Goldstone criticizes UN Council on Human Rights
Richard Goldstone, the primary author of the infamous Goldstone Report, is now trying to distance himself from the way in which the report is being used to single out Israel for condemnation. Most recently he criticized the United Nations Council on Human Rights, which commissioned the report, for the contents of its referral to the Security Council. This is what he said: "The draft resolution saddens me as it includes only allegations against Israel. There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report." Goldstone, as usual, is trying to have it both ways. The truth is that the report itself barely criticizes Hamas. Indeed, the summary - which was intended as a press release - is replete with condemnations against Israel but never once criticizes Hamas. Instead it gently criticizes "Palestinian armed groups," as if to suggest that these were vigilante grass roots killers who were not sponsored by and doing the work of Hamas. The text of the report devotes infinitely more space to condemning Israel than it does to condemning Hamas or even "Palestinian armed groups." It is not surprising, therefore, that the resolution of the UN Council, which is intended to briefly summarize the report, would focus its attention on condemning Israel. Goldstone, who is a savvy and experienced international diplomat, had to realize this when he signed onto the report. The crocodile tears he is now shedding, in claiming that the resolution "saddens" him, is simply another example of him talking out of two sides of his mouth.. Goldstone backs away from report: The two faces of an international poseur
With so much (though not all) of the civilized world justly condemning (or ignoring) the Goldstone Report for its distortion of the facts and its one-sided condemnation of Israel, Richard Goldstone himself now seems to be backing away from the report's conclusions - at least when he speaks to his Jewish audiences. In an interview with The Jewish Daily Forward, Goldstone denied that his group had conducted "an investigation." Instead, it was what he called a "fact-finding mission" based largely on the limited "material we had." Since this "material" was cherry-picked by Hamas guides and spokesmen, Goldstone acknowledged that "if this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven." He emphasized to the Forward that the report was no more than "a road map" for real investigators and that it contained no actual "evidence," of wrongdoing by Israel. "Nothing proven"! "No evidence"! Only a "road map"! You wouldnt know any of that, of course, by reading the report itself or its accompanying media release. In the text of the report itself, Goldstone neither sought to clarify nor explain what he now claims is the limited scope and legal implications of the report. The report reads like a judicial decision, making findings of fact (nearly all wrong), stating conclusions of law (nearly all questionable) and making specific recommendations (nearly all one-sided). According to the Forward:
It is as if there were two entirely different Goldstone Reports: the first submitted to the United Nations and the second to the Jewish community. In speaking so differently to different audiences, Goldstone is reminiscent of Yasser Arafat, who perfected the art of double-speak, using bellicose language when addressing Arab audiences and more accommodating language when addressing western audiences. The hypocrisy of 'universal jurisdiction'
Last week, an attempt was made to get an arrest warrant issued for Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak - the former dovish prime minister who offered the Palestinians a state on all of the Gaza Strip, 95% of the West Bank and a capital in East Jerusalem - when he set foot in Great Britain. (The attempt failed on grounds of diplomatic immunity because he was an official visitor.) And now Moshe Ya'alon, an Israeli government minister and former Army chief of staff, was forced to cancel a trip he was scheduled to make in London on behalf of a charity, for fear that he, too, could face an arrest warrant. The charges against these two distinguished public officials is that they committed war crimes against Palestinian terrorists and civilians. Ya'alon was accused in connection with the 2002 targeted killing of Salah Shehadeh, a notorious terrorist who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians and was planning the murders of hundreds of more. As a result of faulty intelligence the rocket that killed Shehadeh also killed several civilians who were nearby, including members of his own family. Barak is being accused of war crimes in connection with Israel's recent military effort to stop rockets from being fired at its civilians from the Gaza Strip. The British government and British prosecutors have not supported the calls for the arrest of Barak and Yaalon. Those demanding the arrest of these Israelis are hard-left political activists seeking to invoke so-called "universal jurisdiction" against those they consider guilty of war crimes and genocide. They have absolutely zero interest in human rights, the laws of war, or in preventing genocide. Indeed, many of them supported the Cambodian genocide and have refused to condemn the Rwanda and Darfur genocides. They would never dream of demanding the arrest of Hamas murderers who target Israeli schoolchildren for suicide bombings or rocket attacks. They are willfully misusing these concepts - human rights, universal jurisdiction - to serve their anti-Israel and anti-Western ideology. What they are doing undercuts the neutrality and value of these protections. Dishonest Intelligence
In December of 2007, I wrote an article about the National Intelligence Estimate that had just concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. The immediate effect of this pollyanna-ish report was to diminish the need for tough sanctions against Iran and take the military option off the table. We now know that the conclusion reached in the report was categorically false, and that those who issued the report knew it was false. I entitled my December 2007 article "Stupid Intelligence," because as I argued in it, its author had fallen hook, line and sinker for a transparent "bait and switch" tactic employed by Iran.
It was clear to many perceptive readers of the report, and to most other intelligence agencies, that Iran had simply - and deceptively - opted for the second track, and had certainly not abandoned its nuclear weapons program. It now turns out that at the time this "stupid intelligence" estimate was released, our intelligence agencies were aware that the Iranians were building a secret military facility buried deep in the mountains near the holy city of Qom. The United States recently disclosed the existence of this facility (after Iran was forced to acknowledge its existence) together with its firm conclusion that it could be used only for the development of a nuclear weapons program. If the intelligence community knew then what they know now, then its 2007 National Intelligence Estimate was not only stupid, it was dishonest. Goldstone report is an ad hominem attack
The definition of the ad hominem fallacy is to respond to substantive arguments solely by attacking the person who offered them. The mirror image of this classic fallacy is to try to bolster arguments solely by praising the person who offered them. This is what is happening with respect to the notorious Goldstone report regarding Israel's conduct during the Gaza War. Had Richard Goldstone, a distinguished judge and a prominent Jew, not been the author of the United Nations Human Rights Council report on Israel, it would be tossed in the trash barrel along with other one-sided and biased reports by this prejudiced group which targets only Israel for human rights violations. But those seeking to defend this indefensible report point to Goldstone's authorship as proof that it must have credibility. He has in effect placed his "Hechsher," that is, his religious certification of purity, on this impure report. It is appropriate, therefore, to respond to this argument by discrediting its author and his selfish motives for granting his imprimatur to conclusions which he well knows are false, incomplete, misleading and bigoted. Indeed, Goldstone and his supporters are acknowledging to Jewish friends that he did have a motive in agreeing to head the group that issued the report. His motive, according to his supporters, was to bring some balance to a report that without his input would have been "even worse." Goldstone's daughter, Nicole, in an obviously pained interview with Haaretz, 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. The Goldstone report is a barrier to peace
There are many things wrong with the Goldstone report, which accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians in order to punish the people of Gaza. First, its primary conclusions are entirely false as a matter of demonstrable fact. Second, it defames one of the most moral military forces in the world, along with one of the most responsive legal systems and one of the freest nations in the world when it comes to dissent. Third, it destroys the credibility of "international human rights" and proves that this honorable concept has been hijacked for political purposes directed primarily against one nation - Israel. But fourth, and most important, it has set back prospects of peace by making it far more difficult for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. Goldstone investigation undercuts human rights
Richard Goldstone - the primary author of a one-sided United Nations attack on Israeli actions during the Gaza war - has now become a full-fledged member of the international bash-Israel chorus. His name will forever be linked in infamy with such distorters of history and truth as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Jimmy Carter. The so-called report commissioned by the notorious United Nations Human Rights Council and issued under his name is so filled with lies, distortions and blood libels that it could have been drafted by Hamas extremists. Wait - in effect, it was! One member of the group is an Hamas lackey who before being appointed as an "objective" judge had already reached the conclusion - without conducting any investigation or hearing any evidence - that Israel's military actions "amount to aggression, not self defense" and that "the manner and scale of its operations in Gaza amount to an act of aggression and is contrary to international law." So much for objectivity. Many human rights experts urged her to recuse herself because of her prejudgment, but she was on a mission on behalf of her "client" - Hamas. And she did a good job as an advocate. But as a judge, she employed an Alice-In-Wonderland conception of justice: verdict first, trial to support the verdict. Filmmakers and writers seek to censor Israeli film
A group of hard-Left filmmakers and writers from around the world have been using their celebrity to try to coerce the Toronto International Film Festival into banning Israeli films. Their petition, which is filled with misstatement of facts and rewriting of history, describes Israel as "an apartheid regime." It focuses not so much on Israel's occupation of the West Bank since 1967, but rather on Israel's very existence since 1948. It characterizes Tel Aviv, a city built by the sweat of Jews largely on barren coastal land, as illegitimate. It never mentions the fact that the Palestinians were offered and rejected statehood in 1938, 1948, 1967 and 2000-2001. It fails to mention that when Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, the result was rockets being fired at Israeli schoolchildren and other civilians. They claim that the inspiration for their censorship effort includes "former President Jimmy Carter," who they say has characterized Israel as an "apartheid regime." Jimmy Carter has said many nasty things about Israel, but he has expressly disclaimed any allegation that the Israeli regime itself is apartheid. He acknowledges that Israel is a multicultural democracy in which Arabs vote, serve in the Knesset, serve on the Supreme Court and teach in Israeli universities. Many even volunteer to serve in the Israeli Army. His use - misuse in my view - of the word "apartheid" was limited to Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Can a state be built on a pack of lies?
The so-called "spiritual" leader of Hamas has ordered that Palestinian children are not to be taught about the Holocaust. Younis al-Astal - who is about as spiritual as Al Capone - has declared that the United Nations' proposal to include Holocaust education in a course on human rights would constitute a "war crime." It would be "marketing a lie and spreading it," he said. Instead, he would have Palestinian children learn only about the so-called crimes of the Israeli occupation and the self-inflicted wound that Palestinians call the "nakba." I am not so sure I would trust the United Nations, and especially its Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to teach anything relating to Jews, Israel or the Holocaust. That agency has been part of the problem, not the solution, by perpetuating the refugee status of Palestinians who could have been integrated into the Palestinian mainstream over the past sixty years. By making an industry out of their permanent status as refugees, UNRWA has made peace more difficult and hatred more acceptable. The agency has turned a blind eye to Hamas terrorists who routinely used UNRWA facilities as launching sites for rockets. It has protected terrorists. It has sought to legitimate Hamas as a social service agency rather than condemn it as a fascist group of anti-Semites who employ violence in the name of Muhammad. Now, perhaps in an effort to appear balanced, UNRWA has agreed to provide basic information about the Holocaust to eighth grade students. These would be the only Palestinian students who learn about the murder of six million Jews at the hands of Hitler, since the Palestinian Authority has banned the teaching of the Holocaust to students in the West Bank. Sweden's refusal to condemn 'organ libel' is bogus
Sweden's foreign minister, Carl Bildt, has refused to condemn a "blood libel" published by one of Sweden's leading newspapers, Aftonbladet. The article outrageously claims that Jewish soldiers in Israel killed Palestinians to harvest their organs. According to the New York Times, the writer of the article, Donald Bostrom, has acknowledged that "he has no idea whether the accusations are true." Yet a widely-read Swedish newspaper was prepared to publish this undocumented and highly volatile accusation without requiring its author to present any credible evidence. This accusation is reminiscent of the medieval blood libels that falsely accused Jews of killing Christian children to use their blood for religious rituals. Not only has foreign minister Bildt refused to issue to a personal condemnation of the current "organ libel," his foreign ministry explicitly disavowed the denunciation issued by Sweden's Ambassador to Israel, who had called the article "shocking and appalling." |
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