(Another) Open Letter to Judge Goldstone

Richard Landes
Augean Stables
12 May '10

Dear Judge Goldstone,

I am one of those who have read your report, and have followed your subsequent comments about it. I just read your most recent statements in the Jerusalem Post and Ha-Aretz (for those who can’t read Hebrew, consult the CAMERA’s discussion). Once again you repeat, unchanged, two prominent claims:

1) If only Israeli had cooperated, things might have been different; and
2) No substantive criticism has arisen to challenge your findings.

Now your first claim is a counter-factual, hence speculative. But even then, it’s misleading. While Israel didn’t cooperate officially, through various channels (Israeli NGOs, Daniel Reizner, the former head of the International Law department at the IDF), Israel submitted extensive evidence to your committee. You not only ignored these submissions, but to this day refuse to put them up at the UNHRC website devoted to your Mission.

Your second claim, however, is more concrete; and here the evidence against your is formidable. There is an extensive and substantive critique of your Report. In fact most close readers – even neutral ones – find the Report surprisingly unprofessional and stunningly credulous in its handling of evidence. These critiques are available online (collected at a handy website), and your denial that they have any substance contradicts your second claim categorically. Why would it have made any difference if Israel had participated in the Mission’s work, since you have and continue to ignore any evidence that contradicts your findings against them? Are you really saying, it’s too bad Israel didn’t participate because then the findings would be still more damning?

(Read full article)

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New Apologias Emerge for Judge Goldstone and his Report

Ron Radosh
pajamasmedia.com
11 May '10

A controversy has broken out over an investigation of the Goldstone Report published last week in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. The main revelation was that Justice Richard Goldstone, as a judge during the height of the apartheid regime, approved sending 28 black defendants to the gallows. As the newspaper noted, Goldstone should “look long and hard in the mirror and to do some soul-searching before he rushes to criticize others.” Goldstone, the investigation claimed, took part in some of the most indefensible actions of what it called “one of the cruelest regimes of the 20th Century.”

Readers of this blog know that PJM previously reported, as Jennifer Rubin noted at Commentary’s “Contentions” blog, that we spotted “Goldstone’s apartheid record a few months back.” If you follow the link to her citation, you will find my old column and the link to documented reports that show more evidence of Goldstone’s actions in support of apartheid. In particular, the lengthy article by Ayal Rosenberg, who knew Goldstone, contains further revelations about his sorry record as a judge.

Goldstone’s record should be harder to ignore now that one of Israel’s major papers has spoken out. So far, there have been two kinds of takes on this. Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic is among those who believe the new information compromises Goldstone’s record. Goldberg responded: “Obviously, [Goldstone] was comfortable enforcing the death penalty — and torture penalties — on behalf of a racist state. Perhaps he reformed the system in ways he has not explained, but I’m reasonably sure the four men he ordered whipped did not think of him as a great reformer.” And Alan Dershowitz forcefully hit Goldstone head on with his column:

Goldstone was — quite literally — a hanging judge. He imposed and affirmed death sentences for more than two dozen blacks under circumstances where whites would almost certainly have escaped the noose. And he affirmed sentences of physical torture — euphemistically called “flogging” — for other blacks. He also enforced miscegenation and other racist laws with nary a word of criticism or dissent. He was an important part of the machinery of death, torture and racial subjugation that characterized Apartheid South Africa. His robe and gavel lent an air of legitimacy to an entirely illegitimate and barbaric regime.

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The Previous Apartheid Goldstone Reference

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
10 May '10

That Ynet story on Goldstone's apartheid judge history was known partially earlier:-

...At university you belonged to NUSAS showing that you cared about racial discrimination. In 1978 you accepted an appointment from Jimmy Kruger, Minister of Justice, to be a temporary judge to the Transvaal Supreme Court. Jimmy Kruger was often called the Himmler of apartheid. You were not forced to accept this appointment which was made permanent in 1980. When queried why you accepted to be an apartheid judge, you replied that you preferred to try and change things from within. I have to deduce at this stage:

1. You are a brilliant man to have been made a judge at such an early age.
2. You wanted to advance your career.
3. Perhaps you had changed your mind from NUSAS days.
4. You did not tell the truth about changing things from within, because you knew full well that any statement against apartheid with people like Jimmy Kruger and p.W. Botha around, would have led to immediate dismissal.

After 1980 your career advanced extremely rapidly in the apartheid regime. You were appointed to the Appellate Division of the S.A. Supreme Court which was a top position in the apartheid hierarchy. You are known to have mixed socially with the Afrikaner leaders. You are known to have assisted P.W. Botha to cover up what was going on during the state of emergency which made you an accomplice to apartheid policy.

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Where Does Goldstone Fit in Mearsheimer’s List?

Emanuele Ottolenghi
Contentions/Commentary
09 May '10

So here’s a question for John Mearsheimer. As Noah Pollak pointed out not so long ago, John Mearsheimer classified Jews into three categories — new Afrikaner Jews, righteous Jews, and the “great ambivalent in the middle.” In his useful lists, he included one Judge Richard Goldstone among the noble ones. And so, in light of the revelations about Judge Goldstone to which Jennifer Rubin referred earlier on today, one is left to wonder. Where would Mearsheimer now put Goldstone — among the “New Afrikaner” or the “Righteous”? Maybe we should create a separate category — Old Afrikaner but Righteous? Good Ol’ Afrikaner?

Is he a Righteous Afrikaner because he bashes Israel after having hung a few Africans — the bashing makes him righteous, the hanging makes him Afrikaner?

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Legitimating Bigotry: The Legacy of Richard Goldstone

Allan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
07 May '10

Richard Goldstone, author of the notorious Goldstone report, did not become a South African judge in the post-Apartheid Mandela Era, as The New York Times and other media have erroneously reported. He accepted a judgeship during the worst days of Apartheid and helped legitimate one of the most racist regimes in the world by granting the imprimatur of the rule of law to some of the most undemocratic and discriminatory decrees.

Goldstone was--quite literally--a hanging judge. He imposed and affirmed death sentences for more than two dozen blacks under circumstances where whites would almost certainly have escaped the noose. And he affirmed sentences of physical torture--euphemistically called "flogging"-- for other blacks. He also enforced miscegenation and other racist laws with nary a word of criticism or dissent. He was an important part of the machinery of death, torture and racial subjugation that characterized Apartheid South Africa. His robe and gavel lent an air of legitimacy to an entirely illegitimate and barbaric regime.

It is no surprise that Goldstone kept this part of his life secret from academic colleagues, friends and the general public. I recall him at the lunch and dinner tables in Cambridge describing himself as a heroic part of the struggle against Apartheid. Now it turns out he was the ugly face of Apartheid, covering its sins and crimes with a judicial robe. How differently we would have looked at him if we knew that he had climbed the judicial ladder on whipped backs and hanged bodies.

Now that his dirty secret has been exposed to the world, he has invoked the defense raised by German judges at Nuremberg: "I was just following the law." This cowardly defense was rejected at Nuremberg and by the international law that Goldstone claimed to be applying against Israel in the Goldstone report. It should be resoundingly rejected by the court of public opinion.

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Judge Goldstone's dark past

Yedioth Ahronoth investigation reveals man preaching human rights, who authored scathing report against Israel's operation in Gaza, sent at least 28 black defendants to gallows as South African judge under Apartheid regime


Tehiya Barak
Israel Opinion/Ynet
07 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

He asserted that Israel committed war crimes and came out against the Israel Defense Forces, whom he claimed violated basic human rights. Judge Richard Goldstone forgot just one thing – to look long and hard in the mirror and to do some soul-searching before he rushes to criticize others.

A special Yedioth Ahronoth investigation reveals Richard Goldstone's dark side as a judge during the Apartheid era in South Africa. It turns out, the man who authored the Goldstone Report criticizing the IDF's actions during Operation Cast Lead took an active part in the racist policies of one of the cruelest regimes of the 20th century.

During his tenure as sitting as judge in the appellant court during the 1980s and 1990s sentenced dozens of blacks mercilessly to their death.

This stain on Goldstone's past kept him from coming out against the death penalty on many occasions and from vehemently criticizing countries who still allow executions. Goldstone didn't bother confessing and telling about his actions in any of his statements or speeches.

(Read full report)

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Who Is Goldstone to Judge Israel?

Honest Reporting/Backspin
06 May '10

Yediot Ahronoth's Hebrew site reports that that Judge Richard Goldstone sent 28 black South Africans to their death when they appeared before his court during the apartheid era.

And now that Yediot and the blogosphere is asking, "Who is Goldstone to judge Israel with his one-sided report on the Gaza war," the jurist's response is adding fuel to the fire.

First, the Yediot investigation, which will be published in full on Friday. Jerusalem Central (via Israel Matzav) provides details:

According to Yediot's findings, Goldstone confirmed the death sentences of at least 28 accused blacks, who had appealed their sentences, most of them for murder, and he expressed his support for death sentences in his decisions as well, as he wrote in the case of a young black man who was sentenced to death for killing the white owner of a restaurant after he fired him: "The death penalty needs to reflect the demands of society to take retribution for the crimes that people see, justifiably, as horrifying".

Goldstone, "declared that the gallows were the only punishment of deterrent in these cases", and wrote: "Fury is a relevant factor in the imposition of a suitable punishment".

Whoa! An internationally acclaimed jurist says that fury is a "relevant factor" in choosing a suitable punishment? Sounds, uh, disproportionate. If an Israeli judge were make such an assertion, can you imagine the outrage of the UN Human Rights Council, or Human Rights Watch?

(Read full article)

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Analyzing the Durban II Conference

Interview with Gerald Steinberg

Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg
Institute for Global Jewish Affairs
Published March '10
No. 96

From 20-24 April 2009, the Durban Review Conference took place in Geneva. It is also known as Durban II, a follow-up to the infamous "Durban I" World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in the late summer of 2001. At Durban I, an NGO Forum accepted what can be summed up as a declaration of war against Israel. Participating nongovernmental organizations adopted a strategy for the complete isolation of Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.

The Canadian Harper government was the first to announce in February 2008 that it would not participate in Durban II, followed nine months later by Israel. Other countries, including the United States, eventually followed suit in refusing to come to Geneva. The withdrawal accelerated when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his intention to participate. Many funders that had provided large amounts of money for the Durban I NGO Forum, including Canada and the Ford Foundation, did not provide NGO support for 2009.

Although the nonparticipation of so many key countries made Durban II less of a diplomatic disaster for Israel than Durban I, it did not result in any erasure or renouncement of the anti-Israeli "Durban strategy" adopted at the 2001 NGO Forum.

Many UN-sponsored mini-Durbans promoting the indictment of Israel continue to take place, led by the same NGOs active in the Durban I hate-fest. In the dominant narrative, Israel is the world's worst violator of human rights and must be held accountable through investigations predetermined to find it guilty. Judge Richard Goldstone has become the patron saint of this "Durban process."

(Read full interview and analysis)
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Irish eyes not smiling on Israel

Soccer Dad
07 March '10

Micheal Martin the Irish foreign minister writes of his recent visit to Gaza in Gaza a year later:

What I witnessed in Gaza, amidst all the rubble and devastation still so evident from last year's conflict, was a population traumatized and reduced to poverty by an unjust and completely counterproductive blockade. All that is being achieved through the imposition of the blockade is to enrich Hamas and marginalize even further the voices of moderation.
I view the current conditions prevailing for the ordinary population as inhumane and utterly unacceptable, in terms of accepted international standards of human rights.

Of course, as a guest of Hamas and someone who clearly wanted to see the worst he only saw what his hosts wanted him to see.

A couple of weeks ago Omri showed the effects of the blockade on Gaza. Like Judge Goldstone, Mr. Martin had no interest in seeing the bigger picture and was only interested in convicting Israel.

There is a blockade of Gaza, in order to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its offensive capabilities. It may not have worked, but it was a legitimate effort to prevent a terrorist organization from regaining its capacity to cause terror.

And here's the summary of the latest week's summary of humanitarian aid Israel allowed into Gaza (apart from what's smuggled in via the tunnels).

(Read full post)
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How my email to Goldstone was twisted by his report

Hillel Neuer
U.N. Watch
21 January '10

Israeli public figures who say their country would have benefited by cooperating with the UN Human Rights Council’s “fact-finding” mission on the Gaza conflict are mistaken.

The raw malice that the Goldstone Report evinces toward Israel, the one party about which the panelists can say nothing good (as opposed to their exuberant, repeated praise for the “resilient” people of Gaza), demonstrates convincingly that the source of the imbalance lay in the UN committee’s mental structure. More information would have meant nothing. In the commissioners’ jaundiced view of the conflict, the Israeli leadership’s guilt for premeditated murder on a mass scale was taken as a philosophical given, a first premise not open to logical challenge.

Indeed it bears note that in July 2009, during the time that Goldstone, Chinkin, Jilani and Travers were conducting their UN inquiry, Israel did publish a voluminous document offering its side of the story, entitled “Factual and Legal Aspects of the Operation in Gaza, 27 Dec 2008 - 18 Jan 2009.”

When I saw this report on the internet, I emailed the link to Judge Goldstone, in the hope that it might provide some balance to the Hamas-influenced testimony on which the UN Human Rights Council appointees were basing their inquiry.

(Read full article)
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