Richard Goldstone—the primary author of a one-sided United Nation’s 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 actually 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 later.
Other members were accompanied on their investigations in Gaza by actual Hamas activists who showed them only what they wanted them to see. The group was eager to find or manufacture “evidence” to support what the Human Rights Council itself had directed them to find, namely that Israel committed “grave violations of human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip.” This conclusion too was reached before any investigation. No wonder so many prominent human rights experts, including Mary Robinson, refused to participate in this mockery of human rights, declaring that it was “guided not by human rights, but by politics.” No wonder so many nations that are dedicated to human rights—such as Switzerland, Canada, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands—refused to go along with the politically-motivated witch hunt. They should also refuse to accept the politically motivated, entirely pre-ordained conclusions of the biased report.
As I wrote before the “Kangaroo Court investigation” began:
“The UN Human Rights Council is a scandal. [It has] a long history of singling out Israel for condemnation and of ignoring real human rights abusers by the world's worst offenders, several of which dominate the Human Rights Council and it predecessor.
As Hudson Institute scholar Anne Bayefsky recently noted: "The Council has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all the other 191 U.N. member states combined.... The more time the Council spends demonizing Israel, the less likely it becomes that it will ever get around to condemning genocide in Sudan, female slavery in Saudi Arabia, or torture in Egypt.”
…
The very idea of the UN Council conducting an "independent" or objective investigation of Israel is preposterous.
A careful reading of the official media summary—the widely quoted press release—of the report itself reveals the bias of its members and discredits the entire enterprise.
The summary never criticizes Hamas. It downplays the rockets deliberately fired by Hamas at Israeli civilian targets in Sderot and other towns and cities, blaming them on generic “Palestinian armed groups.” It faults Israel more than Hamas for using human shields. It cites the admission of Hamas leader Fathi Hammad, who boasted that:
“For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed humans shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.””
But it concluded that “it does not consider [this admission] to constitute evidence…” It ignored videos, which constitute hard evidence, that clearly show Palestinian terrorists firing rockets from civilian areas, including schools. This was part of a pattern of ignoring evidence that undercut its pre-determined conclusions and exaggerating—sometimes manufacturing—evidence that supported it.
The lowest blow and the worst canard contained in this lie-laden report is that the Israeli judicial system is incapable of conducting investigations and bringing about compliance with international law. It claims that the Israeli judicial system “has major structural flaws that make the system inconsistent with international standards,” and that “there is little potential for accountability for serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law through domestic institutions in Israel.” This is a direct attack on the Israeli Supreme Court by a lawyer who knows full well that there is no country in the world that has a judicial system that demands more accountability than the Israeli system does. There is no judicial system in the world—not in the United States, not in Great Britain, not in South Africa, not in France—that takes more seriously its responsibility to bring its military into compliance with international law. The long term President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Professor Aharon Barak, opened the Supreme Court of Israel to all claims of law violation. Cases that would be rejected by the courts of other nations have been pursued by the Israeli Supreme Court. This part of this infamous report has literally turned black to white and white to black. It has condemned the most responsive judicial system in the world, without even bothering to compare it to other systems. In doing so, they have made a mockery of international human rights and turned into a weapon that targets only Israel.
Another Orwellian “newspeak” conclusion is that “the international community has been largely silent” about alleged Israeli abuses in the Gaza and the West Bank. Didn’t the investigators even read the reports of the Human Rights Council, as well as so many other organizations of the international community, that obsess over Israeli imperfections, to the exclusion of other real human rights abusers? No country in the world has been subjected to more criticism than Israel. Yet on Planet Goldstone “the international community has been largely silent” about Israel. This statement could only have been written by a variation of the three monkeys with hands covering their eyes and ears, but not their mouths or pens.
After reading these perverse falsities, I fully expected the report to end by parroting the Swedish tabloid that accused Israeli soldiers of killing Palestinian children in order to sell their organs. Shades of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion!
Every serious student of human rights should be appalled at this anti-human rights and highly politicized report. Judge Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself. In an apparent effort to curry favor with the international anti-Israel establishment, and perhaps with the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, he has abandoned all principles of objectivity and neutral human rights. He no longer deserves the mantle of a human rights advocate. He has done more to destroy the credibility and objectivity of human rights than any credible human rights personage in modern times.
In addition to presiding over a biased and bigoted report, Goldstone has been two-faced. In an op ed published by the New York Times following release of the report, he is far more critical of Hamas than he was in the report itself. The Times article was intended for an American audience, so he went out of his way to create the false impression that the report was balanced in its allocation of blame.
If the methodology and conclusions of this infamous report were ever applied generally to democracies seeking to combat terrorists who hid behind civilians—as in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq—it would constitute a great victory for terrorism and a defeat for democracy. But not to worry. The report is not intended to establish general principles of international law, applicable to all nations. It is directed at one nation and one nation only: the Jew among nations—Israel. For shame.
I've read the first 30 pages or so. They didn't even try to appear unbiased. They consistantly refer to "occupied territory" rather than using an objective term like disputed territory. In paragraph 32, they employ the sentence "The Mission
rejects this position." Then they go on to state they found no evidence either way. It's sloppy from a legal perspective too. In paragraph 86, they use the phrase "since the beginning of the occupation". Is that supposed to be a date? Is it 1948, 1967 or something else? Goldstone should retire from public life over this piece of crap. -Michael
Thank goodness that there are scholars of law like Prof.Dershowitz, who have the strength of character to debunk the infamous report prepared by Richard Goldstone and his cronies. Such a self-hating Jew as Goldstone should be declared a persona non grata in the State of Israel.
Please endeavor to get this piece into the NY Times as an Op-Ed.
The Times ought to be obliged to do this as a counterweight to Goldstone's own op-ed this week.
Thank you Alan Dershowitz for standing up and being such an astute and oustanding supporter of Israel and the truth. If only we had more mensches like you!
Why isn't this response in the general media so that at least the American public can be made aware of the facts?
Justice Goldstone as Head of the Mission repeatedly insisted that the Mission was not a judicial inquiry and so "could not reach judicial conclusions". On this basis that he justified the inclusion of partisan mission members, admitting that their involvement "would not be appropriate for a judicial inquiry'. The Report however is highly judicial in nature, reaching conclusive judicial determinations of guilt, and including 'detailed legal findings' even in the absence of the sensitive intelligence information which Israel did not feel able to provide. These determinations are made notwithstanding the Report's admission that it does "pretend to reach the standard of proof applicable in criminal trials".
Elements Ignored by the Report:
The Report all but ignores the deliberate terrorist strategy of operating in the heart of densely populated civilian areas which dictated the arena of battle. Even when the Hamas terrorists mixed among civilians, the Report rejects the notion that there was an intention to put the civilian population at risk.
Astonishingly, despite the many widely reported instances in the international press of the abuse of civilian facilities by terrorist groups, and the statements of Hamas own leaders praising women and children who acted as human shields, the Report repeatedly stated that it could find no evidence of such activities. This, even despite its admission that those interviewed were "reluctant to speak about the presence or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups".
The Report also ignores Israel's extensive efforts, even in the midst of fighting, to maintain humanitarian standards. While it does, reluctantly, acknowledge Israel's "significant efforts" to issue warnings before attacks, it does not find any of these efforts to be effective
While the Report passes judgment against Israel in respect of almost any allegation, it seeks to absolve the Hamas of almost any wrongdoing. The word "terrorist" is almost entirely absent. Soldier Gilad Shalit, now held incommunicado in captivity for over three years, was "captured during an enemy incursion" and the Hamas members that the Mission met with in Gaza are thanked as the "Gaza authorities" for extending their full cooperation and support to the Mission.
Even the thousands of rocket attacks against Israelis which necessitated the Gaza Operation are given the most cursory treatment, and indeed the Report indirectly blames Israel even for these by terming them "'reprisals".