Israel Matzav

The Goldstone Commission staff: The keepers of the gate

Some of you may have noticed that I've been offline for a couple of hours (it's actually for longer, but with the wonders of scheduling posts, you'd never known how long). This evening, a group of bloggers, professors and interested government media people gathered in someone's living room in Jerusalem to talk about how we can more effectively make Israel's case in the media. One of the ideas I had was based on a remark that Dore Gold made on Sunday at the JCPA bloggers seminar.

I had asked Dore Gold how much Goldstone had seen before of the material that he put in his slide show at Brandeis. The answer was almost none. But Dore hastened to add that he believed that was the staff's doing - that Goldstone's staff had not let any of the exculpatory material provided by Israel come through to Goldstone. I suggested this evening that looking into the Goldstone Commission staff might be a fruitful area of inquiry.

I came home and did a little research online and discovered that it's going to take a bit more than running a list of names through Google. In fact, getting the names is going to be quite a challenge. We do know that much of the staff came from the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, the organization that acts as the 'Human Rights' Council's bureaucracy. But we don't know much more than that. The Goldstone Commission refused to provide a full listing of its staff.

In fact, only two staff members appear to have their names in the public domain - both as a result of their names being on invitations to testify. One is Francesca Marotta, Head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. You can see an invitation to testify that was signed by her here. The other is Sareta Ashraph, researcher in the Fact Finding Mission Secretariat. Her name appears in the same letter.

Who are Francesca Marotta and Sareta Ashraph? According to NGO Monitor,

• Goldstone mission staff researcher, Sareta Ashraph, is a UK lawyer and a member of Amnesty International who has a history of anti-Israel political activity. For instance, in 2003, she was an organizer for a Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights “lawfare” lecture given by Raji Sourani, head of PCHR, and chaired by Daniel Machover, the attorney responsible for filing PCHR’s 2005 case against Doron Almog and a leading proponent of lawfare. Ashraph also worked in the West Bank on “investigations of allegations of violations of international humanitarian law following ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ in 2002.”
• Francesca Marotta, Head of the Secretariat UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, is a long-time employee of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights as Coordinator of the Methodology, Education and Training Unit, Research and Right to Development Branch and the “UNHCHR officer responsible for the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” In 1997 and 1999, she held meetings with PCHR.

PCHR is the 'Palestinian Centre for Human Rights,' which is one of the NGO's on which Goldstone relied heavily. The name Daniel Machover should ring a bell for you as well.

But for the most part, the Goldstone Commission has succeeded in keeping its staff top secret. Why? Maybe it's time to break the silence.

More here. No smoking guns against individual staff members yet, but definitely the smell of bias.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:44 AM