NGOs vs. Goldstone: NGO Monitor Analysis

NGO Monitor
13 April '11

Judge Richard Goldstone's Washington Post op-ed (April 1, 2011), retracting the substance of the UNHRC "Goldstone Report" on the Gaza conflict, undermines the credibility of the NGOs that provided the false allegations of "deliberate killings" by the Israeli army. In response, NGOs (HRW, B'Tselem, Amnesty, PCHR, NIF, and others) have issued numerous statements distorting and rewriting Goldstone's words, in an effort to preserve their credibility.

NGO Monitor has documented the central role of NGOs in advancing dubious charges of Israeli "war crimes" in Gaza. These analyses were reflected in articles about Goldstone's op-ed, including Mort Zuckerman in the U.S. News, Colin Rubenstein in The Australian, as well as Stuart Robinowitz's detailed reprimand of Human Rights Watch for failing to admit its error or apologize for "its charge that Israel deliberately targeted civilians."

Major NGO distortions of Goldstone's retraction include:

· Human Rights Watch (HRW) was a major force behind the production of the Goldstone report. In the effort to unravel and spin Goldstone's retraction, HRW director Kenneth Roth has published two op-eds (Jerusalem Post and Guardian) and a letter to the New York Times - all in one week.

· In this campaign, Roth reiterates HRW's discredited accusation of "widespread and systematic" attacks that "clearly reflected Israeli policy," while Goldstone acknowledges "that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of [IDF] policy."

· Goldstone writes that "our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith.... McGowan Davis [the UN committee that wrote the Goldstone follow-on report] has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree." However, in Roth's version, "the UN report raised serious doubts about the thoroughness of these investigations."

· Roth claims that "Human Rights Watch... never made" allegations that the report originally quoted and which Goldstone then retracted. In contrast, as documented systematically by NGO Monitor and Prof. David Bernstein, numerous HRW reports, press releases, etc., as well as op-eds by Roth relating to the Gaza conflict, specifically and falsely accuse high-ranking Israeli officials of deliberately targeting civilians.

· B'Tselem Director Jessica Montell's Washington Post op-ed (April 5) also sought to erase her organization's central role in the Goldstone Report. However, in 2009, B'Tselem boasted having "provided assistance to the investigative staff of the Goldstone mission from the beginning to the end of its research," and this NGO has led campaigns lobbying governments to endorse the discredited report's recommendations targeting Israel.

· Eleven Israeli political advocacy NGOs issued a press release (April 4), falsely claiming that "Goldstone's statements support our consistent position" that Israel should launch an "independent investigation." The unsubstantiated claims from these groups were repeated in the now rejected report. (In a submission to the Goldstone commission, many of these NGOs alleged that Israel "wag[ed] a campaign [that] was planned as a punitive operation" and that there is "grave suspicion regarding the legality of the entire military operation.")

· PCHR's Raji Sourani sought to attribute Goldstone's retraction to a "psychological war orchestrated by Jewish and Israeli groups." PCHR was also a leading source of allegations that were copied in the report.

· In Amnesty International's spin, Goldstone's recognition of error was "deliberately misinterpret[ed]" by Israeli officials in a "cynical attempt to avoid accountability for war crimes....." Amnesty was very active in promoting the false accusations in the report, and provided the list of 36 incidents - all focusing on allegations against Israel.

· New Israel Fund (NIF) released a statement claiming, "Following 'Operation Cast Lead,' the human rights organizations supported by NIF called for the Israeli government to set up an independent commission of inquiry. Had the government agreed, this would have prevented the establishment of the Goldstone Commission." This assertion is unfounded. The UN Human Rights Council's resolution creating the biased "fact-finding mission" was adopted on January 12, 2009 - during the fighting. This implementation of the Durban strategy by the UNHRC to target Israel, and the contributions of NIF-funded NGOs, were not dependent on whether or not Israel carried out investigations.

· Eleven Palestinian NGOs published an open letter (April 7) rejecting Goldstone's article, alleging that the "many civilian casualties and the extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure during Operation Cast Lead cannot be attributed to human error alone....The failure of domestic investigations necessitates recourse to international justice mechanisms, including the referral by the UN security council to the international criminal court [sic]."

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