NGO Monitor: Three "Goldstone Committee" Members Continue to Promote False Allegations

NGO Monitor
14 April '11





Statement in Guardian parallel to NGO campaigns

JERUSALEM - In contrast to Judge Richard Goldstone’s honest recognition of the fundamental bias and errors in the report on the Gaza war published by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the other three members of this “fact finding” committee are clinging to its false allegations, notes Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor. The response in the Guardian signed by Hila Jilani, Christine Chinkin, and Desmond Travers closely tracks the language used by Amnesty International and other NGOs in response to Goldstone’s factual reconsideration.

“From the beginning, it was clear that all the members of the so-called ‘fact finding’ exercise lacked the qualifications necessary to asses the events of the Gaza war, as well as demonstrating conflicts of interest and biases. It is also not surprising to see how closely their defense of the report reflects Amnesty International’s own statements,” said Professor Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “Chinkin had been a consultant to Amnesty, while Jilani and Travers signed a highly biased letter spearheaded by Amnesty accusing Israel of “war crimes” before their appointment to the UN body. Now they are again joining forces with Amnesty’s ideologues to counter Goldstone’s belated retraction. Morally, they have an obligation to follow the courageous example of Goldstone, and admit they were wrong.”

NGO Monitor also notes that among the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provided the allegations included in this discredited report, Amnesty was particularly influential. At a UNHRC-run townhall meeting for NGOs in Geneva in May 2009, representatives from Amnesty International gave a detailed outline for the report’s contents to the Goldstone mission members. Indeed, Amnesty’s recommendations closely corresponded to the final report.

Steinberg added, “It took two years, but Judge Goldstone has now acknowledged the obvious – that the UN Human Rights Council is totally biased, and therefore, the mandate, mission and report lack any moral or substantive validity. The fact that Hila Jilani, Christine Chinkin, and Desmond Travers cling to the anti-human rights agenda set by Libya, Iran, Cuba, China, and other core violators at the UNHRC serves to highlight their moral blindness.”


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Goldstone Commission Members Weigh In

RH
CAMERA/Snapshots
14 April '11

The members of the Goldstone commission -- all who have displayed extreme anti-Israel bias (see, for example "Chinkin's Gaza Letter Reveals Bias, But Also Skewed Facts", "Goldstone Commissioner Suggests Israelis Conditioned to Kill Children" and "The Judges: Israel is Already Guilty") -- are doing 'damage control' to preserve their work, now that Richard Goldstone has retracted the central thesis of their UN investigation and report.

Pakistani human rights lawyer Hina Jilani, professor of international law at the London School of Economics Christine Chinkin and former Irish peacekeeper Desmond Travers jointly released a statement stating that they now find it necessary" to dispel any impression that subsequent developments have rendered any part of the mission's report unsubstantiated." They write:

Calls to reconsider or even retract the report, as well as attempts at misrepresenting its nature and purpose, disregard the rights of victims, Palestinians and Israeli, to truth and justice.

On the contrary. The retraction of a false libel addresses the rights of the victims. But, contrary to what they say, Israeli victims have never been of concern to the commission members.

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Editorial: Israel and the UN

Editorial
Chicago Tribune
www.chicagotribune.com
04 April '11

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-goldstone-20110404,0,5871957.story

In 2009, a United Nations panel led by Richard Goldstone issued a 575-page bombshell of a report. It accused Israel of committing war crimes against the Palestinians in a three-week Gaza invasion. The Goldstone report was a diplomatic bonanza for Israel's enemies around the world. The report was so damning that some Israeli officials stopped traveling abroad for fear they'd be arrested for war crimes.

On Friday, Goldstone wrote an op-ed about his report in The Washington Post that can be summarized in two words: Never mind.

"If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document," he wrote. Goldstone said he no longer believed one of the report's most incendiary charges: that Israeli soldiers deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians during its invasion of Gaza.

So where does a nation go to get its reputation back?

Israeli leaders have complained for years that the UN is biased against the Jewish state, that it judges almost every action of Israel through a Palestinian prism.

And now … evidence. Not just a disastrously wrong report. But evidence that the entire enterprise was skewed against Israel from the start.

Skewed is not our word. It's Goldstone's. He writes that he "insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel."

He writes that he "had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the UN Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted."

That should surprise no one. Israel has hardly been blameless in the decades of Middle East strife, but the UN human rights panel has overlooked slaughter and genocide in places around the world and focused almost exclusively, year after year, on Israel's alleged misdeeds. The human rights panel once elevated Libya to leadership and coddled the worst human rights abusers around the globe, including Iran and Sudan.

Goldstone was supposed to be the exception: He wasn't believed to be reflexively anti-Israel.

How did he get it so wrong? Goldstone regrets that his panel didn't have "Israeli evidence that has emerged" since the report's publication "explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes."

So absent facts, the Goldstone panel reached the conclusion that Israel had deliberately targeted civilians, a sensational accusation. We hope Goldstone continues to elaborate on whatever pressures or politics led to the conclusion.

So what do we know?

Israel didn't target civilians. Hamas did. It sent hundreds of rockets into Israeli towns.

The report called on Israel and Hamas to investigate their soldiers' actions. Israel did. Hamas didn't. A Hamas official told The New York Times that there was nothing to investigate because firing rockets to kill civilians in Israel is "a right of self-defense…"

The UN should formally retract the Goldstone report. But it can't stop there. The UN needs to acknowledge that it has not been an honest broker in the Middle East. It needs to acknowledge that its human rights panel continues to be an embarrassment that greatly undermines the standing of the world body.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the UN may vote this fall to recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The UN would declare the boundaries —and that would put Israel in the position of occupying land belonging to a sovereign state and member of the UN.

The UN does not have the moral authority for such a declaration. It has not been an honest broker. Not even close.

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UNHRC fawns over the PA's response to Goldstone

Elder of Ziyon
21 September '10

The UN Human Rights Council came out with a report judging the respective merits of the responses by Israel, the PA and Hamas to the Goldstone Report.

It wasn't too terrible in judging Israel's responses, given that it is the UNHRC we are talking about here. They had some good things to say but were still unconvinced how independent the Israeli investigators were and they had other issues like Israel not following up with Arab complainants about the status of the investigation.

And, to their credit, they politely implied that the Hamas investigation was worthless:

86. The Committee also has concerns related to the impartiality of the second Gaza Committee’s investigations. The report did not seriously address the recommendations by the Fact-Finding Mission to the de facto Gaza authorities....This gives the impression that the investigations sought to deflect attention from the alleged violations of IHL and IHRL by the de facto Gaza authorities and raises concerns about their credibility and genuineness.

87. Moreover, some aspects of the report sought to explain away allegations of serious violations of IHL. For example, the second Gaza Committee suggested that the unavailability of modern military technology could not preclude armed groups from defending themselves. This implicitly acknowledges the truth of the allegations in the FFM report that armed groups violated IHL by launching weapons at Israel that were incapable of striking precise targets, while seeking to justify the violation and absolve the perpetrators.

(I cannot find a copy of the Hamas "investigation," the UN did not publish it as they did the others.)

But the UNHRC absolutely loved the PA's investigation.

(Read full post)

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First line of defense

British military hero Richard Kemp explains why he defended Israel, challenged Goldstone Report


Modi Kreitman
Israel News/Ynet
16 September '10

LONDON – As almost every Israeli knows, public relations are one of the country's main worries. But surprisingly, the man who has given Israel one of its biggest PR boosts is a British man with a Commander of the Order of the British Empire from the Queen of England.

Colonel Richard Kemp, 51, served in the British army for 30 years. During his time there he commanded the British forces in Afghanistan, served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia, participated in the Gulf War, and specialized in anti-terror warfare. Kemp's distinguished resume also includes membership on the exclusive COBRA council, a crisis response committee whose members are intelligence, secret service, police, and army officials charged with advising the government in times of emergency.

Goldstone Gaza Report: Col. Richard Kemp Testifies at UN by HumanRightsUN


These astounding credentials have turned Kemp into something of a war hero, and his book depicting the UK under terror attack, 'Attack State Red', was an instant bestseller. He prefers to keep the location of his London office secret, in order to avoid attempts on his life.

But in Israel the colonel remained little known until January 2009, when a video clip showing him defending Israel during an interview with the BBC was posted on YouTube.

Kemp explained to his interlocutor that Israel had no choice but to engage Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and stressed that the actions the IDF was taking in order to avoid civilian casualties were exceptional, especially because Hamas fighters had been trained by Hezbollah and Iran to fight from within a civilian population.

(Read full story)

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Does Anyone Care That Hamas Is Now Using Phosphorus Bombs?

Daled Amos
16 September '10

The Goldstone Commission was concerned about how phosphorus bombs were used during Operation Cast Lead--but that was only because Israel was using them, even though they were used for the smoke and not for the damage it can cause.

Hamas was also using phosphorus bombs during that very same time. On January 14, 2009, Haaretz reported: For the first time, Gaza militants fire phosphorus shell at Israel:

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday fired their first phosphorus shell into Israel, which exploded in an open area in the Eshkol area in the western Negev.

No injuries or damage were reported.

The phosphorus shell came as Gaza militants fired at least 16 rockets at southern Israel throughout the day Wednesday, causing no casualties.

White phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon. Militaries are permitted under laws of warfare to use it in artillery shells, bombs and rockets to create smoke screens to hide troop movements as well as bright bursts in the air to illuminate battlefields at night.

However, the substance can cause serious burns if it touches the skin and can spark fires on the ground.

Human Rights Watch on Sunday accused Israel of firing artillery shells packed with white phosphorus over populated areas of Gaza during recent fighting, including a crowded refugee camp, putting civilians at risk.

Israel maintains that it uses munitions in complete accordance with international law.

(Read full post)

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Leaks on mass civilian casualties in Afghanistan could form basis for Goldstone style prosecutions against US, Britain and other coalition countries

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
26 July '10

This weekend’s release of thousands of secret official files about coalition operations in Afghanistan paints a harrowing picture of the fog of war, most troubling of all of the accidental killings by our soldiers of hundreds of innocent civilians – revellers at wedding parties, kids in school buses, ordinary people going about their daily business who tragically found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Given that the Taliban systematically hides behind the civilian population this sort of thing is, of course, inevitable. Nonetheless, it is understandable that the revelations by Wikileaks have caused embarrassment to the governments of all the coalition countries.

But for those coalition countries in Europe – Britain first among them – who are currently cheerleading the passage of the Goldstone Report on Gaza through the United Nations this is more than an embarrassment. In the light of Goldstone, it represents an outright threat to the security of their soldiers on the ground as well as to their national interests in international tribunals.


In my experience, the MidEast crowd at the British Foreign Office and its equivalents elsewhere in Europe tend to be a little on the slow side. So, let me spell this out so there is no ambiguity.

International laws, norms and procedures to a great extent operate on the basis of precedent. So when Britain and other European countries allowed the Arab dictatorships to push a report through the United Nations specifically designed to criminalise the Israeli military’s attempts to deal with terrorists hiding behind a civilian population in Gaza, they simultaneously set a precedent for all countries, including their own.

Now that it has been revealed — via official documents — that British soldiers, for example, have been involved in exactly the same kind of operations against exactly the same kind of terror groups using exactly the same tactics and resulting in exactly the same kind of outcomes in terms of the loss of civilian lives, British soldiers and ministers could face exactly the same kind of censure and penalties as Israel.

(Read full post)

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Seriously! Isn't There Anyone Associated With The Goldstone Report Who Didn't Condemn Israel In Advance

Daled Amos
08 March '10

It's not a difficult question--but as you read the following article, it's hard to avoid the obvious answer, and wonder why it had to be this way.

There is a common thread that ties together

Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on "The situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967"

Judge Richard Goldstone, head of Goldstone Commission

Desmond Travers, member of Goldstone Commission

Christine Chinkin, member of Goldstone Commission

Hina Jilani, member of Goldstone Commission

Francesca Marotta, a senior member of the UN staff that helped compile the Goldstone Report

UN Inquiry Accused of Anti Israel Bias

A controversial United Nations report called the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict and more commonly known as "The Goldstone Report," is under fire for being biased against Israel. Among its conclusions was an accusation that Israel had committed "war crimes" during its twenty-two day war with Palestinian terrorists that ended in January, 2009. Critics discredit this finding - saying key members of the report were clearly biased in favor of the Palestinians.

(Read full article)
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I guess our New Israel Fund check got lost in the mail

Jacob Shrybman
Sederot Media Center
16 February '10

When the news of the New Israel Fund (NIF) paying around $8 million to organizations that provided the Goldstone Report with all its condemnations of Israel, it was clear that the “New Israel” desired by the New Israel Fund is one with more than 9 years of consistent rocket fire.

Our organization, Sderot Media Center (SMC), with a yearly budget of close to $200,000, worked tirelessly on a formal report that was requested by the Goldstone Commission itself, which encompassed the impact of the rocket fire on the residents of the Sderot region. We sent this formal report accompanied by photographs and videos to depict to this UN committee, which did not visit Sderot, what it is like to live under either daily rocket fire or the threat of daily rocket fire over the course of then eight years. The Goldstone Committee then flew our director, Noam Bedein, to the UN Headquarters in Geneva to give a 30-minute presentation/testimony in front of the committee on this daily reality lived in Sderot.

The New Israel Fund paid around $8 million to organizations that provided information to the Goldstone Report. As a cited provider of information for the Goldstone Report, I guess our New Israel Fund check got lost in the mail?

(Read full article)
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