Battle Over Goldstone Report Continues
April 7, 2011 17:33 by Alex Margolin
Judge Richard Goldstone’s Washington Post op-ed admitting he was wrong about key elements in his infamous Goldstone Report on the war in Gaza unleashed a torrent of media coverage over the past week.
In his original report, Goldstone wrote that Israel and Hamas were both guilty of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in the Gaza War. One of the most serious charges leveled against Israel was that it intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians. The charge, Goldstone wrote last week, was wrong. While Goldstone did not fully repudiate his report, he acknowledged there were flaws.
Although the story never reached the scale that had accompanied the publication of the Goldstone Report in 2009, virtually every media outlet covered Goldstone’s about-face fairly, if less dramatically.
A portion of the press, however, remains immersed in the question of what Goldstone’s reconsiderations mean for the fate of the Goldstone Report. After all, if relevant information has emerged that wasn’t considered when the report was published, it would be reasonable to expect its authors to review the material and make any necessary adjustments.
The Chicago Tribune, for example, wrote:
The UN should formally retract the Goldstone report. But it can’t stop there. The UN needs to acknowledge that it has not been an honest broker in the Middle East. It needs to acknowledge that its human rights panel continues to be an embarrassment that greatly undermines the standing of the world body.
It would be reasonable, that is, if the goal of a UN report were truth. It’s not reasonable at all, however, if the goal is to vilify Israel and use the Goldstone Report to further an agenda of Israel’s delegitimization.
Sadly, some of the report’s biggest cheerleaders before Goldstone declared his reconsiderations have become its biggest defenders today.
Former UN special rapporteur John Dugard, a longtime Israel critic who has often invoked the charge of apartheid against Israel, claimed that Goldstone failed to bring any new facts to the debate that would necessitate a review at the UN. Writing for the New Statesman, he wonders how Goldstone could even question that Israel set out to harm Palestinian civilians intentionally.
In his op-ed, Goldstone declares that Hamas’s indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel, which resulted in the killing of four civilians, was an “intentional” targeting of civilians and consequently a war crime. But it is a mystery how he can suggest that the indiscriminate bombing and shooting of Palestinians in Gaza by the IDF, which resulted in nearly a thousand civilian deaths, was not “intentional”.
It is also a mystery how Dugard arrived at his total of nearly a thousand civilian deaths. Ironically, Goldstone himself, in the same op-ed, noted that even Hamas has conceded that the casualty figures were in line with the IDF’s totals.
Dugard also ignores the issue of human shields, or Hamas terrorists firing from behind Palestinian civilians. The following video taken during Operation Cast Lead demonstrates how Hamas used endangered the lives of Palestinian children, using them as human shields.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwP_LusgPAw&NR=1[/youtube]
What may have been reported in the Goldstone Report as indiscriminate bombing may, in fact, have been completely different.
Former British army Col. Richard Kemp, who had testified before the Goldstone Commission to dispute charges of war crimes against Israel, recently noted that the Goldstone Report’s failure to properly address the use of human shields by Hamas has justified the same tactic in Libya.
Dugard wasn’t alone in dismissing Goldstone’s reversal as irrelevant to the substance of the Goldstone Report. In an editorial, The Guardian also noted that Israel’s intentions toward Palestinian civilians were beside the point.
The report did not in fact claim that Israel set out deliberately to murder civilians. It said that Operation Cast Lead was “deliberately disproportionate” and intended to “punish, humiliate and terrorize”. That charge stands unanswered. Indiscriminate warfare, as opposed to deliberate killing, was undoubtedly state policy.
This accusation by the Guardian was addressed by HonestReporting editor Yarden Frankl on Backspin, HR’s daily blog:
One might think that such an admission by the report’s chief author would cause the Guardian to reevaluate its position. But no, instead of blaming Israel for the intentional killing of civilians as a matter of policy, it now blames Israel for indiscriminate killing of civilians as a matter of policy.
Yet the Guardian offers no new evidence for this accusation, merely pointing back at the original flawed and debunked report. The editorial presents a list of accusations as facts. Yet these accusations are lacking both credibility and context. A full treatment of every one of the accusations based on Israel’s investigation has been published online. In certain cases, the investigations found the individual soldiers had acted against standing orders. But the vast majority of incidents were found to have been performed based on military need and done so in a way to limit civilian casualty and damage as much as possible.
While the credibility of the Goldstone Report has been challenged by the Goldstone’s reversal, the report remains a central document in the effort to challenge Israel’s moral authority and its very legitimacy. Unmitigated public pressure helped push Goldstone to reconsider his conclusions. It is vital to maintain the pressure to push Goldstone to take the next step and demands that the Goldstone Report be annulled or amended to reflect the truth.
S Rubicon
8:41 pm
Apr 07, 2011
In the final analysis, the Goldstone Report damage has been done & will almost forever be used to justify any attack against Israel. Reports like this, and other investigations (sic), as well as unverified media reports have always been used to launch those vicious attacks. In truth, the same is done to America.
In the end, media reports or PR campaigns to demonize, are weapons many anti-freedom groups & individuals use to further their agenda’s. By selecting a target & then attacking that target incessantly, the anti-freedom groups & individuals seek to chip away at the ability of the public to discern fact from fiction. Their goals have nothing to do with truth or justice, as we all well know. Their goals, are power & wealth.
The work of Honest Reporting & others will be ongoing. So long as the public remains susceptible and in many cases gullible & unaware, those seeking freedom, justice, & peace, will have a job debunking those distortions & lies. The problem is, the truth typically cannot be or is not as sensational as the lies & distortions have been & will be til the end of time.
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christine sherrard
10:29 pm
Apr 07, 2011
Yet, with fork tongues, the west is condemning the Libyan President for using his own people as human shields. Seems there is one rule for Israel and one for everywhere else.
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Brent Pudsey
1:31 am
Apr 08, 2011
I applaud Honesty Reporting for bring forward this story, I admire the fact that Goldstone was able to admit he had been bias and was causing indirect harm to the nation of Israel.
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RICHARD
2:16 am
Apr 09, 2011
SORRY, HIS APOLOGY IS NOT ACCEPTED…HE CAUSED TOO MUCH HARM TO ISRAEL AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE….
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» Battle Over Goldstone Report Continues Freedom Alert!: Defending American Freedom by exposing Radical Islam, Socialist, Liberals, and all the Enemies of Freedom, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness!
3:02 am
Apr 08, 2011
[...] Click here to view the embedded video. [...]
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R. Eluchans
3:37 am
Apr 08, 2011
The fact is that the UN accepted a wrong report from Goldstone. Therefore the UN should rectify the error. Goldstone must apologise instead of givin poor excuses. And the UN Human Right Counsil should not only apologise, but also explain why they have never condemned the terrorist attack from Hamas, implicitly justifying those. What abou the righ of seldf defense for Israel? What about the use of human shield by the arab terroristT of Hamas. The fact is that the UN has been biased against Israel. Period.How anyone can believe in a UNbody like the Human Right Council composed by dictators who do not respect human life in their countries? It is something very wrong with the UN.
About this “journalist’ J. Dugard, well…same story than those form other British tabloids that just are totally biased against Israel. What they publish is not factual, they just expressed their opinions., as good as someone else. The problem is tghat they do not do their job as journalistst, they use their “positions to diseminate their poison at their discretion. The media who hire them, in my view lacks integrity.
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Eli, Kiryat Ono, Israel
12:01 am
Apr 10, 2011
Goldstone has been and still is a despicable liar. The evidence in favor of Israel was abunbdant and fully available at the time of the report writing. He could have read Hamas Charter of 1988 and find out how murderous Hamas is, or listen to Col. Richard Kemp, or read preliminary IDF report, or address a lot of other authentic material from Israeli citizens who have been under attacks for 7 years. He ignored all those to support a biased organization like UNHRC with countries like Libya and Saudi Arabia, that have no concept of human rights. This villain put Israelis (even Tzipi Livnie) at risk of arrest in the UK while Gaddafi and other Arab tyrants could walk freely. Not to mention the use by murderous terrorist organizations and dictatorships of his report to compromise the ability of my country to defent its citizens against rocket attacks.
His excuse “had Israel cooperated it would have been different” is just another lie in his on going blood libel. Goldstone shamelessly betrayed his own people and he will be remembered in infamy among our people for the rest of his life.
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Robert
7:37 am
Apr 12, 2011
My comment is awaiting moderation.
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Robert
7:38 am
Apr 12, 2011
Yaron, Albert, Nathan, Anonymous
I want to continue our discussion.
Robert
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Battle Over Goldstone Report Continues « Olive Press
5:21 pm
Apr 12, 2011
[...] http://honestreporting.com/battle-over-goldstone-report-continues/ [...]
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