Some more Goldstone commentary
Sorry for the gaps tonight. In addition to having taken Mrs. Carl out to dinner, I pulled a Richard Goldstone (if you don't get what I mean, look at the picture).Here are a few comments on Goldstone's claimed epiphany to which I'd like to call your attention.
David Bernstein:
I think, additionally, that Goldstone took Israel’s refusal to participate in this “game” as a personal affront, rather than causing him, as he should have, to question the whole enterprise.Jeffrey Goldberg:
Well, I'm glad he's cleared that up. Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to retract a blood libel, once it has been broadcast across the world.David Horovitz:
How tragic, that is, that Goldstone so misplaced his moral compass in the first place as to have produced a report that has caused such irreversible damage to Israel’s good name. Tragic least of all forthe utterly discredited Goldstone himself, and most of all for our unfairly besmirched armed forces and the country they were putting their lives on the line to honorably defend against a ruthless, murderous, terrorist government in Gaza.And finally, Melanie Phillips:
The “if I had know then what I know now” defense Goldstone invokes to try to justify his perfidy is typically flimsy, of course.
Sanctimonious even now, Goldstone complains about Israel’s “lack of cooperation with our investigation.” But as he knows full well, Israel could not possibly have formally cooperated with his inquiry, which had been constructed by the obsessively anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council with the precise intention of blackening Israel’s name, legitimizing its enemies and curtailing its capacity to defend itself in future conflicts – such as the one Israel may have to fight quite soon if the current upsurge in Hamas rocket fire continues.
To have formally subjected itself to examination by his committee and the institutionally biased UN Human Rights Council that had formed it – a bias which Goldstone now acknowledges in his article – would merely have given his work greater purported credibility.
Notwithstanding that absent formal cooperation, however, the truth about what happened in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 – the truth that Goldstone now disingenuously claims to have discovered only after he filed his malicious indictment of the IDF and of Israel – was readily available to him at the time.
...
Given that “history of bias” at the council, one can only wonder, yet again, why Goldstone consented to do its dirty work for it, to such devastating effect.
His duplicitous investigation has had a toxic effect everywhere on the second battlefield – in diplomatic and legal forums, in the media, on university campuses, in global public discourse. He poisoned Israel’s name.
And on the real battlefield, he gave succor to our enemies, encouraging them to believe that they could kill us not with mere impunity, but with active international empathy and support.
He alleged that we were an immoral enemy, and thus he put all of our lives at greater risk.
An apology just isn’t good enough. The very least he owes Israel is to work unstintingly from now on to try to undo the damage he has caused.
Yom Kippur came early this year for Richard Goldstone. His show of penitence has come far too late.
By his own admission, the man stands revealed as at best an abject idiot and at worst a moral and judicial bankrupt. His report blackened Israel’s name for defending itself against existential attack; encouraged its attackers to ratchet up their onslaught safe in the knowledge that the international community now had official confirmation that Israel was morally beyond the pale; put Israeli civilians, along with Israel’s very survival, at increased risk by helping delegitimise Israel as a global pariah; and fuelled the pressure on Israel not to defend its civilians by military means against the attacks which have relentlessly increased in audacity and scope.Indeed.
Regardless of its manifest moral and intellectual inadequacies, however, his recantation carries inescapable consequences. All those who have used Goldstone’s report as a basis for their own delegitimisation of Israel now also stand revealed as having endorsed one of the worst officially sanctioned international falsehoods in history. All their attacks on Israel which relied upon Goldstone’s report are now shown to be equally baseless and discredited. Any future such attacks which use this report as an authority will be demonstrably false and malicious. The UN should now declare the Goldstone report null and void. Any less will make it knowingly and demonstrably party to a travesty of justice.
But of course, like all previous blood libels against the Jews, the poison this one has injected into the global bloodstream has no antidote. The damage is done – and no amount of self-serving recantations by Richard Goldstone will undo the terrible harm he has done.
Labels: Goldstone Report, Richard Goldstone
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:41 AM
6 Comments:
While Mr. Goldstone clearly has the most to learn from this whole sad affair, he decisions (which may have done more to unravel the whole quest for international justice he claims to have been fighting for) may have lessons for all of those (including all of us) who may one day find themselves being lured by institutional corruption to call black white and night day:
http://www.divestthis.com/2011/04/goldstone.html
you wore a pink shirt and a really bad tie?
it was not a recantation...im not sure why people are saying that
i remember the debate, when he was shown evidence that refuted the report, and he clearly stated that israel should have presented that at the time
he is doing the same thing here
he does not recant...he does not do teshuva
he covers his own butt...and cares nothing for the lives of israelis and jews across the globe
evil, little man
Restaurant review, please. Where did you guys eat?
Re Goldstone... I think we should ask him, as a way to start redeeming his damage, to start with finding an engineer to work with who could help him put together an engineering level description of what happens when the Gaza/Leb rockets land in a civilian area (e.g., a slow motion animation of the rocket trajectory, landing, explosion (with measurements and specific effects info), etc., a spreadsheet with all the costs and effort required for the safe rooms, shelters, etc.
And second, he could take that BBC video you put up earlier and do a title search on some of the building shown, discuss whether certain "victim" groups should be crushed by the bigotry of low expectations (i.e., living in a building they don't own without paying the rent)... he could make a table top elevation representation, showing how the houses and apartments Israel builds make it harder to do the type of bunker building you showed in your post on southern Leb yesterday...
If he actually is smart, he could help.
I suspect Goldstone now recants only because his "benefactors" are under attack by their own people, are short on cash, and can't pay him off any more.
Like I said Carl - if I defamed and libeled you as a person, would you accept my apology?
The point I'm seeking to make is that if tarnishing the good name and reputation of an individual is an irreparable injury, all the more so that is true of a country.
Goldstone can collect all the feathers in the world he wants but he cannot really undo the damage that has been done.
And insincere repentance is worse than no repentance at all - from the viewpoint of the victim. He still does not fully understand the consequences of what he did.
A single op-ed will not be enough to mitigate the harm the report that bears his name has done to the Jewish State.
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