding Israel's conduct during the Gaza War.

Had Richard Goldstone, a distinguished judge and a prominent Jew, not been the author of the United Nations Human Rights Council report on Israel, it would be tossed in the trash barrel along with other one-sided and biased reports by this prejudiced group which targets only Israel for human rights violations. But those seeking to defend this indefensible report point to Goldstone's authorship as proof that it must have credibility. He has in effect placed his "Hechsher," that is, his religious certification of purity, on this impure report. It is appropriate, therefore, to respond to this argument by discrediting its author and his selfish motives for granting his imprimatur to conclusions which he well knows are false, incomplete, misleading and bigoted.

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Lipton, writing for Muzzlewatch, uses the double ad hominem: opponents of the report resort to smears; Goldstone's bona fides are "iron-clad."

Predictably, the usual suspects have been working overtime to smear any and all that might be associated with the report. Obviously, the UN is an easy target for such people, unfortunately, Goldstone, himself, is a tougher nut to crack. His “friend of Israel” bone fides are iron clad as his probity in investigating war crimes in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Goldstone has personally, notwithstanding vicious inuendo (see below) responded forcefully to any claims of bias, or vile claims of “self-hatred.”

UN Report on Cast Lead, Jewish Self-Hatred and Spin

Posted on September 24 2009 by Rob Lipton under Gaza , Ha'aretz , Media , United Nations.

The recent release of the UN study headed by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone is a watershed of sorts in the diplomatic history of Israel. An ardent supporter/friend of Israel with family living in Israel, Goldstone’s report is sober yet scathing regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza. The report details not just the slaughter of civilians but the seemingly planned destruction of civilian infrastructure that could, in no way, be considered militarily related (unless the futile goal was to make the bombed civilians turn against Hamas). The report also unequivocally condemns Hamas for the war crime of firing on civilian populations in Israel, and likely for that reason, both Israel and Hamas were finally able to agree on one thing, their condemnation of the report.

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Heller, blogging at Opinio Iuris, discusses key issues of the Goldstone Commission, including the controversy around Christine Chinkin, and focuses a considerable amount of analysis on the issue of "ad hominem" attacks.

The Inevitable Attack on the Goldstone Commission

by Kevin Jon Heller

Although often critical of Israel, I have always been sympathetic to Israeli claims that the UN Human Rights Council has deliberately appointed individuals to investigate conditions in the Palestinian territories who were either actually biased against Israel or who at least could not avoid the appearance of bias. I was completely opposed, for example, to the HRC’s decision to appoint Richard Falk a Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.”

The Goldstone Commission, however, is a different kettle of fish entirely. Justice Goldstone is, to put it mildly, one of the most eminent international lawyers in the world — a judge for nine years on the Constitutional Court of South Africa; the first Chief Prosecutor of the ad hoc Tribunals; a member of the international panel appointed by Argentina to investigate Nazi activity in the country since 1938; the chairperson of the international inquiry into Kosovo; and so on. He is also Jewish and a trustee of Hebrew University in Israel. So it is difficult to plausibly maintain that he is biased against Israel — particularly given that one of his first acts after being appointed by the HRC to investigate Operation Cast Lead was to publicly announce that he would not abide by HRC Res. S-9/1’s indefensible request to limit the fact-finding mission to Israel’s war crimes, but would investigate Hamas’s war crimes, as well.

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Nicuccio, writing at the Amnesty International blog offers a good example of the defense, "they just do ad hominem arguments."

Shooting the messenger (and everyone else): investigating war crimes in Gaza

16 September 2009 at 12:42 by Niluccio

Tags: Gaza Richard Goldstone war crimes Israel Palestinians The Cockney Rejects Oi music

The finding from the UN investigator Judge Richard Goldstone that both the Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes in Gaza at the beginning of the year has met with two predictable responses.

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Antony Lerman articulates the "ad hominem" in both its forms to defend Goldstone: "they just use ad homimem arguments," and "Goldstone's credentials are far superior to those of his critics."

Judge Goldstone and the pollution of argument

Attacks on human rights groups that probe Israel's Gaza offensive are an insult to reasonable public debate

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Antony Lerman
The Guardian, Tuesday 15 September 2009

The despicable attacks on human rights organisations investigating Israel's Gaza offensive in January confirm Churchill's observation: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." The mission led by the South African judge Richard Goldstone to investigate international human rights and international humanitarian law violations during Israel's offensive, established by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), is the latest victim. His findings are about to be made public. The knives have been out for the mission for months. Now they are being plunged into him and his colleagues. Until the report is out Goldstone can't defend it. So the smears and misrepresentation are left free to pollute public discourse.

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In his Jerusalem Post blog, a couple of days after the initial draft of the report was released, Alan Dershowitz launched a fiery attack on Goldstone at his blog, "Double Standard Watch." The article engages in several arguments that strike at the persons involved in the Mission, primarily Goldstone himself.

Thursday Sep 17, 2009

Double Standard Watch: Goldstone investigation undercuts human rights

Posted by Alan M. Dershowitz
Comments: 11

Richard Goldstone - the primary author of a one-sided United Nations attack on Israeli actions during the Gaza war - has now become a full-fledged member of the international bash-Israel chorus. His name will forever be linked in infamy with such distorters of history and truth as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Jimmy Carter. The so-called report commissioned by the notorious United Nations Human Rights Council and issued under his name is so filled with lies, distortions and blood libels that it could have been drafted by Hamas extremists. Wait - in effect, it was!

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Melanie Phillips addresses why Dershowitz, with whom she agrees in this case, makes an ad hominem attack on Goldstone.

The 'human rights' witch-hunt

FRIDAY, 25TH SEPTEMBER 2009

As readers may know, I have had my differences with the American civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz – specifically, over how American Jews can continue to support Barack Obama given his acute hostility towards Israel and appeasement of the Arab and Islamic world. Nonetheless, all credit to Dershowitz for mounting a devastating onslaught upon Richard Goldstone and his shocking travesty of justice masquerading as judicious analysis for the UN Human Rights Commission on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. In this piece, Dershowitz accuses Goldstone of conducting a ‘kangaroo court’ in which he "abandoned all principles of objectivity and neutral human rights."

And in this terrific piece he excoriates Goldstone’s ‘wilful and deliberate’ refusal to hear the other side of the story – Israel’s side: the most elementary precondition of justice and fairness. As I wrote here, the mandate Goldstone was given by the UN required him to be thus one-sided and unjust, singling out Israel alone for investigation and thus merely collecting the evidence to uphold the prior verdict of guilt – an utter negation of legal and ethical principles which he sought to conceal by presenting a dubiously revised version of his mandate which bestowed a veneer of even-handedness, while delivering precisely the rigged verdict that the UN had required of him. Dershowitz tears him to shreds by showing how he refused to take evidence from Col Richard Kemp, Britain’s former commander in Afghanistan who had previously stated that during Cast Lead Israel had behaved with globally unprecedented ethical care to avoid killing Palestinian civilians -- evidence which would have holed below the water-line the blood-libel Goldstone was assembling from overwhelmingly partisan sources that Israel had deliberately targeted civilians.

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