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The Goldstone Report not only ignored evidence of Palestinian media and religious hate speech and the incitement to violence against Israelis, it even entertained the proposal that Israel is the real culprit in demonizing the "other." The questions/statements of the judges, the claims and accusations of the report, show a radical ignorance of the situation in Palestinian territories, especially under the control of Hamas. This issue may constitute the single most important factor in the conflict, contributing at a fundamental level to the perdurance of the conflict, to the suicidal hatreds that motivate much aggression towards Israel. The committee's disregard for this element in the story represents one of its greatest failures of "due diligence," a failure for which the NGOs, the MSNM, and other "reporters" from the territories are also consistently guilty.
The failure of the MSNM to cover this aspect of the problem took on a particularly striking and dangerous profile at the beginning of the Second Intifada, when even reporters investigating incitement covered it in silence.
William Orme, correspondent for the New York Times, came to Israel in November of 2000, to explore the Israeli claim that Palestinian “incitement” drove much of the violence of the Second Intifada. In his article, “A Parallel Mideast Battle: Is It News or Incitement?”, he tackled the case of Sheikh Halabiya who, on Palestinian TV, called for killing Jews everywhere:
The Jews are the Jews. Whether Labor or Likud the Jews are Jews... They must be butchered and must be killed… It is forbidden to have mercy in your hearts for the Jews in any place and in any land. Make war on them any place that you find yourself. Any place that you meet them, kill them.”
When it came to the case of Halabiya, Orme wrote:
"Israelis cite as one egregious example a televised sermon that defended the killing of the two soldiers [at Ramallah on October 12, 2000]. “Whether Likud or Labor, Jews are Jews," proclaimed Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabaya in a live broadcast from a Gaza City mosque the day after the killings.
The Palestinian success in silencing the news media on the subject of their indoctrination to hatred and genocidal incitement comes out clearly in an exchange between Colonel Travers questioned two Palestinian psychiatrists, allowing them to project Palestinian attitudes onto the Israelis. Elihu Richter, who tried to draw the Commission's attention to these matters with a brief submitted during their hearings, concluded that the report systematically failed to recognize the problem and, as a result, failed to understand Hamas' behavior:
In his search for the appearance of false symmetry between Israel, a society committed to life, live and let live, and Hamas - an authoritarian, repressive terror organization committed to death, Judge Goldstone has advanced the use of "asymmetric lawfare" on behalf of the asymmetric warfare waged by genocidal terrorists ("armed organizations" in his report). Judge Goldstone's ignoring of state sanctioned incitement and hate language by Hamas and its benefactor, Iran, is the equivalent of a traffic cop ignoring radar evidence that a driver is doing 190 kph on a city street and has a blood alcohol concentration of 0.30%.
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Goldstone Commissioner Suggests Israelis Conditioned to Kill Children
September 21, 2009 by Gilead Ini
Months before the Goldstone Commission report was finished and publicized, one commissioner — having clearly accepted as incontrovertible fact the most inflammatory and dubious accusations by Palestinian witnesses — had made up his mind that Israelis are conditioned to kill children.
On June 29, Desmond Travers, one of four commissioners who participated in the Human Rights Council's "Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict," turned to Gaza psychiatrist and veteran anti-Israel activist Eyad El-Sarraj (also spelled Iyyad El-Sarraji) and his colleague Ahmed Abu-Tawahina for their "professional insights" into the mental state of Israelis. The exchange is telling, not least because it revealed the credulity with which Palestinian accusations of Israeli brutality were accepted.
During his questioning, Travers stated as fact that "there have been instances of the shooting of children in front of their parents." And apparently having ruled out that such events (if, in fact, they did occur) could have been the result of the chaos and fog of war, he told his "witness" Sarraj, "I find that kind of action to be very, very strange and very unique." With this introduction complete, he moved on to his question:
I would like to ask you if you have any professional insights as to what mindset or what conditioning or what training could bring around a state of behavior that would cause a soldier, a fellow human being to shoot children in front of their parents. Do you have any professional insights into that kind of behavior?
The response to this loaded question was predictable. The "psychological profile of the Israeli soldier" is one of ever increasing hatred. In the first intifada, children threw stones at Israeli soldiers to "protect their streets, which is the only place for children to play." Israel decided to respond by "killing and violent killing" — proof of the "psychological instability" of Israeli troops. "The Palestinian in the eyes of the Israeli soldier is not an equal human being," and is often seen as a "demon." Israelis think that "I am superior to this world and I can oppress it." They are paranoid. Because the psychological problems were not treated, it became the "perpetual state" of Israelis' minds. Yes, Palestinians "can" demonize and hate Israelis, but this is a "reaction" to Israeli oppression. Compared to Israelis, "the Palestinians have a greater capacity ... to deal with the Israelis as equal human beings, as a whole human being." Israelis identify with, and behave like, the Nazis.
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Prof. Elihu Richter, Director of Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University submitted a Brief to Goldstone and his Mission in June of 2009 in which he laid out the issues for consideration. The Mission sought out no corroboration in its work in Gaza, and used none of this material in its judgments.
….Between June 1 2008 and Jan 29 2009 the UN’s executive organs, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council remained silent in the face of…. [Hamas’ and Iran’s] incitement,[to genocide], ignoring their responsibilities under the UN Genocide Convention. This silence persisted despite the precedents from previous genocides, notably Rwanda, that such hate language is a warning sign, predictor, and catalyst of genocide….
…If the Commission fails to call for criminal prosecution of the known facts concerning the cruel and inhuman mis-treatment of Gilad Schalit, the Hamas rocket and terror attacks directed against civilians, and the incitement and hate language, by Hamas and Iran, it will recycle the culture of impunity for such violations of human rights to life, respect for llife and human dignity. By failing to pursue these actions, it will itself have become a complicit bystander to these crimes….
Excerpts from Brief
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The following is a selection of a Memorandum sent by Maurice Ostroff to the UNHRC on the Goldstone Report
September 27, 2009, dealing with the material relevant to this section.
Analyses of Arab media, incitement and dehumanization (see Appendix B)
Since the members of the Mission are not fluent in Arabic they were neither able to assess the influence of public opinion in Gaza, nor the extent of the pervasive incitement and dehumanization that continues in mosques, schools, and on official TV. In the circumstances, it is egregious that recommendations to invite testimony from specialist organizations that document and translate the Arab media were ignored.
During an interview on Al Jazeera TV, Judge Goldstone emphasized that dehumanization of the other is the primary factor in the commission of horrific acts like genocide. Despite this, not a single word is mentioned about the daily incitement against infidels, Jews, and Israel that continues unabated in PA mosques and schools, contrary to the Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap. In the At Al Omari mosque, the imam refers to Jews as "the brothers of apes and pigs." In a video presentation received, but ignored by theMission, a three year old is taught that Jews are the sons of pigs and apes, and a school class is taught to strive for martyrdom by killing as many Jews as possible. See:
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Elihu Richter, head of the Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University, sent Goldstone a brief during the time of their investigation. Here he addresses the issue of how Goldstone's claims that had Israel cooperated, it would have been "beneficial to [her] interests," by pointing out the dramatic disparity between the UN's record of investigating real war crimes and genocidal deeds and their singling out of Israel.
Tuesday Sep 29, 2009
Posted by Prof. Elihu D. Richter
I can prove the phoniness of Judge Goldstone's claim in The Jerusalem Post that had the Government of Israel submitted its case to his Commission, the latter could have been encouraged to move in a new direction, "beneficial to Israeli interests." The implication of Goldstone's statement is that Israel, not the Commission, is responsible for the latter's errors of omission and commission.
I personally submitted a nine-page, annotated and referenced brief to the Commission last July. Goldstone's claim that the Commission was driven by the evidence is refuted by the fact that the Mission ignored my brief and its attached evidence. Subsequently, I have published additional evidence showing that the high male-female ratio of fatalities among Palestinians in Gaza argues for the combatant status of many whom human rights organizations classified as non-combatants, and supports other investigations making the same point.
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Indoctrinating Palestinian Children to Genocidal HateBy: Manfred Gerstenfeld
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, December 23, 2008
In both the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas-ruled territory of Gaza there are carefully planned widespread campaigns of incitement of children. These lead to Palestinian children aspiring to be involved in terrorist actions. The following interview with the psychiatrist and pathologist Dr. Daphne Burdman examines the strongly held cultural beliefs that engender this incitement. Burdman was assistant clinical professor of pathology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. army
MG: Can you tell us briefly how the process of incitement works?
DB: In both the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas-ruled territory of Gaza there are carefully planned, widespread campaigns of incitement of children. These have induced profound effects on the psychology of Palestinian children. Due to this indoctrination children start viewing positively their involvement in terrorist actions in which they risk their lives. This process of incitement should be better documented. Thereafter it should be analyzed how this fits into the broader picture of Palestinian and Muslim genocidal ideology. Finally, methods of detoxifying brainwashed children should be discussed.
MG: Why do we know so little about it?
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