UNDERSTANDING
THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

Between Goldstone and Gaza, what's one more zero?

By Martin Kramer (The Sandbox)

posted Thursday, 10 December 2009

I've been reading through the part of the Goldstone Report treating the economic impact of Operation Cast Lead—a part that hasn't gotten much attention. It's largely a crib of a March 2009 report compiled by the Palestinian Federation of Industries, whose deputy general-secretary, Amr Hamad, was interviewed three separate times by the mission. The mission deemed both the report and Hamad's testimony to be "reliable and credible."

The most important sentence in this section of the Goldstone Report is this one: "Mr. Amr Hamad indicated that 324 factories had been destroyed during the Israeli military operations at a cost of 40,000 jobs" (paragraph 1009). I did a double-take when I read that: 40,000 would be astonishing in an economy like Gaza's. This is what Hamad said in his testimony (June 28, Goldstone in the chair):

Alex Safian analyzes the way Goldstone uses evidence from the Israelis that suggests that Hamas was firing at them from Al Quds Hospital.   A first-year graduate student would not be permitted such license with sources, and this comes from a seasoned professional. Did he read his own report carefully? Did he check the footnotes?  A classic case of "the Goldstone Standard."

Goldstone's Use of Israeli Evidence: The Case of Al Quds Hospital

Alex Safian, CAMERA

September 18, 2009

The United Nations Human Rights Council in April of this year appointed a fact finding mission, led by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, to investigate the fighting in December and January between Hamas and Israel. That mission, which also included Christine Chinkin, Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Ms. Hina Jilani, Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, has now issued its Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.

Because of its belief that the UNHRC, Justice Goldstone and Professor Chinkin had prejudged the outcome of the investigation, the government of Israel did not present official testimony to the commission.

Whether one shares Israel’s concerns over bias or not, the report is harshly critical of Israel, with the UN in its official press release charging that:

there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.

While it also charged that Palestinian missile attacks against Israel may have been war crimes, the vast majority of the report’s 575 pages are taken up with indicting Israel as a serial violator of human rights and the laws of war.

The seriousness of these charges certainly requires meticulous fact finding and painstaking documentation, but this is precisely where the Goldstone report is woefully inadequate.

Excerpt from Trevor Norwitz's open letter to Goldstone, treating the pervasive evidence of bias in the language used when discussing Israel and that used when discussing Hamas.

The Language of Your Report Illustrates Its Bias

As already shown by the various quotes taken from your Report, the language used throughout your Report defies any claim of evenhandedness. This is evident in the big themes, as when you wax eloquent about “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination” without ever noting the denial by Hamas and others who refuse to accept Israel’s legitimacy of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination (and indeed you even call the latter into question yourself32).

And it is evident in the hundreds of little references peppered throughout your recitation of the historical background and your “findings of fact” which are stated in ways unfavorable to Israel (and questionable in fact). To mention just a handful of arbitrary examples: there is the recitation of Israeli aircraft attacking a “car maintenance workshop” (without any explanation that it was probably also a rocket factory) (261); there is the description of the tunnels built under the Gaza-Egypt border as “a lifeline for the Gaza economy and the people” enabling them to get “fuel . . . as well as consumables” without even mentioning the smuggling of rockets, IEDs and other weapons (253 and 320); there are the unsubstantiated incidental “drive-by” allegations of intentional attacks on civilians (for example that an Israeli plane “fired a missile at a group of Palestinian children who were sitting in a street” (260)); there are all those references to “blockades” and “occupation” (even after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza); and of course there is the refusal ever to use the word “terrorist” or “terrorism” except when quoting an Israeli source. Indeed an analysis of the use of the word “terror” of your report will reveal the ironic fact that Israel is the only party in connection with whom you use the word “terrorize”33 and the party you frequently accuse of spreading terror, with just one acknowledgment of the terror caused by over 8,000 rockets fired by Hamas and its ilk (without mentioning them by name of course34).

Differences in Tone and Equivocation.

Your “findings” and accusations against the Israeli government and the IDF, which overwhelmingly dominate your Report, are expressed unequivocally and in words of one syllable using the most serious accusation that can be made: “warcrimes”. You repeat this charge against Israel over and over again. See, for example, paragraphs 1169 to 1173, even though you did offer your standard perfunctory acknowledgement that you did not have all the facts (without saying all the “facts” you did have came from one side): “From the facts available to it, and in the absence of any informationrefuting the allegations that the incidents described above took place, the Mission finds that there have been a number of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law.”(1165) [p. 14]

Goldstone Played Fast & Loose with Evidence and Due Process of Law in His Yugoslav Adventure

UPDATING/REVISION 10-16-2009

In their effort to provide credibility for Richard Goldstone and his deeply prejudicial and simplistic "report" on Gaza warfare, his defenders cite his supposed sterling international reputation, as --among other things-- the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] at the Hague. However, Goldstone is not universally admired for his exertions as prosecutor of that war crimes tribunal. We will show here some of the criticisms of his doings there and will review, or fisk, a report by an investigating committee of the ICTY prosecutor's office [OTP] which was ostensibly meant to inquire whether NATO should be prosecuted before the Tribunal for killing civilians and for attacking civilian sites in Serbia. The committee recommended NOT prosecuting NATO [Surprise, surprise!!] for war crimes during that 1999 war. Goldstone, as might be expected, defended the decision not to prosecute NATO --or even to investigate it more extensively.

Goldstone says Israel guilty until proven innocent

By Ted Belman

October 9, 2009

The Goldstone Commission Inquiry reported that “Israel was guilty of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.” But I thought it was a fact finding inquiry only.

The Forward reports Goldstone: ‘If This Was a Court Of Law, There Would Have Been Nothing Proven.’.

WOW. What an admission.

Tellingly, in an interview with the Forward on October 2, Goldstone himself acknowledged the tentative nature of his findings.

“Ours wasn’t an investigation, it was a fact-finding mission,” he said, sitting in his Midtown Manhattan office at Fordham University Law School, where he is currently visiting faculty. “We made that clear.” For all that gathered information, though, he said, “We had to do the best we could with the material we had. If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”
Goldstone emphasized that his conclusion that war crimes had been committed was always intended as conditional. He still hopes that independent investigations carried out by Israel and the Palestinians will use the allegations as, he said, “a useful road map.”

This is disgusting. Even the ICC holds the accused, innocent until proven guilty. Goldstone reverses this and holds Israel guilty and requires her to prove her innocence.

0.He recalled his work as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal in Yugoslavia in 1994. When he began working, Goldstone was presented with a report commissioned by the U.N. Security Council based on what he said was a fact-finding mission similar to his own in Gaza. “We couldn’t use that report as evidence at all,” Goldstone said. “But it was a useful roadmap for our investigators, for me as chief prosecutor, to decide where we should investigate. And that’s the purpose of this sort of report. If there was an independent investigation in Israel, then I think the facts and allegations referred to in our report would be a useful road map.”
Nevertheless, the report itself is replete with bold and declarative legal conclusions seemingly at odds with the cautious and conditional explanations of its author.

This article goes on to analyse the Report. But in my opinion what I have quoted above says it all.

I also read Richard Landes’ excellent fisking of Goldstone’s NYT Op-Ed but wanted to add something. The indented comments are those of Goldstone.

But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.

He has this backwards. The law prohibits “intentional killing” of protected persons. His language ignores the prohibition and uses language that mandates a duty to protect. The is no such duty.

Many civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt.

Once again he invents a new standard, namely whether civilian deaths were “necessary”.

This is not part of the language of war crimes. The only question is whether civilians were intentionally targeted.

To some extent the law demands that you attack your military object in the way that minimizes civilian casualties if you had options. If you failed to avail yourself of alternatives, it might be said that the ensuing deaths were “unnecessary”. But this is debatable. My legal advisors tell me that the IDF doesn’t have a duty to use smart bombs and can use artillery.

Reading Goldstone carefully, it appears he wanted to force the issue and make Israel carry on an investigation to avoid the ICC. So the inquiry was not so much a fact finding mission as it was a prod to force Israel to hold its own investigation. That’s why he said Israel was guilty. Had he only said Israel might be guilty then the need for Israel to investigate is much reduced.

This is what all the NGO’s do. They don’t say Israel may have committed war crimes but that Israel did commit war crimes. Its all about putting pressure on Israel.

As I mentioned about the ICC itself says that all accused are to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a basic human right. Too bad that the HRW and the others, couldn’t care less.

I wonder if Goldstone can be sued for libel. He made an allegation that Israel was guilty that he himself says has not been proven?