Israel Matzav

The harshest accusations

What happened to make Richard Goldstone retract his accusation that Israel deliberately bombed civilian facilities in Gaza? In a sympathetic article, The New York Times reports that things didn't quite work out the way Goldstone planned.

Two decades ago, Richard Goldstone, a Jewish South African judge, played a vital role in reconciling his country’s white minority government and rising black majority movement by leading a fact-finding mission into black violence that offered a Solomonic conclusion.

The violence, he found, was endemic but a covert government campaign was sponsoring black killings to undermine the opposition. Heads rolled, hands were shaken and Mr. Goldstone was hailed as the most trusted man in the country, going on to a distinguished international career.

In 2009, he tried to do the same thing in the other country close to his heart — Israel. Mr. Goldstone, a Zionist who believes political reconciliation will result when both sides face the unbiased rigors of international law, agreed to lead a United Nations inquiry into the war between Israel and Hamas, telling friends the mission could make a real contribution to Middle East peace.

The resulting report that bears his name accused both sides of wrongdoing — deliberately making civilians targets. But the report not only failed to bring peace to the region and universal honor to its author. It also hardened positions and brought a storm of attacks on Mr. Goldstone, especially from within his community.

In other words, Goldstone thought that if he made the terrorists think that they were no more guilty than Israel, they would come around to reconciling with us. Really. And he stuck to that line from the Report's release in September 2009 until April 1, 2011, when he wrote his famous op-ed in the New York Times Washington Post.

So what changed his mind? The Times makes it sound like the biggest factor was the extent to which Goldstone was shunned by the Jewish community worldwide. Did he really think it would be otherwise?

“I know he was extremely hurt by the reaction to the report,” said Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Foundation, who has known Mr. Goldstone for years and remains close to him. “I think he was extremely uncomfortable in providing some fodder to people who were looking for anything they could use against Israel.”

In describing his new position, Mr. Goldstone wrote, “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” He has declined requests to elaborate. Interviews with two dozen people who know him suggest a combination of reasons: the hostility from his community, disappointment about Hamas’s continuing attacks on civilians, and new understanding of Israel’s conduct in a few of the most deadly incidents of the war.

The year and a half since the Gaza Report was published has been hard on Mr. Goldstone. Hailed by the Arab world and the anti-Israel left, he has been censured by those with whom he had always identified. One of his two daughters, who spent more than a decade in Israel and now lives in Canada with the man she married here, has been furious with him, according to a family friend; he was nearly unable to attend the bar mitzvah of his other daughter’s son in South Africa because of plans by some members of the Jewish community there to demonstrate against his presence.

The daughter who is 'furious' with him would be Nicole. I guess she tired of giving pained interviews.

Indeed Goldstone and his supporters are acknowledging to Jewish friends that he did have a motive in agreeing to head the group that issued the report. His motive, according to his supporters, was to bring some balance to a report that without his input would have been “even worse.” Goldstone’s daughter, Nicole, in an obviously pained interview with Haaretz said that, “Had Richard Goldstone not served as the head of the UN inquiry into the Gaza War, the accusations against Israel would have been harsher.” She continued. “My father took on the job, for peace, for everyone and also for Israel.” She told the Jerusalem Post, “My dad loves Israel and it wasn’t easy for him to see and hear what happened. I think he heard and saw things he didn’t expect to see and hear….”

So can we drop the accusation that Goldstone had it in for Israel? Maybe. But that doesn't excuse the hubris that caused him to ignore warnings by many people that he was stepping into a trap. This is from the Times again.

When Mr. Goldstone was asked to investigate the three-week Gaza war, which started in late 2008, he was told by many friends of Israel that he was stepping into a trap. There had never been a United Nations Human Rights Council investigation into possible war crimes in Chechnya or Sri Lanka, but there had been multiple ones into Israel’s actions.

...

As he said in an interview with the newspaper The Forward, “I was driven particularly because I thought the outcome might, in a small way, assist the peace process. I really thought I was one person who could achieve an evenhanded mission.”

Some attribute that sentiment to a well-developed sense of ambition. With a nod to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then the secretary general of the United Nations, some called him Richard Richard-Goldstone, according to Benjamin Pogrund, a South African journalist.

And when Israel refused to play along - citing the bias of the 'Human Rights Council' and the fact that Goldstone's mandate was never changed despite promises made to him that it would be - Goldstone determined to ignore any evidence that was submitted to him unofficially on Israel's behalf, and to ignore evidence that was publicly available (like YouTube videos of 'Palestinians' using children as human shields that were posted on this blog and many others).

“It was a nightmare experience to visit Gaza and witness at first hand all of this destruction and to witness at first hand the effects this has on the men, women and children of that overcrowded enclave,” Mr. Goldstone said in a speech last month to a group of Jewish lawyers in Sacramento.

He added that he was sure it would also have been “an emotional and distressing experience” to visit the many victims of the thousands of rockets over the years fired from Gaza into southern Israel. “I deeply regret that the Israeli government denied us that opportunity,” he said.

The lack of access to Israel and its military, Mr. Goldstone implied in numerous statements, led to a somewhat skewed report that needed to be adjusted.

The problem is that all his protestations to the contrary, Goldstone conducted his commission as a court. He issued 'findings of fact and conclusions of law' like a court. And a court doesn't hear evidence unless the parties put the evidence in front of it.

Goldstone may not be guilty of deliberately trying to hurt Israel. But he is guilty of hubris of the worst kind. Former Nixon aide John Dean wrote a book about it once. It was called Blind Ambition.

Labels: Goldstone Report, Richard Goldstone

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:03 AM