The Goldstone Report

[JackRiddler]

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.

Well not everyone, but yeah.

I suppose it's a peripheral question whether and how they got to him or if he was always going to pull this stunt.

.

[hava1]

he was always going to pull this stunt.

.

way out of my paranoia league, but yes, that's also a possibility.

I am really saddened by the murder of Juliano Mer...as I felt, today, in the gut level, its a day when those in the crossfire (peace activists, bridge of peace, coexistence people) are taken out of the game.

I think both hammas and IDF split the job of killing those people in both sides.

[seemslikeadream]

The Cleansing of Israel's War Crimes

Goldstone's Rethink

By JONATHAN COOK

Nazareth.

Israeli leaders have barely hidden their jubilation at an opinion article in last Friday's Washington Post by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone reconsidering the findings of his United Nations-appointed inquiry into Israel's attack on Gaza in winter 2008.

For the past 18 months the Goldstone Report had forced Israel on to the defensive by suggesting its army – as well as Hamas, the ruling faction in Gaza – had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel's three-week Operation Cast Lead. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of women and children.

Goldstone's report, Israeli officials worried, might eventually pave the way to war crimes trials against Israeli soldiers at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

In what appeared to be a partial retraction of some of his findings against Israel, Goldstone argued that he would have written the report differently had Israel cooperated at the time of his inquiry.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, immediately called on the United Nations to shelve the Goldstone Report; Ehud Barak, the defence minister, demanded an apology; and Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, said Israel's actions in Gaza had been "vindicated".

Israel would certainly like observers to interpret Goldstone's latest comments as an exoneration. In reality, however, he offered far less consolation to Israel than its supporters claim.

The report's original accusation that Israeli soldiers committed war crimes still stands, as does criticism of Israel's use of unconventional weapons such as white phosphorus, the destruction of property on a massive scale, and the taking of civilians as human shields.

Instead Goldstone restated his position in two ways that Israel will seek to exploit to the full.

The first was an observation that since his report's publication in September 2009 "Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct".

In the past Goldstone has made much of the need for Israel and Hamas to investigate incidents where civilians were targeted, saying that otherwise his report should be transferred to the ICC. In his article he favourably compared Israel's investigations to the failure by Hamas to carry out any probes.

The significance of Goldstone's reassessment from Israel's point of view was underlined this week by comments to the Jerusalem Post newspaper from a senior unnamed legal official in the Israeli military. He said Goldstone's professed confidence in Israel's investigatory system would help to forestall future war cimes probes by the UN.

That will be cause for Palestinian concern at a time when, in response to renewed hostilities between Israel and Hamas, some Israeli government ministers have called for a Cast Lead 2.

Another unnamed commander told the popular Israeli news website Ynet yesterday that Goldstone's change of tack might lift the threat of arrest on war crimes charges from Israeli soldiers travelling abroad.

However, according to both Israeli human rights groups and a committee of independent legal experts appointed by the UN to monitor implementation of the report, Goldstone's applause for Israel's investigations is unwarranted.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B'Tselem, an Israeli organisation monitoring human rights in the occupied territories, said Israel had failed to conduct a prompt, independent or transparent inquiry.

"The materials on which Israel has relied have not been made available to us, so we are not in a position to judge the quality of the investigations or the credibility of the findings."

Likewise, the UN committee of experts, led by a New York judge, Mary McGowan-Davis, has complained that the Israeli army is probing itself and questioned the effectiveness of the investigations following "unnecessary delays" in which evidence may have been "lost or compromised".

Human rights groups have pointed out that, despite the large number of deaths in Gaza, only three of the 400 investigations cited by Goldstone have so far led to indictments.

One of those cases involved the theft of a credit card. Another, in which two soldiers used a nine-year-old boy as a human shield, led to their being punished with three-month suspended sentences and demotion.

The second, more significant reassessment by Goldstone is that he was wrong to conclude in his report that Israel intentionally targeted civilians "as a matter of policy".

Despite Goldstone's misleading wording in the article, he is referring not to an Israeli order to intentionally murder civilians but a policy in which indiscriminate attacks were undertaken with a disregard to likely casualties among civilians.

Strangely, he appears to base his revised opinion on Israel's own military investigations, even though no evidence from them has yet been made public.

Rina Rosenberg, the international advocacy director of the Adalah legal centre in Israel, which has been monitoring Israel's investigations on behalf of Palestinian legal groups, said Goldstone had given Israel a "gift" with this observation.

"Israel has tried to focus the debate entirely on whether it intended to kill civilians, as though a war crime depends only on intentionality. Israel knows that intention – outside a policy like targeted assassinations – is very difficult to prove."

She pointed out that there were other important standards in international law for assessing war crimes, including negilgence, disregard for the safety of civilians, and indiscriminate use of force.

Also, observers have wondered what new information has emerged since Mr Goldstone published his report to justify a rethink on whether Israeli policy left civilians in the line of fire.

His original conclusion drew in part on public statements by Israeli military commanders that in Gaza they had applied the Dahiya doctrine – an Israeli military strategy named after a suburb of Beirut that Israel levelled during its 2006 attack on Lebanon. In his article, Goldstone cast no fresh doubt on his earlier premise that such a strategy would by definition endanger civilians.

In addition, Israeli group Breaking the Silence has collected many testimonies from soldiers before and since publication of the Goldstone Report indicating that they received orders to carry out operations with little or no regard for the safety of civilians. Some described the army as pursuing a policy of "zero-risk" to soldiers, even if that meant putting civilians in danger.

Similarly, leaflets produced by the military rabbinate – apparently with the knowledge of the army top brass – urged Israeli ground troops in Gaza to protect their own lives at all costs and show no mercy to Palestinians.

The timing of Mr Goldstone's article has raised additional concern among Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups that he may have succumbed to political pressure.

Late last month the UN's Human Rights Council, which set up the fact-finding mission, recommended that the General Assembly refer the Goldstone Report to the Security Council – the decisive stage in moving it to the International Criminal Court.

It is expected that the US, which has consistently opposed such a referral, will block the report's progress to the ICC – further embarrassing Washington after its recent veto at the UN of a Palestinian resolution against Israeli settlements.

Shawan Jabareen, director of the Palestinian legal rights group al-Haq, said Mr Goldstone's article had provided Israel and the US with a "new weapon" to discredit the report even before it reached the Security Council.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com/201 ... judge.html

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

It will be recalled that after the September, 2009 issuance of the Goldstone Report suggesting that Israel might be guilty of war crimes, Judge Richard Goldstone was barred from attending grandson’s bar mitzvah. That is how much resentment was produced by the critical report that bares his name. Well, Richard Goldstone has just assured himself access to all future family celebrations. He has accomplished this by calling into doubt his offending investigatory work.

Part I – Judge Goldstone Has Second Thoughts

In a Washington Post op-ed, “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and War Crimes,” published on 1 April 2011, Judge Goldstone declared that new information coming from Israeli investigations, allegedly conducted “transparently and in good faith,” now indicate (at least to him) that “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” Since there was no policy of targeting civilians, all of the non-combatant victims (the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem tells us that of the 1,387 Palestinians killed in the invasion, 773 were civilians) become mere “collateral damage.” Voila! Israel is off the hook when it comes to the charge of war crimes. Or so Goldstone now believes.

But hold on a moment. In a thorough analysis of Judge Goldstone’s new position, Adam Horowitz, writing in Mondoweiss, turns things around once more. Horowitz points out that since the Goldstone Report, which was admittedly a preliminary document, there have been other investigations by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Committee of Independent Experts (CIE). These inquires suggest that Goldstone’s faith in Israel’s investigations is seriously misplaced.

For instance, in his op-ed Goldstone cites a major case where Israeli forces killed 29 members of the al-Simouni family. This was an important piece of preliminary evidence of a possible war crime sited in the original Goldstone Report. He now tells us that an Israeli investigation has shown that it was all a mistake, “an erroneous interpretation of a drone image.” Further, Goldstone is now “confident that if the officer [who misread the drone image] is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly.” There are, of course, several problems with this position.

1. Israel’s so-called investigations into the Gaza invasion were episodes of the IDF investigating the IDF. Exactly the same so-called investigative procedure Israel used after its illegal attack on the Mavi Marmara. These “investigations” were not “transparent” because they were not public. Nor did the Israelis share the nature of their evidence with outsiders. As Horowitz points out this way of conducting business is not episodic, but rather official standard operating procedure. It is a reflection of structural problems, mostly having to do with obvious conflict of interest issues, that make Israel presently incapable of carrying out an objective investigation of its own actions. It must be noted that the original Goldstone Report had pointed to these problems. In paragraph 1756 the Report stated “The Mission found major structural flaws that in its view make the [Israeli investigatory] system inconsistent with international standards….there is the absence of any effective and impartial investigation mechanism and victims of such alleged violations are deprived of any effective or prompt remedy.” Nothing has changed on this account since the issuance of the Goldstone Report except that Judge Goldstone has ceased to see the situation as a problem. This leaves Horowitz, and no doubt many others, puzzled. “Why Judge Goldstone is now ignoring this issue is unclear.”

2. The Israeli findings in the specific case mentioned above are contradicted by the investigation of the CIE. That finding indicates that there is suggestive evidence that a senior Israeli military commander purposely targeted an area in which he knew civilians had congregated. He knew it because he had been informed by his own ground units that they had ordered a number of civilians to that location. Using the drone photos as justification he went ahead and called in an air attack on the site anyway and then kept ambulances from approaching the scene. Was this just the action of a rogue officer operating in contravention of policy? Almost certainly not. According to Israeli media reports, an IDF “special command” investigation of the incident carried out ten months later found that the air attack happened after a “legitimate interpretation of drone photographs” and “there had been nothing out of the ordinary in the strike.”

The key words in the Israeli “special command” report is “nothing out of the ordinary.” The behavior of the Israeli military during the January 2009 invasion of Gaza cannot be abstracted from the entire history of Israeli aggression against Palestine, its inhabitants and surrounding Arab lands as well. Indeed, that behavior has been remarkably consistent–so consistent that it is virtually impossible to see any particular manifestation of it as accidental. Was Dair Yasin (1948) an accident? Was Sabra and Shatila (1982) an accident? Was the shelling of west Beirut (1982) an accident? Was Qana (1996) an accident? Is the on-going inhumane and illegal blockade of Gaza an accident? The answer to all these questions is no. They were all done under officially rendered orders. Indeed, a short list of Israeli massacres runs to 57, and those are just the major ones. Almost all of them were neither accidental nor rogue operations. Given such a consistent pathological pattern, what are the odds that the estimated 773 civilians who died in the invasion of Gaza were killed accidentally, just collateral damage?

Part II – Prime Minister Netanyahu Says ‘I Told You So’

One suspects that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had advanced notice of the Goldstone letter. Within a very short time after the letter appeared he was calling on the United Nations to retract the original Goldstone Report. “Everything we said proved to be true. Israel did not intentionally target civilians and it has proper investigatory bodies.” Defense Minister Ehud Barak simultaneously declared, “We always said that the IDF is a moral army that acted according to international law.”

What a convenient combination of events! Israel investigates itself, exonerates itself, gets its biggest name critic to buy the procedure as legitimate and then back off his criticisms. The only question left is how many others will also buy into what really looks like a prearranged set up? My guess is every single country which wants to get around the issue of Universal Jurisdiction (see my analysis on this subject dated 12 February 2011) will soon be quoting Goldstone’s op. ed. as if it is a legal document.

Part III – Shifting the Focus To Hamas

While Judge Goldstone praises Israel for its “investigations,” he chastises Hamas for its lack of inquiry. Goldstone tells us that “Hamas has done nothing.” Well, at least we can say that Hamas has thereby refrained from insulting our intelligence with mock investigations leading to predictable if dubious self-exoneration.

Goldstone approaches the acts of Hamas and those of Israel as if they are on a par. He tells us that “The laws of armed conflict apply no less to non-state actors such as Hamas than they do to national armies.” At least in the case of Israel, such an approach denies context. Historically, the violence of the oppressed tends to rise over time to the level of the violence of the oppressor. That is what has happened in Israel-Palestine. It is not the Palestinians who have set the standards for violence in this conflict. That role has been played by the Israelis. As the list of major massacres cited above suggests, long before their was ever a suicide bombing or an attack with small rockets lacking guidance systems, the Israelis were massacring Palestinians, stealing their land and generally evicting them from their country. In some ideal moral world, Richard Goldstone’s conclusion that the violence of the oppressed must be judged by the same criteria as the violence of the oppressor might make sense. Unfortunately, it does not do so in the real world we have created for ourselves.

Part IV – Conclusion

Richard Goldstone has always had a deep attachment to Israel. Thus it stands in his favor that throughout most of the time he led the UN investigation into the 2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza he maintained a level of objectivity which made possible a glimpse of just how brutal the Zionist state is. It is no secret that since the Report’s release Goldstone has come under much pressure to alter his views. He has been accused of everything from “perpetuating a blood libel against Israel” to singlehandedly supplying Israel’s enemies with their most influential document. As suggested at the beginning of this analysis, some of this reaction led to his being ostracized by friends and family. Now 75 years of age and at the end of his career, it would seem that Judge Goldstone has made the decision that he does not want to be remembered as a important critic of Israel. He wants to come in from the cold and so he has begun to make amends. I am afraid he will find this a difficult task. People in Goldstone’s position, who change directions in this way, tend never to be trusted again–by either side of the struggle at issue. This is so even if the change is justified, which in this case it is not. So Richard Goldstone has dug himself a deep hole at the bottom of which he is likely to dwell alone.

[hava1]

The two responses brought up here are not very insightful or inspiring, the usual rants (we heard many of those re Obama, or even Assange, whenever they fail to deliver).

We would expect transparency from our leaders, and if they are being cornered, we would like to know that. Especially if the subject is legal, because a judge cannot just cave in, s/he has a duty to apply only the law.

However, usually the type of pressures are such that one cannot come out and state them, the ptb no longer use crude methods, if they ever did.

In this particular case, its important to remember that the USA's stance had been negative all along, and did not support the investigation OR the results, which I think is crucial here. THe reason being that its the last wall between the USA and UN investigation into Iraq, for instance. So the State dept defends its stooge, as a living shield. And indeed, the first casualty, how not surprising is the idiot who stepped into the trap, relying on the cheerleaders who will be the first to execute him. Been there.

Now, what's left for us here in ISrael is the Assange cables, apparently he handed them to Ronen Bergman and Yossi Melman, so I dont hold my breath, these are two gate keepers, but I guess that's what there is.

I hope some of the whore house atrocities here will be outed.

[seemslikeadream]

Goldstone says he will not retract report
April 6, 2011
(JTA) -- Richard Goldstone said he will not seek to quash his report to the United Nations on Israel's conduct during the Gaza war, despite his retraction of a key finding.

Reports that he told Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai that he would seek to quash the report prepared at the behest of the U.N. Human Rights Council are false, Goldstone told The Associated Press. The report presented to the council in September 2009 accused Israel of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Goldstone, a former South African judge, wrote in an Op-Ed last weekend in The Washington Post that Israel did not intentionally target civilians as a policy during the Gaza War, withdrawing a critical allegation in the Goldstone Report.

"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," Goldstone wrote. "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a host of Israeli officials and organizations have called on the United Nations to cancel the Goldstone Report following Goldstone's Op-Ed.

Goldstone, who is Jewish, said he accepted an invitation from Yishai to visit Israel and tour its southern communities, which have been besieged by Hamas rockets. Yishai said he called Goldstone to thank him for his reassessment and to invite him to visit the country. Goldstone will visit Israel in July as a guest of Yishai.

[American Dream]

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

Beyond Goldstone: A truer discussion about Israel, Hamas and the Gaza conflict

By Jessica Montell, Tuesday, April 5th, 2011.

JERUSALEM

The word Goldstone has entered the modern Hebrew lexicon as shorthand for anti-Israel bias and the deterioration of Israel’s international position. When the fact-finding U.N. mission headed by Judge Richard Goldstone released its report into Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip 18 months ago, it seemed as if the world divided into two camps. There was the pro-Goldstone camp, arguing that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza and must be held accountable; and there was the anti-Goldstone camp, which insisted that the report was nothing less than a blood libel against the Jewish state. Everyone had to pick sides.

Where did that leave me? B’Tselem, the organization I lead, had extensively documented Operation Cast Lead and was pushing hard for domestic accountability. So we worked to leverage what was positive about the Goldstone Report — particularly the central recommendation that both Israel and Hamas must investigate the grave allegations and hold accountable anyone found responsible for violating the laws of war. But it was impossible to ignore some glaring problems with the report, particularly the conclusions regarding Israel’s intention to harm Palestinian civilians and what appeared to be different standards to prove Israel’s crimes and those of Hamas.

Now Goldstone himself acknowledges that the report was flawed. In a Post op-ed that has created a media storm, he conceded that Israel did not willfully target civilians as a matter of policy. Yet the column, while acknowledging that Israel has opened criminal investigations into the allegations raised, by no means absolves Israel of all the grave allegations regarding its conduct, as official spokespeople rush to conclude.

In the operation, according to rigorous research by B’Tselem, Israel killed at least 758 Palestinian civilians who did not take part in the hostilities; 318 of them were minors. More than 5,300 Palestinians were injured, over 350 of them seriously. More than 3,500 houses were destroyed, and electricity, water and sewage infrastructure was severely damaged. In many ways, the Gaza Strip has yet to recover from the unprecedented destruction this operation wrought.

The extent of the harm to civilians does not prove that Israel violated the law. But Israel has yet to adequately address many allegations regarding its conduct, including: the levels of force authorized; the use of white phosphorous and inherently inaccurate mortar shells in densely populated areas; the determination that government office buildings were legitimate military targets; the obstruction of and harm to ambulances.

Accordingly, Goldstone’s praise of Israel’s investigations seems a bit premature. Of the 52 criminal investigations Israel opened into incidents in Cast Lead, only three have led to indictments. Nearly 2½ years after the operation, we do not know the status of the remainder of the investigations. Furthermore, these investigations look at individual incidents and at the behavior of individual soldiers. There have been no investigations into the policy questions.

Of course, as Goldstone wrote Sunday, this is far more than Hamas has done to investigate its crimes. And that is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Goldstone’s opinion piece and the Israeli spin of it: the measuring of Israel against Hamas. Israel did not willfully target civilians; Hamas did. Israel initiated investigations; Hamas did not. When the bar is set so low, Israel easily clears it.

The Goldstone Report’s shortcomings contributed to a polarization that left little room to address the complexity of the issues involved. The Israeli army was either a gang of criminals or the most moral army in the world. Operation Cast Lead was either flawlessly executed or a crime against humanity. Goldstone’s op-ed presents an opportunity to break down these false dichotomies and generate a more nuanced understanding of the operation, both in the domestic Israeli discourse and among the international community.

It is therefore regrettable that the Israeli government and many in the media have portrayed Goldstone’s op-ed as a retraction of everything in the 575-page report. “The one point of light,” Gabriela Shalev, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said of Goldstone’s op-ed, “is that if we have to defend ourselves against terror organizations again, we will be able to say there is no way to deal with this terror other than the same way we did in Cast Lead.”

Shalev’s words make chillingly clear that this debate is not only about the past but also about the future. For this reason it is vital that we move beyond the slogans and soundbites around Goldstone. Instead, we must honestly discuss how to ensure genuine accountability for past wrongs, full respect for international humanitarian law and protection for civilians in any future military operations.

The writer is executive director of B’Tselem: the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/ ... BL20110406

U.S. envoy Rice doubts Goldstone report can be fixed

(Reuters) - Susan Rice, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, said on Wednesday she wanted a controversial report on Israel's 2008-09 Gaza offensive to "disappear" but did not think it could be amended even though its author now says he may have been wrong.

Israel has urged the United Nations to cancel the 2009 report to the U.N. Human Rights Council by South African jurist Richard Goldstone that said both Israel and the Islamist group Hamas were guilty of war crimes in the Gaza conflict.

Last week, Goldstone wrote in the Washington Post that Israeli investigations of the Gaza conflict indicated civilians had not been intentionally targeted. He said his report, published about nine months after the conflict, would have been different had he known this while writing it.

"I'm not sure it can be amended," Rice told a congressional hearing. "What we want to see is for it to disappear and no longer be a subject of discussion and debate in the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly or beyond."

The United States, a steadfast ally to Israel, has worked for years to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. As change sweeps the Arab world, President Barack Obama said on Tuesday it was "more urgent than ever" to revive the stalled peace process.

Rice told lawmakers the United States repudiated the Goldstone report as "deeply flawed" when it first emerged.

"We see no need ... for the Goldstone report to be considered and now that its principal author has said what he said, frankly, our view is reinforced that this should go away and that's what we'll work to do," she said.

About 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and 13 Israelis were killed in the brief but devastating war from December 2008 to January 2009 that was launched with Israel's declared aim of ending cross-border rocket fire from Palestinian militants.

Israel refused to cooperate with Goldstone's investigation and condemned his report as distorted and biased.

'A VIABLE STATE'

Rice said the United States did not see any evidence at the time that Israel intentionally targeted civilians or committed war crimes. Israel had shown an ability to investigate concerns about the conflict, "quite in contrast with Hamas," she said.

Rice also defended U.S. participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council, saying that it was better for the United States to stay engaged and resist anti-Israel bias on the council "rather than turn our backs."

Asked by lawmakers about a possible Palestinian move for U.N. recognition of an independent Palestinian state, Rice said "you can pass a resolution but that does not a viable state create."

"A viable state can only be established through direct negotiations between the parties," she said.

Israel has been alarmed by a string of recognitions by Latin American states of Palestinian statehood, which some analysts say could be a precursor to a move by the Palestinians to seek full U.N. membership.

n September, Obama set a one-year goal for Israelis and Palestinians to agree on the issue of Palestinian statehood, a time-frame most analysts called a long shot.

But Obama has yet to abandon that target despite the collapse of talks late last year in a dispute over Israeli settlement building on occupied land.

[hava1]

I wish the metrial were in Engilsh, but the Goldstone retraction (?) created havoc in the media here, mainly the interesting blogs are left to center trying to save face and re-frame the situation without relying on international law at all.

that's gideon levy, hAaretz this morning -
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/goldstone-has-paved-the-path-for-a-second-gaza-war-1.354550

Yet another hebrew only scoop, Ronen Bergman, the intelligence expert/journalist publishes yesterday in Globes, scoops about Israeli army secret facilities with "sex appartments" equipped with Sauna, hot tobs etc, for high up officers and general to enjoy the young female soldiers for sex. The picture of the article shows a hot tup with two almost naked couple holding hands preparing for sex.
http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.as ... 1000636531


Bergman claims that these findings led to IDF sending to arrest him for treason, and him being interrogated several times for alleged security offenses.

[hava1]

Published 01:32 07.04.11Latest update 01:32 07.04.11
Goldstone has paved the path for a second Gaza war
Anyone who honored the first Goldstone has to ask him: What exactly do you know today that you didn't know then? Do you know today that criticizing Israel leads to a pressure-and-slander campaign that you can't withstand, you 'self-hating Jew'?

By Gideon Levy


All at once the last doubts have disappeared and the question marks have become exclamation points. Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu Al-Aish wrote a short book in which he invented the killing of his three daughters. The 29 dead from the Al-Simoni family are now vacationing in the Caribbean. The white phosphorus was only the pyrotechnics of a war film. The white-flag wavers who were shot were a mirage in the desert, as were the reports about the killing of hundreds of civilians, including women and children. "Cast lead" has returned to being a phrase in a Hanukkah children's song.

A surprising and unexplained article in The Washington Post by Richard Goldstone caused rejoicing here, a Goldstone party, the likes of which we haven't seen for a long time. In fact, Israeli PR reaped a victory, and for that congratulations are in order. But the questions remain as oppressive as ever, and Goldstone's article didn't answer them - if only it had erased all the fears and suspicions.


Anyone who honored the first Goldstone has to honor him now as well, but still has to ask him: What happened? What exactly do you know today that you didn't know then? Do you know today that criticizing Israel leads to a pressure-and-slander campaign that you can't withstand, you "self-hating Jew"? This you could have known before.

Was it the two reports by Judge Mary McGowan Davis that led to your change of heart? If so, you should read them carefully. In her second report, which was published about a month ago and for some reason received no mention in Israel, the New York judge wrote that nothing indicates that Israel launched an investigation into the people who designed, planned, commanded and supervised Operation Cast Lead. So how do you know which policy lay behind the cases you investigated? And what's this enthusiasm that seized you in light of the investigations by the Israel Defense Forces after your report?

You have to be a particularly sworn lover of Israel, as you say you are, to believe that the IDF, like any other organization, can investigate itself. You have to be a blind lover of Zion to be satisfied with investigations for the sake of investigations that produced no acceptance of responsibility and virtually no trials. Just one soldier is being tried for killing.

But let's put aside the torments and indecision of the no-longer-young Goldstone. Let's also put aside the reports by the human rights organizations. Let's make do with the findings of the IDF itself. According to Military Intelligence, 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation, 709 of them terrorists, 162 who may or may not have been armed, 295 bystanders, 80 under the age of 16 and 46 women.

All the other findings described a more serious picture, but let's believe the IDF. Isn't the killing of about 300 civilians, including dozens of women and children, a reason for penetrating national soul-searching? Were all of them killed by mistake? If so, don't 300 different mistakes require conclusions? Is this the behavior of the most moral army in the world? If not, who takes responsibility?

Operation Cast Lead was not a war. The differences in power between the two sides, the science-fiction army versus the barefoot Qassam launchers, doesn't justify things when the blow was so disproportionate. It was a harsh attack against a crowded and helpless civilian population, among which terrorists hid. We can believe that the IDF didn't deliberately kill civilians, we don't have murdering soldiers as in other armies, but neither did the IDF do enough to prevent them from being killed. The fact is, they were killed, and so many of them. Our doctrine of zero casualties has a price.

Goldstone has won again. First he forced the IDF to begin investigating itself and to put together a new ethics code; now he unwittingly has given a green light for Operation Cast Lead 2. Leave him alone. We're talking about our image, not his. Are we pleased with what happened? Are we really proud of Operation Cast Lead?

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/op ... r-1.354550

[hava1]

delete, double

[American Dream]

Goldstone to face libel suit

MK Danny Danon enlists help of Jewish-American lawyers to file libel lawsuit against South African judge following his retraction of his Gaza war report. MK Danon: Report is '2010 version of blood libel'

Attila Somfalvi
Published: 04.07.11


Judge Richard Goldstone is expected to stand trial for libel following his retraction of his Operation Cast Lead report, in which he accused Israel of war crimes.

Knesset Member Danny Danon (Likud), currently in the United States, has enlisted the help of a number of Jewish-American attorneys who agreed to file a lawsuit against the South African judge at no charge.

A petition will be filed with a New York District Court next week, in which the plaintiffs will demand a formal apology and a symbolic financial compensation for the State of Israel. A second lawsuit may be filed in an Israeli court if Goldstone arrives in Israel.

Minimize the damage

The decision to file the lawsuit is a direct response to the judge's op-ed in the Washington Post in which he claimed his report caused significant damage to the State of Israel in the United Nations and internationally.

Despite his retraction, Goldstone announced he does not intend to try and nix the report.

"The Goldstone Report is the 2010 version of a blood libel. The twisted image Goldstone painted of the State of Israel caused damage, is still causing damage and will continue to damage Israel and its citizens for years to come. A public apology published in every country might lessen the harm already done," Danon explained.



http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 08,00.html

[hava1]

IMO, the best one so far from ISrael, (the Author is Arab)

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/goldstone-s-regret-is-a-result-of-emotional-pressure-1.354841

Goldstone's 'regret' is a result of emotional pressure
Declarations were made, not from the lunatic fringes, but from central figures in world Jewry to the effect that Goldstone, the world-renowned human rights activist, was 'spreading lies' about his own people, that he was the one preventing Defense Minister Ehud Barak from visiting London.

By Oudeh Basharat


In any event, when Richard Goldstone "retracted" he didn't really retract. Read his op-ed in the Washington Post once, twice - there's no retraction there on any substantial issues. And when he stated in his "regret" that Israel had started its investigation after his conclusions were made, that is a kind of reaffirmation of Goldstone's report. At the time, we should recall, Israel vehemently refused to conduct a probe of Operation Cast Lead. According to the strange interpretations of his "regret," 1,400 people - most of them civilians - were killed in Gaza by mistake. Well, only a professional "mistake maker" could cause killings of such magnitude.

To stand firm for two years is an act of heroism. At his advanced age, it would have been quite cruel had Goldstone been prevented, in his own community, from being called up to read from the Torah at his grandson's bar mitzvah. To humiliate him publicly, in front of his family, that's like a 20-year-old IDF soldier humiliating a Palestinian in front of his sons.


It is hard to identify when the breaking point came. Apparently it was a sequence of events: total ostracism on the part of every Jewish organization the world over; declarations, not from the lunatic fringes, but from central figures in world Jewry to the effect that Goldstone, the world-renowned human rights activist, was "spreading lies" about his own people, and he was the one preventing Defense Minister Ehud Barak from visiting London - "while Khaled Meshal, an arch-terrorist, can move around freely," as one prominent Jewish activist said. And so the judge who joined the United Nations commission as a human rights activist emerged as someone who obeys the terrorists.

We can state here: Goldstone's "regret" is a result of emotional pressure - and this time around, not a moderate amount.

The escape hatch used by a person in distress is usually the tortured question: Why go through all this suffering? For Hamas? The organization that doesn't respect human rights in Gaza itself? And that operates contrary to Palestinian public opinion, international law and ethics - firing on Israeli civilians, and in so doing providing another excuse for the Israeli government? Or for Muammar Gadhafi, whose country is a member of the UN Human Rights Council, but who slaughters his own people?

Why? For the sake of justice, to limit an insane use of force, so that not every person bearing arms will simply do whatever he pleases. Goldstone made a tremendous contribution on this issue, to both the Arabs and the Jews.

The headline in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said: "The pressure and the regret." It should have read: "The pressure and the surrender." Another successful campaign of targeted assassination. We can report on the two-way radio: "The judge is in our hands, over." Poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote: "Hurray to the conqueror of a village." In that spirit we could continue: "Hurray to the subduer of a judge." It's a shame that Israeli society chose to break the mirror.

[hava1]

and compare to the all too expected xymphora "goldstoned"
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2011/04/goldstoned.html

everybody seems to have forgotten that Goldstone has always been a Zionist, and more particularly, a lite Zionist. Lite Zionists believe fully in the Zionist goal of building a Jewish state across the Middle East, but differ from full Zionists in that they believe full Zionist tactics are hurting the Zionist cause. Goldstone's problem with Operation Cast Lead wasn't the unprovoked ultra-violence against innocent civilians - it was the optics of the use of such violence. He feared that the PR battle was being lost. Once the IDF came up with enough lies in its self-investigations to cover the PR problem, the violence no longer bothered him. He has now taken his logical place as a Jew to fully hide the problem from the gentiles.

The best allies of the Ultra Zionists are the antisemites from the "left". Perhaps the "Stunt" was pulled by the "justice angels" of the UN, against their buddy Goldstone and for the usual currency (money, whores, whatever Bibi has up his sleeve).

[AlicetheKurious]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4051939,00.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

...

In an interview with the Al-Watan newspaper he said...

Hava, this article is a crude disinfo plant. I'm willing to bet my right arm that El Baradei has never given any interview to "Al-Watan" (which one? the one run by students in Kuwait? The rather obscure newspaper from the tiny Sultanate of Oman? I had to Google "Al Watan" to find out if there even exists a newspaper called "Al-Watan"). The first clue is the lack of clarity about the newspaper and in which country it's published, only that it's "Arab". The second clue is that nobody who has any knowledge about El Baradei or who has watched his hours of live interviews could possibly believe that he would say anything vaguely resembling this quote. That is so outrageous it would be funny if it weren't scary that so many people are still willing to believe without question whatever whoppers are published in the Israeli press. What is it about El-Baradei that makes the Mubarak regime, the Saudi-backed Salafists and Israel all want to defame him so much?? Believe me, according to credible reports, the Israeli government is the only one making belligerent military threats at this time.

On the other hand, speaking of Kuwaiti newspapers, we recently had a minor scandal here, after a respected Egyptian newspaper, Al-Shorouk, claimed in its news summary that the German Der Spiegel had published an interview with Egypt's Defense Minister and Head of the Armed Forces Council, Field Marshall Tantawy. According to Al-Shorouk's brief, in the interview Tantawy made an explosive claim, that Saudi Arabia had threatened to withdraw all Saudi investments in Egypt and expel the millions of Egyptians living and working in Saudi Arabia if the Egyptian government prosecutes and tries Hosni Mubarak. After vainly searching the Der Spiegel website for the original interview, some Egyptian journalists contacted Al-Shorouk, only to find out that the info had been taken from the Kuwaiti Al-Anba newspaper. The puzzle of the missing interview caused quite a brouhaha in Egyptian internet circles, prompting the official spokesperson for Der Spiegel to call in to talk shows to categorically deny that Der Spiegel had conducted or published any such interview.

Why did the Kuwaiti newspaper publish a non-existent interview? How long would it have remained unquestioned if some careless or rookie employee at El-Shorouk hadn't reported it?

Bottom line: intelligence agencies, among others, plant disinfo in obscure or compromised newspapers in order to "launder" it so it can later be picked up and published elsewhere. The Mossad has a long history of doing just that: in fact, more commonly they publish some claim which is later reported by a reputable newspaper and then quotes are selectively taken from the reputable newspaper in order to get the Mossad's message out.

This goes something like this:

Ynet News: "Israeli intelligence sources insist that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program."

As-Safir: "According to the Israeli Ynet online newspaper, Israel claims that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program."

Jerusalem Post: "According to the Lebanese As-Safir, intelligence sources insist that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program."

New York Times: "Arab sources report intelligence claims that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program."

From there, it hits the agencies and is trumpeted all over the globe.

(I use this example because that's exactly what happened in the case of Syria's so-called "secret nuclear weapons program" a few years ago.)

Unless this "news" is corroborated (highly unlikely), it can safely be assumed to be false.