The Goldstone Report

[seemslikeadream]

The Goldstone Report
The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict



Philip Weiss, Adam Horowitz and Lizzy Ratner
January 2011 ISBN: 1568586418
In the spring of 2009, South African judge Richard Goldstone set out on a mission to the Gaza Strip on assignment from the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas during "Operation Cast Lead", Israel's invasion of Gaza a few months earlier. Many other reports on the Israel-Palestinian conflict had come and gone, but the account Goldstone's mission produced later that year was different—it became the report heard round the world.

Formally known as The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, the report is one of the most controversial and historic documents published in the century-long conflict in Israel and Palestine.

Alternating between clinical analysis and contained bursts of moral outrage, it offers a devastating catalogue of the events of "Operation Cast Lead" capped by a stark conclusion: that both Israeli and Hamas forces committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the twenty-two-day conflict. For the first time, a U.N. report accused the Palestinian side of grave breaches of international law, but it was the mission's emphasis on Israeli atrocities—in particular its conclusion that Israel had engaged in a "deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population"—that made it a political bombshell.

This new volume is an edited version of the original along with essays from a wide range of leading experts, activists, and journalists. They include Archbishop Desmond Tutu; human rights activist Raji Sourani; legal expert Jules Lobel; Israeli philosopher Moshe Halbertal; historians Rashid Khalidi and Jerome Slater; congressman Brian Baird; policy analyst Henry Siegman; authors Ali Abunimah, Naomi Klein, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin; and journalists Noam Sheizaf and Leila El-Haddad.

The Goldstone Report is a corrective to the relentless attacks the original received and a strenuous and informed effort to put that report in its proper context.

Philip Weiss is an investigative journalist who has written for the New York Observer, The Nation, The American Conservative, National Review, Washington Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Harper's and Jewish World Review. He is the author of American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps, and founder of Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.

Adam Horowitz lives in New York City, where he is co-editor of Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective. He holds a master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from New York University.
A former reporter for the New York Observer, journalist Lizzy Ratner has written for the New York Times, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor and other publications. She lives in New York City.

[Pele'sDaughter]

wtf?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes

By Richard Goldstone, Friday, April 1, 8:42 PM

We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.

While I welcome Israel’s investigations into allegations, I share the concerns reflected in the McGowan Davis report that few of Israel’s inquiries have been concluded and believe that the proceedings should have been held in a public forum. Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn’t negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence 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.

Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants. The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).

As I indicated from the very beginning, I would have welcomed Israel’s cooperation. The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel. I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within. Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.

Some have charged that the process we followed did not live up to judicial standards. To be clear: Our mission was in no way a judicial or even quasi-judicial proceeding. We did not investigate criminal conduct on the part of any individual in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. We made our recommendations based on the record before us, which unfortunately did not include any evidence provided by the Israeli government. Indeed, our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report. McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree; Hamas has done nothing.

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms.

In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise. So, too, the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

I continue to believe in the cause of establishing and applying international law to protracted and deadly conflicts. Our report has led to numerous “lessons learned” and policy changes, including the adoption of new Israel Defense Forces procedures for protecting civilians in cases of urban warfare and limiting the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas. The Palestinian Authority established an independent inquiry into our allegations of human rights abuses — assassinations, torture and illegal detentions — perpetrated by Fatah in the West Bank, especially against members of Hamas. Most of those allegations were confirmed by this inquiry. Regrettably, there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Simply put, the laws of armed conflict apply no less to non-state actors such as Hamas than they do to national armies. Ensuring that non-state actors respect these principles, and are investigated when they fail to do so, is one of the most significant challenges facing the law of armed conflict. Only if all parties to armed conflicts are held to these standards will we be able to protect civilians who, through no choice of their own, are caught up in war.

The writer, a retired justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, chaired the U.N. fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict.

[hava1]

Anyone has any idea what made him take an about turn ? ball squeezing ? Bibi is celebrating his victory, and calls for the official cancellation of this report, in terms of its official status in the UN.

I had a bitter argument here with some of the posters, regarding him and Falk, which i predicted will duck, as a result of some pressures. I have seen how the IDF work, in fact I experienced it...
the feeble and somewhat racially qualified support these Jews get by internet activists, is not helpful when the shit hits the fan. Most of the leftie heros tend to disappear when a real IDF general appears (or to strike a deal with him), while mobbing and lynching those who cannot defend themselves.

My favorable assumption, re Goldston, is that in light of the revolution in egypt and more so, in light of the atrocities in Lybia, he realizes that he was wrong to have taken his righteous anger at Israel, while sparing BushCO (for instance) on Iraq. Not that Gaza was a picnic, but part of its timing had to do with spinning away from Iraq. Our "dear' IDF always agrees to these deals, knowing that money, big money, is always better than reputation.

Anyway, quite an upheaval in Israel this morning...))

I have exchanged a few insignificant emails with the leaned justice, at the time, asking him to lend his leverage against what our gerenals are doing to us, the citizens of Israel. He said its an interesting point ))) interesting is a polite form of fuck off.

[Nordic]

Anyone has any idea what made him take an about turn ? ball squeezing ?

Really. Does Goldstone have children? That's all.

Which reminds me. This got ZERO attention anywhere, as you might expect. It got little here, too:

UN investigator accuses Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/ ... cleansing/

* By Megan Carpentier
* Categories: Featured, World

American professor Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, told the UN Human Rights Council Monday, “As the report illustrates, the continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forceful eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation that can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing.”

Watch the video, from the Xinhua News Agency

[stefano]

Goldstone does have children, and grandchildren, and the Zionists in Johannesburg quite shamefully picketed his grandson's bar mitzvah in response to the report. He eventually ended up going, I don't know if it was a sort of 'we can make this a lot worse' scenario.

Doron Isaacs: The Goldstone Bar Mitzvah saga from beginning to end (at least so far)

[hava1]

Guys, you are letting yourselves off the hook too easily. Its a given that there will be unbearable heat on the likes of Goldstones, the fact remains, the "Activist" community fails to lend protection in such cases. Soon, someone here will say that obviously Goldstone, being a Jew, is not to be trusted, which is going to be the final victory of the "zionists".

I have raised this point incessantly here, and was told that "unlike Goldstone and Falk" I - Hava- am a coward, which is why I ducked. I dont hold my breath for acknowledgement and I hate the "i told you so" tone, that I might demonstrate here, but this point, I believe is too important to let go.

GIven I am a coward, I dont mind confessing, since I also have panic and PTSD syndroms, I also know that nobody would have withstood the kind of intimidation I experienced, unless they have iron balls and military training, which not many of us civilians have OR unless the fucking big mouths who yell against Israel all the time were THERE, not in words, but physically maintainng a knit wall of solidarity around. (that is usually sufficient).

In Canada, I was scolded that I gave in and ran away from the battle, well, I want to see those heroes do a better job.

In most of the successful civil rights/human rights struggles, there was a meaningful umbrella and protection offered to dissidents, so as to provide shelter, when it is needed. Usually, those who can grant this protection are superpowers like the USA and so forth. In the case of Israel/Zionists, there is no such protection and eventually, the shit boomerangs, plus, the IDF is expert in harassment as warfare, and so they dont kill, leaving marks, but make your life a living hell, daily, so that all you want is a relief, and there's always justification (starting from holocaust and going up to showing the comparable crimes of other nations, including the USA itself or the other western democracies.)

WHile there is solidarity, in the case of Jews/Israelis it is very reserved and spiced with racism, over criticism, so that leaves a huge crack, in which pressures creep in and so forth. Its not a coincidental situation but a result of racism which is not processed enough within the "anti war" brigages.

I can attest to two events that made me run back into the hug of the "zionists". The first was from a man I really liked and who was there for me all the way, but one day when I was down and asked him what he suggests I do to relax, he offered me "go to the church" (which made my hair stand like a goose). A year later, a group of feminist activists were helping me in a situation against the Israeli embassy. At one time, one of them, of Brittish origins I think, snapped me, while I was speaking, "I would never know" she said "how it is to live in a non democratic country" (refering to Israel), well...gimme a break.

SO, I felt that people who are well intentioned and in solidarity have no sensitivity to the "red buttons" of Jews or ISraelis and what is perceived as spriitual threat, that shoves a person back to the establishment's hug. The first, is lack of sensitivity to being offered to waive one's religion (even to atheists or secular jews, such as myself, that' s a big no no), AND to lay too much crap on one's national origins, as if one is at fault for being born an ISraeli or Jew, or as if, god forbid , Israel is the only military dictatorship in the planet, which claims to be a democracy.

If people cannot grasp that, its probably going to remain the same, and the next Goldstone will think twice before going into such a situation.

I cannot think why someone would offer a Jew to go to Church, except as a slip of tongue or as being very obtuse to our history. For me it would be a huge taboo to convert, especially for convenience (if I suddenly believed in another religion that would NOT be a problem of course).
In our world, these days, there is really no justification to such callouseness. the next, which here is almost a fashion on the board, is to lay too much crap on any one individual to the crimes of their gov, ONLY when it comes to Israel.

I have had a little discussion with Norton Ash, about their Harper, and mentioned to him that along his line of thinking, he is PERSONALLY held accountable for the war crimes and fascism of his Prime minister. Not more or less than any Israeli for the crimes of the IDF. Then he said, well...I am embarassed for him, that indeed its ashamed the Canada went to afganistan, but "they made them do it" (the USA). So...why not grant the same miserable sorry excuse to Israel ? a much smaller country than Canada. And why not grant the same excuse to ME, who object to Israel's official policies and suffer for it ?

It appears that the blind spots are not coincidental.

[norton ash]

have had a little discussion with Norton Ash, about their Harper, and mentioned to him that along his line of thinking, he is PERSONALLY held accountable for the war crimes and fascism of his Prime minister. Not more or less than any Israeli for the crimes of the IDF. Then he said, well...I am embarassed for him, that indeed its ashamed the Canada went to afganistan, but "they made them do it" (the USA). So...why not grant the same miserable sorry excuse to Israel ? a much smaller country than Canada. And why not grant the same excuse to ME, who object to Israel's official policies and suffer for it ?

Hava, you're projecting a ton onto me here, just as you projected in the previous exchange you're referring to. Find it and quote it, if you will, because then you'll find I said nothing like this.

Please don't make me part of your resentful complex about Canada, in other words. I don't like Harper, I don't want Canada involved in criminal wars, and I don't approve of Canada's blind support of Israel at the expense of Palestine and mid-east peace. That's all you need to know from me.

[hava1]

Oh, I wasnt saying you said anything about ISrael, I said you explained your policy re afganistan as "we do it coz...", etc. The rest is mine. I dont resent canada at all, I think you have rogue foreign orgs and countries doing stuff there, and I think your gov is working on that now. That goes to both "anti Israel" creeps and perhaps more so now, pro zionist mafia.

All I said is that YOU are projecting too much into a situation which is precisely identical to what happens in your country now, for which I am sorry. But for some reason, on a personal level you take your helplessness and throw/project it on others, who just do the same as you, nothing, coz they have a life too that they want to protect.

The other point had to do with your obtuse response to that actor's claim (quaide), which did strike a "resentment" in me, sorry for that, but you should also take a deep look at yourself and your comfort zone, given your privileges, acquired at the expense of others.

Lastly, there was the Madoff comment, which I also found callouse. So all in all, believe me dearest, I have no resentment to countries, and I dont want to eat collective resentments as well. that's all. My point in picking on YOU, was not YOU , you seem to be a very nice guy, and I believe I sign to most of your views. The point was to show you that I deserve the same individual treatment as you claim for yourself, and you do it without ever thinking it could be taken away from you. But your Harper regime, ALMOST, or was THAT CLOSE to making you lose that stance in the world. And I am very sure you didnt vote for Harper, but I am also very sure you wouldnt not have risked your Jeep, let alone dear ones, to prevent him from being elected.

When you do not like canada's blind spots w/r to Israel, make sure you do something about it, too. that's all I said. And really, you are one of the nicest posters here, I do not resent you or "canada", (would I go there if I resented it), i just seem to resent being picked out for racist reasons.

---

[wordspeak2]

This seems petty.

Anyway, I wouldn't take the Goldstone report update, as it were, as necessarily the result of arm-twisting; I'd take it at face value. The guy was never anti-Israel in the first place. And he's got some valid points. Hamas' hands are hardly clean, folks. And things are generally going their way at this point. Big news I just caught:

U.N. Vote on Palestinian State Could Force Israel's Hand
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/world ... 2&src=tptw

[hava1]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/is ... bled=false

ublished 17:26 04.04.11Latest update 17:26 04.04.11
Israeli actor Juliano Mer-Khamis shot dead in Jenin
Mer-Khamis, 53, was shot five times by masked militants; he had established his name as actor, director and political activist both in Israel and abroad.

By Jack Khoury, Avi Issacharoff, Anshel Pfeffer and Haaretz Service


Israeli actor and political activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, 53, was shot dead on Monday outside a theater which he founded in a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Jenin police chief Mohammed Tayyim said Mer-Khamis was shot five times by masked Palestinian militants, but that Israeli security forces were still investigating the circumstances of his murder. A Palestinian ambulance took his body to a nearby checkpoint to be transferred into Israel.


Israeli Arab actor Juliano Mer-Khamis was shot dead in Jenin on April 4, 2011

Photo by: Daniel Tchetchik

Mer-Khamis' mother, Arna Mer, was an Israeli Jewish activist for Palestinian rights. His father, Saliba Khamis, was a Christian Palestinian. Mer-Khamis was born and raised in Nazareth.

Mer-Khamis was well-known as an actor for his film and theater roles, both in Israel and abroad, and had made a name for himself as a director and a political activist, as well.

Based in Israel, Mer-Khamis was affiliated with the local theater in Jenin, established by his mother in the 1980s. In 2006, Mer-Khamis opened the Freedom Theater in Jenin, along with Zakariya Zubeidi, the former military leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades in that West Bank city.

Zubeidi was appointed co-theater director in an attempt to subdue the ongoing threats voiced against both the institution and Mer-Khamis. The theater itself was torched twice in the past, and the threats persisted despite Zubeidei's appointment.

Some of the criticism focused on the fact that the theater offered co-ed activities, despite prohibition in the Islamic moral code.

Objectors were also outraged when Mer-Khamis staged the play "Animal Farm", in which the young actors played the part of a pig, which Islam considers an impure animal.

Michael Handesaltz, senior editor and theater critic for Haaretz, described Mer-Khamis as a "great actor, an extraordinary human being whose life-story is part of the tragic reality of this country", who in his death became "another tragic victim of life in the Middle East".

[hava1]

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/ ... 4&fid=1725

Did "The NY Times" refuse to publish Goldstone's retraction?

A source close to Judge Richard Goldstone says he originally approached the "The New York Times" to publish his article, but was refused.
4 April 11 12:17, Globes' correspondent
Judge Richard Goldstone's expressions of regret about the Goldstone Commission Report for the UN Human Rights Commission into Israel's incursion into Gaza in early 2009, Operation Cast Lead, has not received the hoped-for coverage in the world, especially compared with the original report.
Hebrew daily "Yediot Ahronot" today cites a source close Goldstone as saying that he originally approached the "The New York Times", one of the world's top newspapers, to publish his article, but that its Op-ed editor refused. Goldstone published his article in "The Washington Post" on Friday.
"The New York Times" said in response, "We do not comment on our editing and reporting procedures."
"The New York Times'" coverage of Israel has been considered highly critical in the past few months. This is especially prominent in frequent op-ed about the Middle East by commentator Thomas Friedman, whose criticism of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally has been unprecedented lately.
Since Goldstone published his article, the defense establishment has been discussing how to exploit it and improve Israel's international public image. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the defense establishment are considering using Goldstone's remarks as a reason to dismiss charges against Israeli officers and senior officials overseas. A top IDF legal source said that article reduced the legal risks facing IDF officers when they are abroad.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.

[hava1]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 39,00.html

lBaradei: We'll fight back if Israel attacks Gaza
In interview with Arab newspaper, former IAEA chief says if elected as Egypt's next president he will open Rafah crossing in case of an Israeli attack
Ynet
Published: 04.04.11, 14:15 / Israel News

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Former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who had previously announced his intetions to run for the presidency of Egypt, said Monday that “if Israel attacked Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime."
New Government
Egypt: Israel must pay us back for gas / Doron Peskin
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In an interview with the Al-Watan newspaper he said: "In case of any future Israeli attack on Gaza - as the next president of Egypt – I will open the Rafah border crossing and will consider different ways to implement the joint Arab defense agreement."

He also stated that "Israel controls Palestinian soil" adding that that "there has been no tangible breakthrough in reconciliation process because of the imbalance of power in the region - a situation that creates a kind of one way peace."

Discussing his agenda for Egypt, ElBaradei said that distribution of income between the different classes in Egypt would be his most important priority if he were to win the upcoming elections.

ELBaradei's main competition is Arab League Secretary General and former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. Last month he discussed Egypt's relationship with Israel. "During my term in office the foreign ministry was subject to unfavorable policies from Israel with regards to the peace agreement," Said Moussa who served as foreign minister 1991-2001," he said.
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"We thought the peace process was like a waterwheel – endlessly turning around and around without reaching a defined point. My opinion was that we needed to be honest with the Israelis, taking determined measures within the framework of the foreign ministry's operations. Maybe this led to a lack of agreement on all Israel related issues."

[JackRiddler]

.

This is pure psy-op, which is to say, it's all about massaging the psychology of the public reception of Goldstone's column so that it is perceived as a "retraction" of the report, and retraction is made synonymous with "refutation." In fact, Goldstone didn't amend a single concrete detail of "his" report. (How come the 9/11 Commission isn't called the Kean-Hamilton Commission, but a UN investigation by four commissioners who passed it unanimously is named only after the commission chair? No need to ask!)

All those Israeli bombs and missiles and bullets and white-phosphorus shells still killed and maimed civilians, destroyed civilian infrastructure, terrorized and traumatized and poisoned almost a million children trapped in an open-air prison, and blew up 4000 homes. Israel still refused to cooperate in any way with the UN investigators, blocking them from entry to Israel or to Gaza via Israel (they got in via Rafah). But Goldstone, after a year's reflection and a reading of the Israeli's own reports, has decided that the killing of civilians as the inevitable and known consequence of a free-fire aggression initiated by Israel against the 1.5 million people held captive in the tiny and defenseless Gaza strip, as described in detail in the UN report, was not the product of an intent to kill civilians, but the collateral damage of a "military operation." Which makes it all right. He's giving the Israelis a pass on the mens rea, the criminal "state of mind." Never mind that they broke the six-month ceasefire, or that they began their action by a surprise strike on a police school graduation ceremony, murdering unarmed men lining up to receive their honors.

This is the typical motive-washing by which "Western" crimes against humanity are put into a different category than those committed by the designated non-Western bad guys. You can choose to take an action you know will kill a thousand unarmed people, and as long as you didn't precede it with a hate speech, as long as you can claim you thought each building you blew up had at least one bad guy in it, as long as you had plans and maps detailing the supposed strategic objectives of your action -- as long as your evil can be called banal -- it's okay.

.

[hava1]

Goes without saying, but this is how its spun for the Israeli public, which is the one who matters, for this issue, coz it is perceived now as giving green light for more violence, and it appears to be coming.

Goldstone knows that, as well.

The question is WHY he wrote it, why now, and what's the subtext. THis was a huge morale blow to Israeli remains of the "left" and HR organizations. The government now wants to "Settle accounts" with those from ISrael who "provided incriminating and misleading info". And believe you me, it will.

I feel very much in despair today over the willingness to war, or rather blood thirst of the region, we are going to see violence, and everyone seems to want it. I am giving up on this issue its really pointless. I am going yuppie. SOrry I am puking and barking at the wrong people, its just that ..well...its pointless to try and do anything, from within the area. You go on, I am just departing from discussing this issue, and I feel really bad to live in a stupid region. But that's my fault.

Anyway...

.

This is pure psy-op, which is to say, it's all about massaging the psychology of the public reception of Goldstone's column so that it is perceived as a "retraction" of the report, and retraction is made synonymous with "refutation." In fact, Goldstone didn't amend a single concrete detail of "his" report. (How come the 9/11 Commission isn't called the Kean-Hamilton Commission, but a UN investigation by four commissioners who passed it unanimously is named only after the commission chair? No need to ask!)

All those Israeli bombs and missiles and bullets and white-phosphorus shells still killed and maimed civilians, destroyed civilian infrastructure, terrorized and traumatized and poisoned almost a million children trapped in an open-air prison, and blew up 4000 homes. Israel still refused to cooperate in any way with the UN investigators, blocking them from entry to Israel or to Gaza via Israel (they got in via Rafah). But Goldstone, after a year's reflection and a reading of the Israeli's own reports, has decided that the killing of civilians as the inevitable and known consequence of a free-fire aggression initiated by Israel against the 1.5 million people held captive in the tiny and defenseless Gaza strip, as described in detail in the UN report, was not the product of an intent to kill civilians, but the collateral damage of a "military operation." Which makes it all right. He's giving the Israelis a pass on the mens rea, the criminal "state of mind." Never mind that they broke the six-month ceasefire, or that they began their action by a surprise strike on a police school graduation ceremony, murdering unarmed men lining up to receive their honors.

This is the typical motive-washing by which "Western" crimes against humanity are put into a different category than those committed by the designated non-Western bad guys. You can choose to take an action you know will kill a thousand unarmed people, and as long as you didn't precede it with a hate speech, as long as you can claim you thought each building you blew up had at least one bad guy in it, as long as you had plans and maps detailing the supposed strategic objectives of your action -- as long as your evil can be called banal -- it's okay.

.

[Nordic]

beautifully put, jack.

wordspeak2, you're trying to tell us that david is as guilty as goliath?