Judge Goldstone defends role, but feels distressed
Goldstone's own OP-Ed For the TL;DR
1.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.
2.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.
Story 1. Former judge complains that close friends kept away from him and some family members even had reservations about his cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council.
Judge Richard Goldstone told associates several months ago that ever since publication of his report on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, he has been in great distress and under duress.
He complained that close friends kept away from him and some family members even had reservations about his cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council.
Last year, a Johannesburg synagogue initially said it would not allow him to take part in his grandson's bar mitzvah.
Goldstone told Haaretz's Akiva Eldar at the time that the bar mitzvah was an event of joy "after much aggravation," and added that he was very upset by the witch hunt and accusations against him. He was particularly offended by a Yedioth Ahronoth article about verdicts he handed down to black defendants during the apartheid era in his native South Africa.
He said at the time that despite the attacks on him in Jewish communities, he does not regret agreeing to chair the investigative committee.
"I felt that because I was Jewish, it would be hypocritical not to get involved in the Middle East," he told Eldar, explaining that he was a Zionist, but did not intend to visit Israel any time soon, for reasons of personal security. He also said he was saddened by what he saw as recent attacks on Israel's democracy, including bills banning criticism of the Israel Defense Forces.
Goldstone observed that Israel has trouble taking criticism, but said he still hopes the government will conduct an open inquiry of the events in Gaza, adding that the country has distinguished justices and reputable lawyers who can lead such an effort and put an end to the affair.
-Source/Haaretz
Story 2. Israel wants war crimes report nullified
JERUSALEM - Israeli leaders yesterday welcomed an admission by Richard Goldstone - a Jewish UN investigator who became persona non grata in the Jewish state - that war crimes accusations contained in his report on Israel’s offensive in Gaza two years ago should be reconsidered.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the United Nations to nullify Goldstone’s report. Defense officials urged the international community to rewrite the laws of war.
Commentators alternated between attacking Goldstone for causing what they said was irreparable damage to Israel and praising him for admitting he made a mistake.
“There are very few instances in which those who disseminate libels retract their libel. This happened in the case of the Goldstone report,’’ Netanyahu told his Cabinet.
Urban warfare has long vexed the Israeli military, which for decades was dominant over the Arab nation’s numerically superior armies but has struggled with foes in crowded refugee camps, dense cities, and villages lined with cinderblock homes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and southern Lebanon.
In December 2008, Israel launched an offensive against Gaza, a densely populated strip of land that borders southwest Israel, in response to years of Palestinian rocket fire.
In three weeks of fighting, some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of civilians, while 13 Israelis died.
Israel said the civilian death toll was unintentional and said Gaza’s Hamas rulers hid militants in populated areas.
It refused to cooperate with Goldstone’s investigation, commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council, a body with a history of anti-Israel declarations.
The Goldstone report, released in September 2009, concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed potential war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
-Source/Boston
Blog Commentary from Countercurrents
...
Not surprisingly, Benjamin Netanyahu has jumped all over this, claiming that this op-ed exonerates Israel of all wrongdoing in Operation Cast Lead. He added: “The fact that Goldstone changed his mind must lead to the shelving of the [Goldstone] Report once and for all” (Haaretz).
There's just one problem with all this: the Goldstone Report never claimed that Israel had a policy of intentionally targeting civilians. As Yaniv Reich writes, “This is a red-herring; nobody seriously believes there is a high-level policy to murder civilians. The actual issue is that ‘these incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli forces moving into Gaza provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population' (Goldstone report, pp. 16). This low threshold was an intentional policy, as has been confirmed by dozens of soldiers' and officers' statements” ( Mondoweiss ).
So, despite what Netanyahu has claimed, Goldstone has not actually retracted any of the allegations of war crimes made by the Goldstone Commission, officially called the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. It should also be pointed out that the other members of the Commission-Christine Chinkin, Hina Jilani, and Colonel Desmond Travers-continue to stand by the Report's findings.
All of which means that Israel still stands accused of committing several war crimes-among them, using civilians as human shields, deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, and conducting indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.
Goldstone proceeds to praise Israel for conducting investigations into “over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza.” But the UN Committee of Independent Experts, which was charged with following up on the Goldstone Report, has reported that Israel has not adequately investigated many of the allegations made by the Goldstone Commission. Most significantly, “there is no indication that Israel has opened investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead” ( Committee of Independent Experts ).
...
-Source
Sorry for cramming three stories in one... I thought they were all v. interesting and gave different perspectives. I'm really interested in the legal nitty-gritty here and was kind of surprised by some of the sloppiness in Goldstone's own Op-Ed... but then I thought maybe I'd misread the report, but others are confirming that in fact I hadn't... so idk. I actually had a chance to hear 2/4 of the mission members of the fact finding mission speak, and they were well-reasoned and well-spoken. I wonder what the opinion of the other members --who are not under the pressure that Goldstone has been-- is on these developments. I guess we'll see once/if they decide to write.
1.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.
2.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.
Story 1. Former judge complains that close friends kept away from him and some family members even had reservations about his cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council.
Judge Richard Goldstone told associates several months ago that ever since publication of his report on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, he has been in great distress and under duress.
He complained that close friends kept away from him and some family members even had reservations about his cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council.
Last year, a Johannesburg synagogue initially said it would not allow him to take part in his grandson's bar mitzvah.
Goldstone told Haaretz's Akiva Eldar at the time that the bar mitzvah was an event of joy "after much aggravation," and added that he was very upset by the witch hunt and accusations against him. He was particularly offended by a Yedioth Ahronoth article about verdicts he handed down to black defendants during the apartheid era in his native South Africa.
He said at the time that despite the attacks on him in Jewish communities, he does not regret agreeing to chair the investigative committee.
"I felt that because I was Jewish, it would be hypocritical not to get involved in the Middle East," he told Eldar, explaining that he was a Zionist, but did not intend to visit Israel any time soon, for reasons of personal security. He also said he was saddened by what he saw as recent attacks on Israel's democracy, including bills banning criticism of the Israel Defense Forces.
Goldstone observed that Israel has trouble taking criticism, but said he still hopes the government will conduct an open inquiry of the events in Gaza, adding that the country has distinguished justices and reputable lawyers who can lead such an effort and put an end to the affair.
-Source/Haaretz
Story 2. Israel wants war crimes report nullified
JERUSALEM - Israeli leaders yesterday welcomed an admission by Richard Goldstone - a Jewish UN investigator who became persona non grata in the Jewish state - that war crimes accusations contained in his report on Israel’s offensive in Gaza two years ago should be reconsidered.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the United Nations to nullify Goldstone’s report. Defense officials urged the international community to rewrite the laws of war.
Commentators alternated between attacking Goldstone for causing what they said was irreparable damage to Israel and praising him for admitting he made a mistake.
“There are very few instances in which those who disseminate libels retract their libel. This happened in the case of the Goldstone report,’’ Netanyahu told his Cabinet.
Urban warfare has long vexed the Israeli military, which for decades was dominant over the Arab nation’s numerically superior armies but has struggled with foes in crowded refugee camps, dense cities, and villages lined with cinderblock homes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and southern Lebanon.
In December 2008, Israel launched an offensive against Gaza, a densely populated strip of land that borders southwest Israel, in response to years of Palestinian rocket fire.
In three weeks of fighting, some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of civilians, while 13 Israelis died.
Israel said the civilian death toll was unintentional and said Gaza’s Hamas rulers hid militants in populated areas.
It refused to cooperate with Goldstone’s investigation, commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council, a body with a history of anti-Israel declarations.
The Goldstone report, released in September 2009, concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed potential war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
-Source/Boston
Blog Commentary from Countercurrents
...
Not surprisingly, Benjamin Netanyahu has jumped all over this, claiming that this op-ed exonerates Israel of all wrongdoing in Operation Cast Lead. He added: “The fact that Goldstone changed his mind must lead to the shelving of the [Goldstone] Report once and for all” (Haaretz).
There's just one problem with all this: the Goldstone Report never claimed that Israel had a policy of intentionally targeting civilians. As Yaniv Reich writes, “This is a red-herring; nobody seriously believes there is a high-level policy to murder civilians. The actual issue is that ‘these incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli forces moving into Gaza provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population' (Goldstone report, pp. 16). This low threshold was an intentional policy, as has been confirmed by dozens of soldiers' and officers' statements” ( Mondoweiss ).
So, despite what Netanyahu has claimed, Goldstone has not actually retracted any of the allegations of war crimes made by the Goldstone Commission, officially called the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. It should also be pointed out that the other members of the Commission-Christine Chinkin, Hina Jilani, and Colonel Desmond Travers-continue to stand by the Report's findings.
All of which means that Israel still stands accused of committing several war crimes-among them, using civilians as human shields, deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, and conducting indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.
Goldstone proceeds to praise Israel for conducting investigations into “over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza.” But the UN Committee of Independent Experts, which was charged with following up on the Goldstone Report, has reported that Israel has not adequately investigated many of the allegations made by the Goldstone Commission. Most significantly, “there is no indication that Israel has opened investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead” ( Committee of Independent Experts ).
...
-Source
Sorry for cramming three stories in one... I thought they were all v. interesting and gave different perspectives. I'm really interested in the legal nitty-gritty here and was kind of surprised by some of the sloppiness in Goldstone's own Op-Ed... but then I thought maybe I'd misread the report, but others are confirming that in fact I hadn't... so idk. I actually had a chance to hear 2/4 of the mission members of the fact finding mission speak, and they were well-reasoned and well-spoken. I wonder what the opinion of the other members --who are not under the pressure that Goldstone has been-- is on these developments. I guess we'll see once/if they decide to write.