| Augean Stables: (Another) Open Letter to Judge Goldstone |
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(Another) Open Letter to Judge Goldstone The following appears (in an earlier draft) in the Jerusalem Post. This version contains links, and an added paragraph on incitement (HT/Elihu Richter). Dear Judge Goldstone,  I am one of those who have read your report, and have followed your subsequent comments about it. I just read your most recent statements in the Jerusalem Post and Ha-Aretz (for those who can’t read Hebrew, consult the CAMERA’s discussion). Once again you repeat, unchanged, two prominent claims:
 Now your first claim is a counter-factual, hence speculative. But even then, it’s misleading. While Israel didn’t cooperate officially, through various channels (Israeli NGOs, Daniel Reizner, the former head of the International Law department at the IDF), Israel submitted extensive evidence to your committee. You not only ignored these submissions, but to this day refuse to put them up at the UNHRC website devoted to your Mission.  Your second claim, however, is more concrete; and here the evidence against your is formidable. There is an extensive and substantive critique of your Report. In fact most close readers – even neutral ones – find the Report surprisingly unprofessional and stunningly credulous in its handling of evidence. These critiques are available online (collected at a handy website), and your denial that they have any substance contradicts your second claim categorically. Why would it have made any difference if Israel had participated in the Mission’s work, since you have and continue to ignore any evidence that contradicts your findings against them? Are you really saying, it’s too bad Israel didn’t participate because then the findings would be still more damning?  One Gazan told a journalist:  The Hamas militants looked for good places to provoke the Israelis. They were usually youths, 16 or 17 years old, armed with submachine guns. They couldn’t do anything against a tank or jet.They knew they were much weaker. But they wanted the [Israelis] to shoot at the [the civilians’] houses so they could accuse them of more war crimes [emphasis added].  By ignoring the issue, you have played into this cannibalistic strategy and left Palestinian civilians in the grip of a predatory and merciless elite.  Despite your claims of even-handedness, Hamas reads your report as vindication:  All paragraphs in the Goldstone report convict Israel and totally exonerate Hamas from any misconduct. For instance, the report exonerates Hamas from the accusation of using civilians as human shields and attributes this accusation to Israeli forces… even when the report is dealing with the rockets that were launched from Gaza, it speaks about military groups without naming Hamas.  They read your report carefully. They noticed you almost never mentioned them and when you did, it was largely favorably. Â
 For all your claims of courageously criticizing Hamas, you actually only charged them with deeds of which they are proud – targeting Israelis. You studiously avoided the truly shameful material – their targeting of their own civilians, their cruel engineering of a “humanitarian crisis†by, for example, blocking medical supplies and ambulances at the Egyptian border.  And if their victimization of their own civilians might be shameful in the eyes of their own people, how much the more would a systematic discussion of their incitement to hatred and genocidal violence be in the eyes of the Western world. You had extensive evidence of this problem presented to your committee by people who are specifically concernedwith, and experts in, the problems of genocide, and you yourself know from the Rwandan case how incitement can lead to genocide. And yet…not a word. Would it have made too strong a case for Israel? Or were you afraid of Hamas’ disapproval?  The fact that you have (presumably) read the substantive critiques of your Report, and really do think they’re “marginal,†calls into question the soundness of your judgment. They may be wrong, but they are fundamental. It is for you to respond. You say Israel should want to be held to the highest standards of human rights; surely you wish to be held to the highest standards of legal reasoning, no?  And yet, you have avoided any criticism. CAMERA, one of your more severe and always substantive critics, actually submitted a formal inquiry to you about specific but vital aspects of your report. After repeated requests for acknowledgment, you responded, “I confirm receipt of your letter. I have no intention of responding to your letter.†This is part of a pattern in which you avoid either debates, or potentially critical interviews, a pattern followed by the other members of your mission.  It is as if you felt you could safely ignore the critique and preach only to the choir, a world-wide community of human rights activists, who fete your accomplishment continuously. As the fox told the crow: “all flattery exists at the expense of he who listens to it.†If you just listen to those who praise you and shun those who speak their mind, then you become a legend in your own mind, and you mistake your reputation for reality. In the end, you shore up a grotesque farce of “international human rights,†orchestrated by the Organization of Islamic Conference and the UNHRC, which actually promotes all the forces most hostile to your cause.  If international law is going to defend human rights, it must do so on the basis of a fair assessment of the evidence, of an honest exchange of criticism, not by assuming the innocence and honesty of the Palestinian underdog. Despite Bertrand Russell’s warning about the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed, your colleague Hina Jilani seems to feel that “it would be cruel not to give credence to [the Palestinians] testimony.†You trample underfoot the biblical wisdom: “Neither favor the powerful nor be partial to the poor, but judge justly.†Indeed you have favored the powerful (Hamas) by considering them the poor (Palestinians), when in fact they victimize their own powerless.  If you have any respect for the rights you claim to uphold, especially those of the Palestinians, any concern for your own intellectual integrity, or for the understanding of the global audience you address, then you will take your critics more seriously, and respond to them, both in writing and in public exchanges. Â
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