More Than Appropriate to Ignore the UN Human Rights Farce

...Rather than questioning Israel’s refusal to play along with its enemies, a better topic of discussion would be why the United States continues to legitimize the UNHRC with its membership. Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s infatuation with the world body causes it to continue to treat the Human Rights Council as a legitimate institution. That should end. But even more important, the international press and decent people everywhere should refuse to treat the UNHRC or its probes as anything but a sick joke.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
12 November '14..

There will be those who will argue that Israel is once again shooting itself in the foot by announcing that it will not cooperate with the investigation being conducted into this past summer’s war with Hamas by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Critics of the decision by Prime Minister Netanyahu will say that by snubbing the inquiry, Israel is losing its chance to give input to the proceedings and ensuring that only its enemies will play a role in the final outcome. But the claim that Israel will have a fair chance to defend itself before the UNHRC is a joke. The UN agency has a long record of bias against Israel but by choosing a chairman of the panel that had already put himself down on record as a virulent opponent of Israel, it should have forfeited the respect of even those few who take the group seriously.

It should be remembered that the last time the UNHRC appointed a commission to investigate an Israeli campaign in Gaza, it produced the Goldstone Commission, a compendium of one-sided libels aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right of self-defense so egregious that even its chairman, South African jurist Richard Goldstone (who was chosen largely out of a desire to put a Jewish label on an anti-Israel product) eventually repudiated it.

This time the UNHRC hasn’t even bothered to pretend that it wanted fairness as it did with the appointment of Goldstone, and chose instead a Canadian law professor who has made a name for himself as an enemy of Israel. William Schabas has already gone on record saying that Hamas was not a terrorist organization and that Netanyahu should be indicted for war crimes. Yet he claims that he could still be impartial. As the Times of Israel reported, even Schabas admitted that his record indicates his bias:

“I do not hate Israel and do not want to engage in a debate regarding my previous positions on Israel,” Schabas told Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat in an interview. “I have had positions in the past concerning Palestine and Israel and they have nothing to do with my mission now. I will put my opinions aside during the investigation and they will have no bearing on it.”

But whether or not Schabas conquers his prejudices during the course of his work probing Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, there is no reason for anyone, in Israel or anywhere else, to take anything the UNHRC says seriously. Its membership is composed of countries that are themselves some of the worst human-rights violators in the world. In appropriating the banner of human rights, these tyrannies have long made a mockery of the concept and instead seem to prove that anti-Semitism is alive and well in the halls of the UN. The vast majority of its work has always been concentrated on efforts to smear Israel or otherwise deny its rights while at the same time ignoring some of the most egregious human-rights catastrophes going on elsewhere.

Sherman - Richard Beinart and Peter Goldstone – Part 1 *

Martin Sherman..
Into the Fray/JPost..
31 May '12..

A Palestinian family named the Ghawis lives on the street outside their home of fifty-three years, from which they were evicted to make room for Jewish settlers – Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” June 10, 2010


* The interspersing of the names in the title is deliberate

In two recent articles, I made the following statements: “Peter Beinart [has] for all intents and purposes declared political war on Israel.” Indeed he has.

And, “There are only two possible explanations for [Beinart’s] actions: He is either sincere or he is not. If he is sincere, he is merely a ‘useful idiot,’ and he should be treated as such. If he is not, then he is engaging in activities that are intentionally detrimental to Israel. He is, therefore, an enemy – and should be treated as such.” Indeed he should.

Beinart has placed himself in precisely the same category as another self-professed “dedicated Zionist” – Richard Goldstone. He should be treated in precisely the same manner – by both the Jewish establishment and Israeli officialdom.

Israel Matzav - The education of R*I*C*H*A*R*D* G*O*L*D*S*T*O*N*E

Carl
Israel Matzav
01 November '11

The Jewish community is very small and the word is that Richard Goldstone is trying to make amends for his pernicious Goldstone Report due to his virtual excommunication from the Jewish community. The latest effort is an op-ed in the New York Times, in which Goldstone defends Israel from charges of apartheid. This passage made me wonder whether he gets it yet.

The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here too there is no intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” This is a critical distinction, even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there. South Africa’s enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority, to the detriment of other races. By contrast, Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.

(Read full "The education of R*I*C*H*A*R*D* G*O*L*D*S*T*O*N*E")

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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?

(Read full post)

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The Un-Goldstone

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
08 May '10

Richard Goldstone, the former judge for apartheid South Africa (should that not be his lifelong description?), pleads that he was simply following the law when he handed out death sentences and orders to whip blacks. He had no choice, you see. What was a lawyer to do? Well, we are presented with the alternative today. A sharp-eyed reader spots an obituary for Sheena Duncan that explains her role in the South African legal system:

Sheena Duncan, who led the Black Sash, a group of middle-class white women in South Africa who protested against apartheid and counseled blacks victimized by the racist laws of that era, died Tuesday at her home in Johannesburg. She was 77. …

Over decades of volunteer work — counseling thousands of black South Africans, plotting legal strategy, writing pamphlets, holding silent vigils and speaking out in churches and at universities — Mrs. Duncan moved far beyond the traditional sphere reserved for white women of her day.

(Read full post)

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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.

(Read full post)

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Tikkun’s Jewish ‘Ethics’ — Honor Goldstone for Libeling Israel

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
27 April '10

With the rise of groups like the left-wing lobby J Street and the presence of a critic of Israel in the White House, it’s hard for a magazine like Michael Lerner’s Tikkun to get much attention these days. But Lerner is doing his best (or is it his worst?) in an effort to recapture the focus of Jewish leftists. To that end, as Jennifer has pointed out, the magazine has announced that it is giving its 25th annual “ethics” award to Richard Goldstone, the author of the biased and inaccurate United Nations report on last year’s war in Gaza that slandered Israel.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that Lerner says he decided to give his dubious prize to Goldstone before the brouhaha over whether the South African jurist would be prevented from attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah because of the anger of his fellow Jews at his presence in synagogue. But, Lerner says, he decided to announce the award now as an answer to Goldstone’s “outrageous” treatment.

The controversy over the Goldstone bar mitzvah is regrettable for two reasons. First, because a child’s rite of passage ought to be allowed to proceed without political demonstrations against one of his relatives, no matter how odious that relative might be. Second, because the threat of a demonstration against Goldstone at the synagogue enabled him to pose as a victim of Jewish intolerance rather than owning up to the fact that he allowed the anti-Semites at the UN to use him as a front man for a vicious libel against the Jewish state.

(Read full post)

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The Ruins of Byblos

Joel B. Pollak
American Thinker
31 March '10

Imagine, for a moment, that Iran and Syria had begun feuding publicly over the fate of the ruins in Byblos, Lebanon. Imagine that some Syrian-backed party in the Lebanese government had begun restoring the buildings of the early Islamic period, leaving evidence of Persian rule for a time of greater budgets and ambitions. Imagine, then, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had taken to the airwaves to denounce the Syrian insult.

What would we think, as outsiders with a vested interest in weakening Syria's alliance with Iran? We would, of course, seize the moment. We might take the opportunity to topple the brutal Syrian regime -- or, more likely, offer inducements to dictator Bashar al-Assad to encourage him to open his country to the Western world. Either way, we would see a superficial spat over a few buildings as evidence of a deeper, emerging divide.

Imagine further that a prominent Syrian figure on the international stage -- or someone of Syrian descent, like Syrian-American novelist Mona Simpson, for argument's sake -- had stepped forward to lead a U.N. fact-finding mission on Syria, which aimed to document "brutal violations of human rights and suppression of democracy." Barred from entry by the regime, the mission would still interview dissident exiles and international NGOs.

Now imagine that in the wake of the lengthy, strident report produced by Simpson and approved by the U.N. General Assembly, the U.N. Human Rights Council had passed five resolutions condemning Syria and established a new U.N. body to monitor compliance with the Simpson report. Would we not feel a sense of momentum, an expectation that the regime would soon crack? Would we not try to ratchet the pressure ever higher?

That is exactly what Israel's enemies feel at the moment, watching President Barack Obama join international condemnation of Israel over a housing project in Jerusalem, watching a prominent Jewish intellectual like Richard Goldstone accuse Israel of crimes against humanity, watching the U.N. Human Rights Council devote the bulk of its efforts to attacking Israel's right to defend itself from genocidal terrorist groups on its borders.

(Read full article)
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The New Israel Fund for Deepening the Jewish-Arab Rift

Israel Harel
Haaretz
11 February '10

The Im Tirtzu organization accuses the New Israel Fund of financing Israeli organizations which Judge Richard Goldstone used for information to accuse the Israel Defense Forces of "war crimes."

The fund's response, as is the wont of radical leftist organizations under fire, was to smear its critics as "fascists".Granted, the NIF's president, Naomi Chazan, signed a petition that defined the IDF's operations in Gaza as "terror against civilians" and demanded that Israel abide by "all UN resolutions relating to the conflict" (including 194, which Palestinians interpret as granting them a "right of return"). Nevertheless, the personal campaign against her is a mistake.

The NIF's many supporters in the media and among political organizations (which benefit from the fund, both directly and indirectly) have used this personal campaign to divert the debate from the fund's subversive goal (a "new Israel," not Jewish or Zionist), which it has furthered by donating more than $200 million thus far to hundreds of anti-Zionist organizations (I have a list, if anyone is interested).

Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel - has used its NIF funding to submit dozens of petitions to the High Court of Justice that seek to reduce and even abolish Israel's identity as a Jewish state. "Israel must recognize the [Palestinian] refugees' right of return, on the basis of UN Resolution 194," declares the introduction to a proposed constitution that Adalah authored. And this proposal would also abolish the Law of Return for Jews.

The NIF also finances Jewish-led groups that seek to undermine Israel's Jewish identity, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

(Read full article)
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How Some Israeli and American Jewish Media Incite Violence

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
09 February '10

(I had to laugh but it seems Prof. Dershowitz has been initiated to our world of media)

It all began with an innocent enough request for an interview about the Goldstone report and my 49 page response to it. (http://www.alandershowitz.com/goldstone.pdf) The Israeli Army radio station asked to interview me. The interview was conducted by an experienced host, Razi Barkai. Unbeknownst to me, Barkai had an agenda. He wanted to get me to say that I thought that Goldstone was a “moser.” He wanted me to use this Hebrew word, whose meaning I did not understand, because in Israel, this obscure theological term has taken on a meaning of its own. According to The Forward, “the term moser entered Israeli political discourse in 1995 in the wake of Rabin’s assassination by radical settler supporter Yigal Amir, when Amir cited some rabbis’ designation of Rabin as a moser as part of his justification for carrying out the murder.” The Forward quoted Michael Karpin, an Israeli journalist and the author of a book on Rabin’s assassination, as follows: “After the assassination, when Amir was interviewed by the police and he mentioned the term moser, people tried to find out what it is…Nobody used it here before the assassination.”

Unfortunately, I was totally unfamiliar with the “inside baseball”—or in this case “inside Israel”—use of this esoteric term.

Several times during the interview, Barkai tried to get me to agree that Goldstone was a moser, a word he pronounced with a thick accent. Since the interview was being conducted in English, I thought he was asking me to agree with him that Goldstone was a “monster.” I would never use the term “monster” since it suggests an inherent, even genetic, flaw in a person, without regard to what he has said or done. I was clear throughout my interview that I believed that Goldstone had exploited his Jewishness to lend illegitimate credibility to a false report.

(Read full story)
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Confronting Jews who defame Jews

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking from Jeusalem
10 February '10

The time has come to draw red lines between legitimate criticism and initiatives seeking to demonize Israel.

Richard Goldstone’s infamous role as the token head of the UNHRC report accusing the IDF of war crimes is only one example of prominent Jews who exploit their origins as a way to defame their people. In fact, until recently, Goldstone was considered a respectable Jew, even a Zionist. He was blinded by hubris and ego, and allowed himself to be seduced by the bitterest enemies of his people into providing legitimization for a blood libel against the Jewish state.

Unlike Goldstone, most Jewish renegades were driven by desperation to unburden themselves from what they regarded as their repressive ethnic and cultural roots. Historian Jacob Talmon described such deviant behavior as “a Jewish neurosis” in response to centuries of oppression and pariah status.

The purported commitment of these Jews to universal and humanitarian values was usually belied by extreme attacks on their own people and association with sponsors who were outright anti-Semites.

Streams of such Jews emerged during the 19th century in the wake of emancipation. A classic example was Karl Marx, whose anti-Semitic diatribes were reflected in outbursts like “money is the jealous god of Israel, by the side of which no other god may exist… The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”

In czarist Russia, some Jewish social revolutionaries even endorsed pogroms against their own kinsmen, hoping that by venting their frustrations on Jews, the masses would ultimately turn on the czar.

(Read full article)
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Arguments "Ad Hominem" and "By Ethnic Identity" in Defense of Goldstone Report

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
03 February '10

Even before the Goldstone Report was released, Richard Goldstone was arguing for its credibility by invoking his Jewishness, his Zionism, his daughter’s residence in Israel and his connection to Hebrew University. It was the mirror image of the classic fallacy known as the argument ad hominem, which is defined as follows: A substantive argument should not be rejected solely because of who has offered it.

It follows of course from this fallacy that an argument should also not be accepted because of who offered it.

A close relative of the ad hominem fallacy is what I have called “the argument by ethnic identity,” which I have defined as follows: An anti-Israel argument is made stronger if offered by a Jew. (“See, even a Jews agrees that…)

These are precisely the fallacious arguments being offered in defense of the Goldstone report by Richard Goldstone and his supporters. Goldstone has even elicited his daughter’s help. This is what she has said: “Had Richard Goldstone not served as the head of the UN inquiry into the Gaza War, the accusations against Israel would have been harsher.” She continued. “My father took on the job, for peace, for everyone and also for Israel.” She told the Jerusalem Post, “My dad loves Israel and it wasn’t easy for him to see and hear what happened. I think he heard and saw things he didn’t expect to see and hear….”

The problem is not what Goldstone saw and heard. It’s what he willfully and deliberately refused to see and hear. He refused to watch videotapes, easily accessible on the internet, that show conclusively that Hamas terrorists routinely fired rockets from behind human shields. He refused to credit eye witness reports published by refutable newspapers and even admissions by Hamas leaders. He willfully refused to listen to the testimony of one of the world’s leading experts on how democratic militaries fight asymmetrical warfare against terrorists who hide behind civilians, who said:

(Read full article)
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Legal lightweight

Soccer Dad
29 January '10

Judge Richard Goldstone was greeted at Yale University with an article in the Yale Daily News written by Noah Pollak and Adam Yoffie that made short work of his commission's report:

Goldstone accepted a mandate from this council to investigate Israel, and only Israel, over its attack last year on the internationally-recognized terrorist group Hamas. The report he produced is a perversion of human rights and international law. It treats Hamas' allegations with meticulous credulity, but Israeli claims with flippant skepticism. It is riddled with factual errors and twisted accounts of the war. The members of Goldstone's staff have long histories of anti-Israel political activism. The report makes frequent and unsupported editorial declarations against Israel and included testimony from residents of Gaza who feared retaliation from Hamas. Justice Goldstone himself has admitted that nothing in the report would be admissible as credible evidence in a court of law.

However the Pollak/Yoffie op-ed was rather mild in comparison with the treatment Goldstone would receive from Richard Landes in recounting Goldstone's talk later.

Perhaps the single most striking feature of the talk was its staggering superficiality. Goldstone might have a reputation (at least among those familiar with his report) for being biased, but not for being a lightweight. And yet in the less than forty minutes of his formal lecture, at no point did one get the impression that one was listening to a trained legal mind, much less a brilliant one. Most of the lecture could have been written by an undergraduate who combined entries at Wikipedia on International Law, Nuremberg Trials, Geneva Convention, and Rome Treaty, with a warmed over version of "war is not the answer," and "why can't we all just get along and follow the law?"

Landes's account is, at once, entertaining and disturbing. Entertaining because Goldstone's superficiality and acute sensitivity come accross in Landes's telling. Disturbing because of the authority international organizations have invested in this man.

(Read full post)

Goldstone Again Plays "Attacking the Messenger" Card

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
30 December 09

Once again, Judge Richard Goldstone attempts to evade substantive criticism of his Gaza report by playing the "they're attacking the messenger" card. In an interview with the New Statesman today, Goldstone states:

There has definitely been a consistent effort to attack the messenger rather than read the report. Clearly, personal attacks have been unpleasant for me, and unpleasant for my family.

Yet, critics have consistently dealt with falsehoods and distortions in the content of his report. When CAMERA's Ricki Hollander sent him a detailed open letter which questioned the report's findings about the Al Bader flour mill, the al-Maqadmah mosque and the military use of mosques, as well as the question of Palestinians engaging in combat while wearing civilian clothes, among other issues, Goldstone refused to respond, writing:

Dear Ms. Hollander,

I confirm receipt of your letter. I have no intention of responding to your open letter.
Sincerely,
Richard Goldstone

Goldstone has apparently likewise declined to respond to other serious critics who addressed the content of his report in detail. How long will he continue to hold up the false ad hominen deflector?

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Judge Goldstone Responds to CAMERA's Letter

CAMERA/Snapshots
07 December 09

Justice Goldstone has consistently tried to defend his eponymous report from criticism by claiming that "no one has been able to show any error of substance in the report nor any of its findings" (see, for example, South Africa's Sunday Times, Nov. 15). But when faced directly with specific discrepancies, contradictions and misstatements that undermined the report's conclusions, how did he respond?

In answer to a follow-up call by CAMERA on Dec. 7th about whether he had received our letter, Justice Goldstone responded:

Dear Ms. Hollander,
I confirm receipt of your letter. I have no intention of responding to your open letter.
Sincerely,
Richard Goldstone

In the same type of double standard that typifies the report, Justice Goldstone refuses himself to answer questions or provide clarification about the substance of his mission's findings, yet slams Israel for having refused to cooperate with or answer the questions of his investigating team.

The real question now is how long can Justice Goldstone continue to hide behind the deceptive argument that no one has addressed the substance or findings of the report?

Read letter and response here.

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At Brandeis, Israel's guilt and innocence on display

Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe
07 November 09

TO BRANDEIS University last night, South African jurist Richard Goldstone brought his international reputation as a legal scholar, a human rights advocate, and the former chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, brought facts and figures, maps and photographs, and audio and video in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

The two men were at Brandeis to discuss Goldstone’s highly controversial UN report on Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli attack in Gaza last winter. The report, written after a fact-finding mission with which Israel refused to cooperate, accuses the Jewish state of committing war crimes by using “disproportionate force’’ to inflict widespread destruction on Palestinian civilians - a policy that amounted to “collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip.’’ Last night’s encounter marked the first time since the report was issued that Goldstone publicly debated the report’s merits with a leading Israeli figure. It would not surprise me to learn that he is in no hurry for a second.

That is not to say that Goldstone didn’t speak well, even eloquently, in defending his own integrity and his chagrin at Israel’s refusal to have anything to do with his commission’s inquiry. Nor was there any mistaking his sincere outrage when he itemized the physical devastation he viewed in Gaza - 5,000 homes destroyed, 200 factories disabled, water systems wrecked, poultry farms demolished - or when he denounced the bombing of a mosque during prayers. “If that isn’t collective punishment, what is?’’ Goldstone asked. Such attacks, he said, “scream out’’ for investigation by Israel.

But Goldstone spent much of the time talking about himself - he recounted his dealings with the chairman of the UN Human Rights Council, his nightmares about being kidnapped by Hamas, his pleased discovery that ordinary Palestinians were “just like’’ ordinary Israelis - while his interlocutor focused relentlessly on facts and evidence. Gold played video of Israelis under Hamas rocket attack, and noted that such attacks had increased 500 percent after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. He displayed aerial photographs of Hamas military installations located amid schools and mosques. He described Israel’s extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties, and showed Palestinian TV broadcasts confirming those efforts. He presented images of weapons caches inside Palestinian mosques and homes.

It was a powerful presentation - so powerful, in fact, that Goldstone regretted not having seen it earlier. “The sort of information shown to us by Ambassador Gold,’’ he said, “should have been shown to us during the [UN] investigation.’’

Yet to my mind, what was most striking of all was Goldstone’s inability to give a clear answer to an essential question: What should a law-abiding country do to defend itself against relentless terrorist attacks?

In one form or another, that question came up repeatedly. In his welcoming remarks, Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz observed that we live in a “new age of warfare,’’ in which civilized nations confront terrorists able to “mix and melt’’ into the civilian population. Asked Gold, after describing the thousands of rockets launched by Hamas at Israeli communities: “What would you do if your population was facing repeated attacks for eight years?’’ During the question-and-answer period, a student asked Goldstone - who had condemned Israel’s “disproportionate’’ attacks - what he would have considered a “proportionate’’ response.

But the judge, astonishingly, had no answer. He responded that that was a decision for the Israelis to make. He said it was a question that had given him “many sleepless nights.’’ He mused that perhaps undercover “commando attacks’’ would have been more appropriate. (“Gee, why didn’t the Israelis think of that?’’ murmured a voice in the audience.) He even suggested that it might make a good subject for a Brandeis research paper.

Judge Goldstone uses his international platform to pronounce Israel guilty, in other words, but will not say how Israel could have avoided such a verdict.

For the truth is, no other verdict was possible. Where the UN is involved, the guilt of the Jewish state is always taken for granted. The eminence of its chairman notwithstanding, the Goldstone Commission was a sham, and its bottom line was foreordained. The mystery isn’t why the Goldstone Report has been so widely denounced, but why Goldstone agreed to write it in the first place.
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Goldstone and the Rule of Law

Ted Belman
Hudson New York
06 November 09

The International Court came into being by virtue of the Rome Treaty in 2002.. To date, 110 states have signed on and a further 38 states have signed but not ratified it. The U.S.and Israel are among those who have yet to ratify the treaty.

The same year, Richard Goldstone delivered a speech at a Toronto synagogue arguing that it was in the interests of Israel and the U.S. that they sign on. It was asked if Israelshould sign on as she would never get a fair hearing. Goldstone vehemently disagreed.

Fast forward: In the days before to Operation Cast Lead, during a period when the Gazans were committing war crimes daily by firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians, Dr. Abraham Bell in his article on International Law and Gaza set out the basic principles and subtitled his article The Assault on Israel’s Right of Self Defense.

But what do these principles and rules he set out mean in practice? Did Israel have no choice but to invade or could it just have used artillery and bombs, even unintelligent inexpensive bombs?

Bruce Tucker Smith, JD, LL.M. (International Law), Lt Col USAFR (ret). who is currently a US military Judge, summarized his opinion as follows:

“In short…Israel’s defense forces are entitled to use whatever means is at her disposal to search out and destroy terrorist operatives. Nothing in international law precludes a vigorous, intense and effective military campaign to destroy terrorist operations. That means, Israel may use air and ground-artillery resources -as she will-against those Hamas operatives (I hesitate to us the word “military” - since Hamas is NOT a recognized military force.) which are used to inflict casualties upon Israel.

“That means Israel may use her army in large or small measure to attack any place or person that attacks Israel. That means Israel can bombard Hamas targets as militarily necessary to render it impotent against a subsequent wave of Israeli soldiers. Although politically preferable, nothing in international law absolutely requires Israel to use “smart” munitions in its operations against Hamas.

“If Hamas attempts to shield its operations with truly innocent civilians or children—it is Hamas and not Israel, who has committed an atrocity -an actionable war crime-of the most heinous proportion!”

In sum: Israel is free to employ ALL munitions, tactics, equipment and personnel in her arsenal to defend herself against the outlaw Hamas terrorist organization. Short of the intentional targeting and murder of truly uninvolved and innocent civilians, Israel can (and should) operate as freely as she desires to protect her territorial sovereignty and the lives of her citizens.

(Continue article)

Gold vs. Goldstone: a test case for free speech

FresnoZionism.com
31 October 09

Richard Goldstone, author of the infamous Goldstone Commission report, which accuses Israel of war crimes in Gaza, will debate Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, at Brandeis University on November 5. The proceedings will be streamed live to the internet from the site.

The Goldstone report is full of inaccuracies and falsehoods (see alsohere as well as here), as well as making the very serious andcompletely unsubstantiated claim that the IDF intentionally caused civilian casualties and damage as a form of collective punishment — when of course the opposite was true.

The UN mandate of the commission was only to investigate Israel. Goldstone himself announced that it would be broadened to include anything that anyone did in the context of the war, and the report did contain a statement that Hamas “may have” committed war crimes by firing rockets at Israeli civilians — something that was ignored by the UN Human Rights Council in the wholly anti-Israel resolution by which it adopted the report.

The methods used by the commission were so biased as to be laughable: evidence and testimony were chosen selectively. Pro-Israel testimony was discredited Even when the same person presented testimony that included anti- and pro-Israel components, the pro-Israel ones were discarded. Accusations made by Hamas or Hamas-linked groups were accepted as fact, while IDF rebuttals were deemed non-credible. Much of it was simply copied from reports published by highly anti-Israel NGOs like Human Rights Watch.

Richard Goldstone has said that “ours wasn’t an investigation, it was a fact-finding mission,” and “if this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.” However, at the same time he defends the process, and calls for a more ‘investigations‘ to give further prominence to the libelous charges in his report.

Dore Gold is a smart guy, and a good speaker. He will be prepared.

What should happen is that Goldstone will apologize to Gold, the state of Israel and the Jewish people, and then ceremonially disembowel himself. This is unlikely.

What will happen if it is a fair fight is that Gold will cut Goldstone to ribbons.

Caroline Glick thinks that it will not be a fair fight:

In an e-mail to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the “neutral” Goldstone against Gold with his “wildly pro-Zionist message.” Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to “discuss a possible response.”

As the young community organizer sees it, “Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action.” He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: “F**k the occupation.”

The problem is that Sussman’s planned “direct action” against Gold is not an isolated incident. On college campuses throughout the US, Israelis and supporters of Israel are regularly denied the right to speak by leftist activists claiming to act on behalf of Israel’s “victims,” or in the cause of “peace.” In the name of the Palestinians or peace these radicals seek to coerce their fellow students into following their lead by demonizing and brutally silencing all voices of dissent.

I’m with Glick. Having personally experienced the tactics of theZionophobic alliance of radical Muslims and left-wing extremists, I think that no effort will be spared to prevent this debate from taking place, and if it does to shout down or in some way silence Dore Gold.

This event will be a test case for the proposition that the constitutional guarantee of free speech is still upheld in the United States of America.

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