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Pro & Con Defenders Kevin John Heller, The Inevitable Attack on the Goldstone Commission, Opinio Juris, 14/9/09
Pro & Con Defenders Kevin John Heller, The Inevitable Attack on the Goldstone Commission, Opinio Juris, 14/9/09
| Kevin John Heller, The Inevitable Attack on the Goldstone Commission, Opinio Juris, 14/9/09 |
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The Inevitable Attack on the Goldstone CommissionThe 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. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped the Israeli government and groups that reject any and all criticism of Israel from attacking the Goldstone Commission:
These are tired and predictable attacks. Apparently, only individuals who have never publicly expressed an opinion on Israel and Hamas are entitled to investigate the situation in Gaza; criticizing both sides, as Chinkin has done — you can read the letter in question here — disqualifies you as being anti-Israel. (Because, of course, the only “unbiased†position is one that assumes that Israel never does anything wrong.) The hypocrisy is self-evident: we all know that the Israeli government and the lawyers mentioned above would have had no problem with Chinkin if she had only criticized Hamas. The attacks on Justice Goldstone himself, however, are even more disturbing. UN Watch, a right-wing NGO, isn’t shy about expressing its disdain for him: “no one has ever disputed that the Arab-controlled Human Rights Council deliberately selected individuals who had made up their mind well in advance — not only that Israel was guilty, but that a democratic state with an imperfect but respected legal system should be considered the same as, or worse than, a terrorist group.â€Â Their evidence for Justice Goldstone having already decided, despite his history and his reputation, that Israel is guilty and is no better than Hamas? Precisely none. Not that those who are attacking the Goldstone Commission care. Their goal is to discredit the Commission at any cost, not to understand what actually happened in Gaza. If doing so requires them to impugn the integrity of one of the world’s most respected human-rights defenders, that is a price they are more than willing to pay. ADDENDUM: It is incredibly revealing that NGO Monitor’s tendentious attack on the Goldstone Commission mentions that Justice Goldstone was a member of Human Rights Watch — andnothing else about his personal history.
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