UNDERSTANDING
THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

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]

Your criticisms of the “Palestinian armed groups” are not only far fewer and more limited but are also much more tentative and measured, and of course Hamas itself is almost untouched. As described above, for the most part you simply avoid looking at Palestinian offences, either just saying you are “not in a position to make any finding” or expressly exonerating them “on the basis of your investigations” or on occasion saying you “cannot exclude the possibility” of bad actions. Of course, you cannot avoid acknowledging that “Palestinian armed groups have launched about 8,00035 rockets and mortars into southern Israel since 2001”. These rocket attacks, you determined (in your boldest accusation against the Palestinians), “constitute indiscriminate attacks upon the civilian population of southern Israel and that where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into a civilian population, they constitute a deliberate attack against a civilian population. These acts would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity. Given the seeming inability of the Palestinian armed groups to direct the rockets and mortars towards specific targets and given the fact that the attacks have caused very little damage to Israeli military assets, the Mission finds that there is significant evidence to suggest that one of the primary purposes of the rocket and mortar attacks is to spread terror amongst the Israeli civilian population, a violation of international law.” (109) The tone and equivocation with which you make this one finding against “Palestinian armed groups” is quite different to that used in your multiple accusations of war crimes against Israel. And of course the charge is virtually meaningless anyway because no party that can be held accountable is named.

Israel can do nothing right in your eyes. Another striking feature of your Report is how every positive action Israel takes is twisted into a negative and an accusation, generally of war crimes. We have already noted how the very substantial amount of humanitarian aid facilitated and delivered by Israel even in the midst of an ongoing war was regarded by you as inadequate to fulfill its obligation as “Occupying Power” and thus a violation of the Geneva Convention. The same pattern is evident in your consideration of the multi-level warning system Israel instituted to try to minimize civilian casualties which has been described as “unprecedented in the history of warfare”.36

You do devote two lines to acknowledging Israel’s efforts is this regard: “The Mission

acknowledges the significant efforts made by Israel to issue warnings through telephone calls, leaflets and radio broadcasts and accepts that in some cases, particularly when the warnings were sufficiently specific, they encouraged residents to leave an area and get out of harms way.” (37)

But you then proceed to spend about ten pages detailing why these efforts were imperfect and inadequate, so that Israel’s conduct still amounted to war crimes. One particular case is quite instructive. Israel was aware that a favorite Hamas tactic when they receive a warning that a particular house is about to be targeted (because it is used for storing weapons or for some other reason) is to send people (civilians?) up onto the roof to wave off the Israeli planes. It is not clear whether these “human shields” perform this task willingly, as suggested by Hamas leader Fathi Hammad,37 or are coerced, but in either case the fact that they do it suggests they have a greater appreciation for the IDF’s restraint than you seem to have.

Knowing this, Israel invested in the technology and training to effect a “warning shot” by missile, the practice referred to as “roof knocking”. There is video evidence of its efficacy. This tactic could be viewed as an innovative effort to add a layer of warning to lower the risk of [p. 15] civilian casualties when striking at legitimate military targets. You, however, chose to describe it as “reckless in the extreme” saying: “the idea that an attack, however limited in itself, can be understood as an effective warning in the meaning of article 57 (2) (c) [of Chapter IV of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions] is rejected by the Mission.” (530 to 533) One wonders if you would apply the same standard to any warning shot, which I expect would be a novel interpretation of the laws of war.

I will cite one final example of how in your Report almost everything Israel does is twisted to portray it in the worst possible light. Your Report notes that, because of the thousands of rockets that have been launched at Sderot and other Israeli cities and towns nears the Gaza border, Israel installed at great cost a warning system that would give residents 15 seconds warning of incoming rockets. Your principle reason for mentioning this appears be so that you can condemn “the disparity in treatment of Jewish and Palestinian citizens by the Government of Israel in the installation of early warning systems and provision of public shelters and fortified schools between its Jewish and Palestinian citizens” even though the Palestinian towns and informal villages are not the target of the rocket attacks from Gaza. (110, 1714)