Israel Matzav

Judge Richard Richard Goldstone

In London's Spectator, Douglas Davis examines
Richard Goldstone's past and why Goldstone believes he has the right to sit in judgment of Israel. It's not pretty.

Richard Goldstone will now be lionised from Pyongyang to Ouagadougou, and all points in between where the oppressed find succour. Streets will be named after him, university chairs will be endowed in his honour and state medals will be struck for this great class-struggler. But to senior legal colleagues in South Africa, he will always be Richard Richard Goldstone.

Richard Richard?

‘Oh yes,’ says a former senior colleague who was close to Goldstone for many years. ‘We believed he saw himself as a future secretary-general of the United Nations. At the time Boutros Boutros-Ghali held the post, so it seemed a logical progression for Goldstone to become Richard Richard.’

It might appear unkind to doubt the purity of Goldstone’s motives in joining the human rights industry, poignantly as Israel’s excoriator-in-chief. But he is, it seems, regarded by colleagues who knew him well as an opportunist. And the record suggests they might be right. There is nothing in Goldstone’s biography to imply he was destined to become a hero of the people, let alone a human rights champion. During his career he has executed some canny intellectual and ideological manoeuvres, leveraging past accomplishments to propel himself further up the pole of seniority and celebrity.

You've read about most of these maneuvers before if you've been reading my blog for the last month and a half, and you may even recognize some of the essays about Goldstone that he cites. But the end is a shocker, and I must recommend that you read the whole thing.

The picture that emerges is one of a brilliant opportunist, whose ambition knows no moral scruples. It seems that Richard Richard Goldstone would sell out his own mother to get ahead in life.

One can only scream with frustration that the Jewish people were able to spawn such a scumball.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:41 PM