Why the Schabas Report will be every bit as biased as the Goldstone Report

Until he was forced out a month ago when it was discovered that he had worked for the PLO, William Schabas headed the United Nations 'human rights council's commission of inquiry into Israel's summer 2014 Operation Protective Edge. The UN has tried arguing that Schabas' resignation means the report won't be biased. That's nonsense. But not for the reason you think. In a lengthy article published by the Tower, Hillel Neuer explains how Richard Goldstone was duped when he headed the Commission of Inquiry into Operation Cast Lead in 2009, and how as much as Schabas was anti-Israel, his presence or absence on the Commission likely made little difference.

There seems no question that Goldstone was duped. He never suspected that OHCHR, the UN agency in charge of providing him with professional staff support, had quietly embedded one of the world’s top anti-Israel lawfare strategists into the team. After all, only four years before, Goldstone had worked on another UN inquiry on the oil-for-food program. In that case, he was supported by a highly professional staff based in New York, with most if not all of them lawyers and experts hired from the outside. Goldstone assumed the Gaza inquiry would be the same.

But it was not the same. The culture of the Geneva-based OHCHR secretariat is known to be far more anti-American, anti-colonial, and anti-Israel than the one in New York. In his naiveté, Goldstone was blind to the prejudice and political agenda of his own bureaucracy. Indeed, there is not the slightest indication that Goldstone had any knowledge of Baars’ extremist activism. But OHCHR knew—and that is why they hired her.

On March 23, what for six months was the Schabas Commission, and now in its final and seventh month has become the McGowan Davis Commission, will present its report to the Human Rights Council. Do we have any reason to expect a fair, objective, and credible report?

Not if we consider the built-in prejudice of the commission’s founding mandate, spelled out in resolution S-21/1 of July 23, 2014, which preemptively declares Israel guilty. It condemns the Jewish state “in the strongest terms,” citing “widespread, systematic, and gross violations of international human rights,” “the targeting of civilians and civilian properties” as a form of “collective punishment contrary to international law,” “disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks,” “grave violations of the human rights of the Palestinian civilian population,” and “military aggressions.” The resolution mentions Israel 18 times. Hamas is not mentioned once.

Not if we consider that Schabas, the activist chairman who says that he “devoted several months of work” to the project, is someone who performed undisclosed paid legal work for the PLO—on the subject of how to prosecute Israelis in international courts—and who famously declared barely three years ago that the leader he most wants to see in the dock at the International Criminal Court is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And—as the cautionary tale of lawfare general Grietje Baars as the key author of the original Goldstone Report makes clear—not if we consider the outsized role played by OHCHR in compiling the evidence, processing submissions, and picking the people to draft the report’s chapters and conclusions. Everything we now know about how OHCHR engineered the travesty of the original Goldstone Report indicates that Goldstone II will suffer the same politically-motivated fate.

Read the whole thing. The woman whose picture is at the top of this post is Grietje Baars, whose name you probably never heard until today.

Labels: Gaza, Goldstone Report, IDF, Operation Protective Edge, Richard Goldstone, United Nations, United Nations Human Rights Council, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, William Schabas

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:11 PM 0 comments

Second reporter confirms AP ordered staff to shun Steinberg

A second reporter has now confirmed Matti Friedman's charges that the AP ordered its reporters not to interview or quote Professor Gerald Steinberg or NGO Monitor.



In case you're wondering, the reporter who confirmed the ban was Mark Lavie.

Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Gaza, Gerald Steinberg, Goldstone Report, NGO Monitor, NGO's, Palestinian incitement, Palestinian terrorism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:43 PM 0 comments

Matti Friedman takes on the NGO's

You might recall that last summer, former AP reporter and editor Matti Friedman wrote a blockbuster piece about the institutional bias in the international media's reporting from Israel. He's back again with lots more details, including the media's partnership with NGO's (non-governmental organizations).

To make sense of most international journalism from Israel, it is important first to understand that the news tells us far less about Israel than about the people writing the news. Journalistic decisions are made by people who exist in a particular social milieu, one which, like most social groups, involves a certain uniformity of attitude, behavior, and even dress (the fashion these days, for those interested, is less vests with unnecessary pockets than shirts with unnecessary buttons). These people know each other, meet regularly, exchange information, and closely watch one another’s work. This helps explain why a reader looking at articles written by the half-dozen biggest news providers in the region on a particular day will find that though the pieces are composed and edited by completely different people and organizations, they tend to tell the same story.

The best insight into one of the key phenomena at play here comes not from a local reporter but from the journalist and author Philip Gourevitch. In Rwanda and elsewhere in Africa, Gourevitch wrote in 2010, he was struck by the ethical gray zone of ties between reporters and NGOs. “Too often the press represents humanitarians with unquestioning admiration,” he observed in The New Yorker. “Why not seek to keep them honest? Why should our coverage of them look so much like their own self-representation in fund-raising appeals? Why should we (as many photojournalists and print reporters do) work for humanitarian agencies between journalism jobs, helping them with their official reports and institutional appeals, in a way that we would never consider doing for corporations, political parties, or government agencies?”

This confusion is very much present in Israel and the Palestinian territories, where foreign activists are a notable feature of the landscape, and where international NGOs and numerous arms of the United Nations are among the most powerful players, wielding billions of dollars and employing many thousands of foreign and local employees. Their SUVs dominate sections of East Jerusalem and their expense accounts keep Ramallah afloat. They provide reporters with social circles, romantic partners, and alternative employment—a fact that is more important to reporters now than it has ever been, given the disintegration of many newspapers and the shoestring nature of their Internet successors.

In my time in the press corps, I learned that our relationship with these groups was not journalistic. My colleagues and I did not, that is, seek to analyze or criticize them. For many foreign journalists, these were not targets but sources and friends—fellow members, in a sense, of an informal alliance. This alliance consists of activists and international staffers from the UN and the NGOs; the Western diplomatic corps, particularly in East Jerusalem; and foreign reporters. (There is also a local component, consisting of a small number of Israeli human-rights activists who are themselves largely funded by European governments, and Palestinian staffers from the Palestinian Authority, the NGOs, and the UN.) Mingling occurs at places like the lovely Oriental courtyard of the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem, or at parties held at the British Consulate’s rooftop pool. The dominant characteristic of nearly all of these people is their transience. They arrive from somewhere, spend a while living in a peculiar subculture of expatriates, and then move on.

In these circles, in my experience, a distaste for Israel has come to be something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry. I don’t mean a critical approach to Israeli policies or to the ham-fisted government currently in charge in this country, but a belief that to some extent the Jews of Israel are a symbol of the world’s ills, particularly those connected to nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and racism—an idea quickly becoming one of the central elements of the “progressive” Western zeitgeist, spreading from the European left to American college campuses and intellectuals, including journalists. In this social group, this sentiment is translated into editorial decisions made by individual reporters and editors covering Israel, and this, in turn, gives such thinking the means of mass self-replication.  

...

In the aftermath of the three-week Gaza war of 2008-2009, not yet quite understanding the way things work, I spent a week or so writing a story about NGOs like Human Rights Watch, whose work on Israel had just been subject to an unusual public lashing in The New York Times by its own founder, Robert Bernstein. (The Middle East, he wrote, “is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.”) My article was gentle, all things considered, beginning like this:

JERUSALEM (AP) _ The prickly relationship between Israel and its critics in human rights organizations has escalated into an unprecedented war of words as the fallout from Israel’s Gaza offensive persists ten months after the fighting ended.

Editors killed the story.

Around this time, a Jerusalem-based group called NGO Monitor was battling the international organizations condemning Israel after the Gaza conflict, and though the group was very much a pro-Israel outfit and by no means an objective observer, it could have offered some partisan counterpoint in our articles to charges by NGOs that Israel had committed “war crimes.” But the bureau’s explicit orders to reporters were to never quote the group or its director, an American-born professor named Gerald Steinberg. In my time as an AP writer moving through the local conflict, with its myriad lunatics, bigots, and killers, the only person I ever saw subjected to an interview ban was this professor.

When the UN released its controversial Goldstone report on the Gaza fighting, we at the bureau trumpeted its findings in dozens of articles, though there was discussion even at the time of the report’s failure to prove its central charge: that Israel had killed civilians on purpose. (The director of Israel’s premier human-rights group, B’Tselem, who was critical of the Israeli operation, told me at the time that this claim was “a reach given the facts,” an evaluation that was eventually seconded by the report’s author. “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,” Richard Goldstone wrote in The Washington Post in April 2011.) We understood that our job was not to look critically at the UN report, or any such document, but to publicize it.

Decisions like these are hard to fathom if you believe the foreign press corps’ role is to explain a complicated story to people far away. But they make sense if you understand that journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories often don’t see their role that way. The radio and print journalist Mark Lavie, who has reported from the region since 1972, was a colleague of mine at the AP, where he was an editor in the Jerusalem bureau and then in Cairo until his retirement last year. (It was Lavie who first learned of the Israeli peace offer of late 2008, and was ordered by his superiors to ignore the story.) An Indiana-born Israeli of moderate politics, he had a long run in journalism that included several wars and the first Palestinian intifada, and found little reason to complain about the functioning of the media.

But things changed in earnest in 2000, with the collapse of peace efforts and the outbreak of the Second Intifada. Israel accepted President Bill Clinton’s peace framework that fall and the Palestinians rejected it, as Clinton made clear. Nevertheless, Lavie recently told me, the bureau’s editorial line was still that the conflict was Israel’s fault, and the Palestinians and the Arab world were blameless. By the end of Lavie’s career, he was editing Israel copy on the AP’s Middle East regional desk in Cairo, trying to restore balance and context to stories he thought had little connection to reality. In his words, he had gone from seeing himself as a proud member of the international press corps to “the Jew-boy with his finger in the dike.” He wrote a book, Broken Spring, about his front-row view of the Middle East’s descent into chaos, and retired disillusioned and angry.

Read the whole thing. And yes, he also explains the genesis of that picture at the top of this post.

Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Gaza, Gerald Steinberg, Goldstone Report, NGO Monitor, NGO's, Palestinian incitement, Palestinian terrorism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:11 PM 1 comments

Of course: Leftist AG's office clears B'Tselem as 'national service'

National Service (Sheirut Leumi) is a substitute for army service which is undertaken by many religious Jewish women (and some religious Jewish men) who won't serve in the army on religious grounds, as well as by people who have physical impediments to serving in the army... and by some conscientious objector types. About six weeks ago, the service's director - Sar Shalom Jerbi - issued a directive stating that volunteering at B'Tselem, our Holocaust-denying anti-Israel propaganda machine, did not constitute national service. Our Leftist Attorney General's office has now overruled that decision, which means that providing anti-Israel propaganda to the biased Schabas Commission will now be deemed 'national service' to the State of Israel.

On Tuesday Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber announced that the decision was null and void.

Zilber said that Jerbi can strip an organization of the right to receive national service volunteers only if the organization rejects Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, incites to violence, terror or racism, or supports terrorism or armed struggle against Israel. However, she said, he failed to prove that B’Tselem does any of these.

Jerbi had cited two interviews B’Tselem director Hagai El-Ad gave during the war, one to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network and another to Radio Tel Aviv, as evidence that the organization supports or incites to terror. But Zilber deemed this evidence “weak.”

Moreover, she said, the agency is obligated to treat all organizations equally, and the fact that Jerbi hadn’t investigated other groups whose activities are similar to those of B’Tselem “also paints the decision in a problematic hue from the standpoint of equality.”

Jerbi’s decision, Zilber wrote, “opens the door to politicization of the National Civilian Service Administration, which is liable to use its authority to deny recognition only to certain groups, thereby imposing an economic and public price tag on them, only because of statements that are controversial on one side of the political spectrum.”

Jerbi said he would honor Zilber’s decision, but also plans to explore other ways “to prevent the absurd situation in which the State of Israel,” via its provision of national service volunteers, “continues financing an organization that accused Israel Defense Forces soldiers and the State of Israel of committing war crimes during Operation Protective Edge [in Gaza] and libeled it around the world.”

Jerbi is seemingly faced with the Hobson's choice of providing national service volunteers to numerous anti-Israel organizations, or finding the budget to investigate all of them. What could go wrong?

Labels: anti-Israeli Israelis, B'Tselem, Gaza, Goldstone Report, William Schabas

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:23 PM 0 comments

Finally: Israel decides that serving B'Tselem is not serving the State

It took way too long to happen, but the State of Israel has finally concluded that serving the 'human rights' group B'Tselem does not constitute service to the State. Working at B'Tselem will no longer count as 'national service.' I'm amazed it ever did.

National Civilian Service Administration Director Sar-Shalom Jerbi informed B'Tselem Director Hagai El-Ad of the decision to strip the group of its "operating organization" certification on Wednesday, via a letter.

"After reviewing the matter with several other operating organizations, and given [B'Tselem's] activities against Israel and IDF troops, I have decided to revoke your participation in the National-Civilian Service Volunteer Program; especially during this period of time, when Israel is engaged in neutralizing the threat of rocket fire looming over millions of its citizens."

Jerbi's letter to El-Ad continued, "As you know, Israel is currently dealing with an international delegitimization campaign, which includes gross incitement against the IDF -- the most ethical military in the world. Unfortunately, B'Tselem is a party to this smear campaign. The information released by the organization and its expressed positions encourage our enemies worldwide and prompt anti-Semitic expressions against Israel, as well as anti-Semitic attacks on Jews."

A B'Tselem statement issued Wednesday read, "B'Tselem maintains that protecting human rights is a vital democratic action done in the best interest of Israeli society. Sar-Shalom Jerbi's decision, which we doubt he has the authority to make, is an abuse of his administrative power for the sake of political gain. It constitutes political and governmental persecution of a human rights group.

"Mr. Jerbi goes as far as to allude that releasing information about human rights violations during wartime constitutes treason, thus fanning the flames of intolerance, which have already poisoned the political atmosphere. He has included himself in the dubious club of those who incite against anyone expressing any criticism" of the Gaza operation.

The decision to exclude B'Tselem from the national service volunteer program "allows the government to bar any organization whose positions it does not approve of, form employing those seeking to perform national service. This action contradicts both the principles of democracy and proper administration norms."

I'm amazed we ever called working for B'Tselem 'national service.' Good riddance!

Labels: anti-Israeli Israelis, B'Tselem, Gaza, Goldstone Report, William Schabas

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:46 PM 0 comments

Civilian to combatant casualty ratio in Gaza around 1:1

Despite ongoing 'Palestinian' efforts to create civilian casualties in Gaza through the use of human shields, the IDF reports that the civilian to combatant casualty ratio in Operation Protective Edge is around 1:1.

Israel has evidence that almost half of Palestinians killed in the 25-day-old Gaza war were combatants, its deputy foreign minister said on Saturday, pushing back against international allegations of a lopsidedly heavy civilian death toll.

Gazan human rights groups say at least 80 percent of the 1,669 Palestinians killed have been non-combatants, including hundreds of children. The U.N. Human Rights Council last week accused the Israelis of "disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks" and launched an inquiry into possible war crimes.

...

"There is research being done in the military, very professionally and reliably, (whose) conclusion is that at least 47% of the fatalities are terrorists, with photographs and names," Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel's Channel Two television, adding that the data would be presented to investigators.

He did not elaborate. Israel rejected the U.N. Human Rights Council's probe announcement, describing the forum as biased, but usually conducts its own combat inquiries. 

Israel says Hamas and other Palestinian guerrillas in Gaza are terrorists and in past conflicts has used broad definitions of combatants - including, for example, Palestinian policemen working for the Hamas administration. 

Other significant factors in the count include:

1. The statistics from the 'Palestinian Health Ministry' in Gaza come from Hamas and are therefore not reliable.

2. The statistics from the 'human rights council' counted anyone under the age of 18 as a civilian, whereas Hamas uses 16 and 17-year olds (and sometimes even younger children) as combatants. and even uses babies as human shields.

3. The more significant statistic in determining whether civilians or combatants are being killed is the male to female casualty ratio. The numbers I have seen for Operation Protective Edge put that at 3:1.

4. Israel's record is actually comparable or better than other Western countries.

According to a 2010 assessment by John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count, a United Kingdom-based organization, American and Coalition forces had killed at least 28,736 combatants as well as 13,807 civilians in the Iraq War, indicating a civilian to combatant casualty ratio inflicted by coalition forces of 1:2.^[24] However, overall, figures by the Iraq Body Count from 20 March 2003 to 14 March 2013 indicate that of 174,000 casualties only 39,900 were combatants, resulting in a civilian casualty rate of 77%.^[25]

The civilian casualty ratio for U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan is notoriously difficult to quantify. The U.S. itself puts the number of civilians killed from drone strikes in the last two years at no more than 20 to 30, a total that is far too low according to a spokesman for the NGO CIVIC.^[26] At the other extreme, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution suggests that drone strikes may kill "10 or so civilians" for every militant killed, which would represent a civilian to combatant casualty ratio of 10:1. Byman argues that civilian killings constitute a humanitarian tragedy and create dangerous political problems, including damage to the legitimacy of the Pakistani government and alienation of the Pakistani populace from America.^[27] An ongoing study by the New America Foundation finds non-militant casualty rates started high but have declined steeply over time, from about 60% (3 out of 5) in 2004-2007 to less than 2% (1 out of 50) in 2012. The study puts the overall non-militant casualty rate since 2004 at 15-16%, or a 1:5 ratio, out of a total of between 1,908 and 3,225 people killed in Pakistan by drone strikes since 2004.^[28]

By the way, Britain's civilian-combatant ratio in Afghanistan was 3:1.

After Operation Cast Lead, Israel produced a 500-page report which, among other things, showed that it had killed mostly combatants (make sure to watch the video at that link). Subsequently, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations demolished the 'human rights council's investigation chairman, Richard Goldstone, in a debate (videos at this link) at Brandeis University, which I live-blogged. After that debate, Goldstone refused to debate anyone else (including Alan Dershowitz) about his report, and eventually he recanted the major accusations in the report - far too late.

Labels: civilian casualties, Dore Gold, Gaza, Goldstone Commission, Goldstone Report, Hamas, human shields, IDF, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge, Richard Goldstone

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:33 AM 1 comments

Foreign reporters threatened on Twitter for reporting on Hamas rocket fire

On Wednesday night, I reported that foreign journalists have begun to quietly acknowledge that Hamas is using hospitals and mosques to store and fire rockets and is using the civilian population generally as human shields for its activities. Unsurprisingly, we now have word that some foreign journalists have been threatened for their reporting.

On Wednesday, Peter Stefanovic of Australia’s Channel Nine News tweeted: “Hamas rockets just launched over our hotel from a site about two hundred metres away. So a missile launch site is basically next door.”

An account called @ThisIsGaza said this was Stefanovic’s fourth time “passing and fabricating information to Israel... from GAZA” and threatened to sue him.

Another account, @longitude0 wrote: “You are a cretin. Are you working for the IDF” and “in WWII spies got shot.”

Financial Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief John Reed reported seeing “two rockets fired toward Israel from near al-Shifa hospital, even as more bombing victims were brought in.”

Shifa, in Gaza City, is the main medical facility in the Strip [and is where the Hamas leadership is hiding out. CiJ].

In response, @Saritah_91 tweeted: “We’ll hold you responsible if Israel uses your tweet to bomb the hospital & then justify it.”

Another twitter user, @ Faysal_FreeGaza, said he’s “subtly justifying and encouraging IDF attacks on hospitals,” and @Maysara_ ara wrote: “Get out of Gaza u informant.”

...

Harry Fear, a journalist from the UK reporting from Gaza for RT (formerly Russia Today) television, tweeted last week: “Early morning Gaza rockets were fired into Israel. A well-known site in W. Gaza City, near my hotel, was among the origins, confirm locals.”

Fear then took on the critics, tweeting soon after that he rejects “loaded complaints that I ‘informed’ Israel about the specifics of Gaza military sites... These sites are well-known among locals and internationals here.”

“Should a journalist only report the noise and ferocity of Israel’s attacks & not the sounds of Gaza’s rockets? Both terrify people,” he tweeted.

Later that day, Fear tweeted: “Al-Wafa hospital has been hit in the last while; injuries reported – this is the hospital with human shields.” 

While a Goldstone 2 is unlikely to be any less biased than the Goldstone Commission after Operation Cast Lead, these tweets should be filed away for future reference. If a future inquiry (there's already one in the making - more on that later) is biased against Israel, these tweets can be used to show that Israel acted justifiably. 

Labels: Gaza, Goldstone Commission, Goldstone Report, Hamas, Hamas rockets, human shields, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge, United Nations Human Rights Council

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:36 AM 0 comments

Why Netanyahu has not ordered a ground invasion

Prime Minister Netanyahu has not ordered a ground invasion due to international pressure and due to the fact that he understands that he would be sending at least some IDF soldiers to their deaths. We all understand that. But there's more to it than that. Elliott Abrams writes that Netanyahu has not ordered a ground invasion because of the warped moral calculation it would cause with respect to casualty numbers.

For one thing, Netanyahu knows he would be sending some Israeli soldiers to their deaths. But he also knows that in the sick math of the Gaza war, Israel would be blamed for “disproportionate” killing.

What that means is simple: too many Palestinians would die, and “not enough” Israelis–in the view of much of “world opinion.” You would read that calculation in the New York Times and see it on the BBC. In “Operation Cast Lead” in 2008, about 1000-1400 Palestinians died, and 13 Israelis. In “Operation Pillar of Defense” in 2012 it was something like 150 to 6. As of now, in the current conflict there are no Israeli deaths and about 100 Palestinian deaths. Here’s how Time Magazine started its story:

The death toll among Palestinians scrambling under a relentless Israeli air assault in the Gaza Strip passed 80 Thursday and edged close to 100 Friday, including at least 14 children….Meanwhile, the barrage of rockets Gaza militants launched toward Israeli cities failed to produce a significant casualty on the third day of Israel’s offensive Thursday….The Israeli military said it destroyed more buildings in the first 36 hours of the current campaign than in all of Pillar of Defense. More people are dying too: the 80 fatalities reported so far is, once again, more than half the reported death toll from the longer bombing two years earlier.

Time then discussed exactly this phenomenon: when what “world opinion” sees as “too many” Palestinians dying and the balance is “too great” in Israel’s favor–that is, too many Palestinians and not enough Israelis being killed–the calls for a cease-fire will escalate. Moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas will be the order of the day–except for those who elevate Hamas, since after all it is killing fewer people!
...

Remember this: in the Second World War, the United States suffered 416,000 combat deaths, or about 0.32 percent of the population. Germany suffered 4-5 million combat deaths, or about 5 percent of the population. The death ratio was 10 to 1. Did that make the war unjust? Does that mean the United States inflicted “disproportionate” numbers of casualties? Unfortunately the Israelis know “world opinion” will never be on their side in these arguments. Let’s just hope the United States is.

UPDATE: UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay has already proved this analysis right, even before an Israeli ground incursion. She said this today:

For its part, the Government of Israel must take all possible measures to ensure full respect for the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack, during the conduct of hostilities, as required by international humanitarian law. In all circumstances, they must avoid targeting civilians. However, we have received deeply disturbing reports that many of the civilian casualties, including of children, occurred as a result of strikes on homes. Such reports raise serious doubt about whether the Israeli strikes have been in accordance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

So, she is already accusing Israel of breaking international humanitarian law and human rights law. Perhaps since Goldstone has retired, she is filling in.

You have to wonder what the outcome of World War II would have been had the World been as 'moral' as it is today.

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, disproportionate response, Elliott Abrams, Gaza, Goldstone Report, Hamas, moral high ground, Navi Pillay, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:38 AM 0 comments

Goldstone Commission member appointed special rapporteur on “Israel’s violations of the bases and principles of international law.”

Deciding that the vetting committee's choice for the UN’s next special rapporteur on “Israel’s violations of the bases and principles of international law,” the United Nations 'human rights council' has decided to appoint Goldstone Report co-author Christine Chenkin to the position, replacing Richard Falk. The Arab group at the 'human rights commission' decided that the vetting committee's choice was not anti-Israel enough.

The only power that can yet stop these outrageously partisan and problematic appointments before tomorrow’s plenary decision is the Obama Administration.

When council president Baudelaire Ndong Ella tomorrow moves the nominations, the U.S. — if it is to live up to its pledge to use its UNHRC membership to fight bias, politicization and double standards — must take the floor, call a vote, and vote No.

Because the UN desperately seeks to make such appointments by consensus, the president may change his mind if he knows in advance and for certain that the U.S would challenge these two objectionable nominations.

If the U.S. fails to call a vote and stand up for what is right, it will have forfeited its moral justification for serving on a council that just elected Putin, the Castro regime, the Chinese Communist Party, and the House of Saud.

More on Chenkin's anti-Semitic background here.

Labels: Christine Chenkin, Goldstone Commission, Goldstone Report, Richard Falk, United Nations Human Rights Council

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:43 PM 1 comments

If you're going to make us come to these talks, at least find an honest broker

Israelis strongly protested US Secretary of State John Kerry's choice of former Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk to be the US representative to the possibly upcoming 'negotiations.' Indyk is the co-chairman of the New Israel Fund.

The NIF was infamously found to have sponsored left-wing Israeli organizations that provided 92% of the Israel-based quotes which appeared in the Goldstone Report – a United Nations report on Israel's "Cast Lead" counter-terrorism operation which was slammed as one-sided and defamatory of Israel.

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon has already sent a letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opposing the appointment of Indyk as a go-between in the talks.

“The former ambassador, Mr. Martin Indyk, is the Chair of the International Council of the New Israel Fund which provides funding to anti-Zionist organizations that accuse Israel of war crimes,” wrote Danon in the letter.

“I request that you ask the American administration for an honest broker for these negotiations.”

The NIF's critics note that it funds organizations that encourage legal proceedings against Israeli soldiers and officials in various countries, and organizations that are active in the BDS movement and Israel apartheid week.

Ronen Shoval, chairman of Im Tirzu - a grassroots Israel Zionist movement - called on the US administration to replace Indyk, in favour of a "more honest broker."

...

"The Israeli public is already deeply suspicious and sceptical about these talks. Appointing someone from the New Israel Fund to such a crucial position will make them lose faith entirely - they just won't trust someone from the NIF," he added.

As long as they don't bring us Rob Malley instead.

Labels: Goldstone Report, John Kerry, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, negotiations without preconditions, New Israel Fund, Robert Malley

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:09 PM 0 comments

'Human rights watch's vulture an expert in fiction

Peter Bouckaert, the 'human rights watch' official who was quoted prominently trashing Israel in a 'private' Facebook page conversation among a group called the Vultures, is an expert in fiction. Bouckaert wrote 'human rights watch's coverage of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, which in a prelude to the even more toxic 2009 Goldstone Report took uncorroborated testimony of Lebanese as absolute truth.

This was sent to me by email:

EXPERTS OR IDEOLOGUES? 

PETER BOUCKAERT

NGO MonitorSeptember 08, 2009NGO Monitor Monograph Series

The references for this article are available here.

Peter Bouckaert

Peter Bouckaert, “Emergencies Director” for HRW,³⁸  has a background in research in South Africa. His one-sided approach to the Arab-Israeli context may be the result of drawing a false analogy between the two very different conflict situations of South Africa and Israel. Bouckaert worked at the Constitutional Litigation Unit of the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa 1994-1995 and the South Africa Department of Land Affairs 1996-1996. 39 He holds a law degree from Stanford University and received a fellowship at HRW after graduation in 1997.  In his position, Bouckaert “is responsible for coordinating [HRW’s] response to major wars and other human rights crises.”40  An interview with Bouckaert described his “maverick style,” his “urgent headline grabbing activism,” and, as with many other activists at HRW, his anti-establishment approach (Case 2005).

Boukaert has authored a number of tendentious op-eds directed exclusively at Israel during and after the Second Lebanon War.  An August 5, 2006 report from Tyre, For Israel, Innocent Civilians Are Fair Game, claimed that “Time after time, Israel has hit civilian homes and cars …killing dozens of people with no evidence of any military objective./My notebook overflows with reports of civilian deaths…” (Bouckaert Aug. 5-6, 2006).  Another op-ed inThe Guardian described the “carnage in Qana” and Israel’s actions as “war crimes” (Bouckaert July 31, 2006).  As noted below in the case study on the Lebanon War, HRW amplified and distorted the events in Qana by publicizing a false casualty figure and repeating claims of indiscriminate attacks.

Bouckaert also wrote HRW’s September 2007 report on the Second Lebanon War, Why They Died.  This pseudo-research publication followed HRW’s pattern of highly selective analysis, unprofessional methodology, unverifiable allegations, and grossly disproportionate criticism of Israel that includes 122 pages on alleged Israeli abuses, and just 23 pages on alleged abuses by Hezbollah. This report also reexamines and corrects some of the most blatant errors in the case studies from HRW’s earlier report, Fatal Strikes which Bouckaert co-authored (NGO Monitor Digest Oct. 1, 2007).  For example, in Fatal Strikes an airstrike on Aitaroun on July 17 is presented as an example of the killing of civilians at a time when “Hezbollah was not operating in the area.”  Yet in Why They Died, the details are changed.  Different witnesses report that “The night of the attack, Hezbollah was firing from inside the village. …At 10:15 p.m., they were firing rockets from near our house. We heard the missiles going out.”⁴¹

Commenting on Jenin in 2002, following the international campaign to accuse Israel of a massacre and war crimes, Bouckaert alleged that “very serious violations of the laws of war took place” and claimed that Israel “clearly failed in [the] important obligation [to minimize suffering to civilians] by causing the significant loss of civilian life and massive damage to civilian property.” This assertion erased Israel’s decision to send soldiers to fight house to house against terrorist infrastructure, instead of relying on airstrikes, due to the civilian presence in Jenin.

In the picture above, Mohamed al-Dura is seen in his role as the patron saint of Durban, the internationally coordinated political and economic campaign against the existence of a Jewish state. 

We've been here before.

Labels: BDS, Goldstone Report, Human Rights Watch, Mohamed al-Dura, Second Lebanon War

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:38 PM 0 comments

Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler

Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, January 30.

1) Defining terror down; defining occupation up

In a New York Times op-ed nearly two years ago, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas wrote:

Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.

Now a pro-Palestinian activist, George Bisharat has filled in details as to how this process will work. In Why Palestine should take Israel to court in the Hague he writes:

The Palestinians’ first attempt to join the I.C.C. was thwarted last April when the court’s chief prosecutor at the time, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, declined the request on the grounds that Palestine was not a state. That ambiguity has since diminished with the United Nations’ conferral of nonmember state status on Palestine in November. Israel’s frantic opposition to the elevation of Palestine’s status at the United Nations was motivated precisely by the fear that it would soon lead to I.C.C. jurisdiction over Palestinian claims of war crimes.
Israeli leaders are unnerved for good reason. The I.C.C. could prosecute major international crimes committed on Palestinian soil anytime after the court’s founding on July 1, 2002.

 Bisharat then cites Col. Daniel Reisner, the one time head of the IDF's legal department:

The former head of the Israeli military’s international law division, Daniel Reisner, asserted in 2009: “International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy.”

From the complete context, it's pretty clear that Reisner didn't mean violations as much as ill defined areas of the law. (Bisharat's implication is clear: the United States should be subject to ICC prosecution for targeted killings in Pakistan and Yemen.)

Bisharat makes a dubious claim here:

And it has treated civilian employees of Hamas — including police officers, judges, clerks, journalists and others — as combatants because they allegedly support a “terrorist infrastructure.” Never mind that contemporary international law deems civilians “combatants” only when they actually take up arms.

Elder of Ziyon has addressed the issue of the police officers in some detail.

This is a critical paragraph, and it highlights Goldstone's credulity. There is a clear statement from the police spokesman saying that the police were instructed to face the enemy, which is not a very ambiguous statement. Months later, when he is reached by commission members to explain this problematic statement, he seizes the opportunity to "clarify" that he only meant that they should be doing normal police duties.
And Goldstone believes him.
Not only that, his "proof" is an absurd statement that no policemen were killed in combat (presumably during the ground invasion.) This is a lie. According to PCHR and my research, 16 policemen were killed from January 4th and on, 34 policemen were killed, and my research indicates that at least 16 of them were members of terror organizations.

What international law "deems" can be fluid.

Even the concept of "occupation," on which Bisharat rests much of his case isn't as clear cut as he presumes. Eugene Kontorovich wrote recently:

I recently came across a discussion in the U.N.’s International Law Commission from 1950, as part of the drafting of the Draft Declaration on Rights and Duties of States. There were quibbles from countries such as France about whether annexation is always banned, or whether there might be various exceptions.
In response, the Secretary observed: “It might be suggested that in order to constitute a crime under international law an annexation must be carried out through the use of armed force, with a view to destroying the territorial integrity of another State.” [See I Yearbook of Int. Law Comm. 137 (1950).]
Indeed, it was not surprising that there was some confusion and concern about the extent of an annexation norm, since as the delegates admitted, there were some “frontier adjustments” made by the Allies after WWII.

The larger problem is that the New York Times continues to promote the Palestinian effort to avoid negotiations and have a settlement imposed on Israel internationally, with no editorial objections.

Please also see Seth Mandel's The Shameful Attack on Israel from Amnesty International. 

2) Iran and Hagel

At the end of a long analysis of the behavior of the Iranian regime, Michael Rubin writes in Deciphering Iranian decision making and strategy today:

Wars in the Middle East are caused not by oil or water but by overconfidence. In 1988, an Iranian mine damaged a US guided missile cruiser. In retaliation, President Ronald Reagan ordered Operation Praying Mantis to destroy Iranian oil terminals. The US Navy decimated its Iranian challengers in the ensuing battle, the largest US naval surface engagement since World War II. The red line Reagan established created a tacit understanding that governed US-Iranian relations for another 15 years. As the Iranian leadership has concluded that it could—literally—get away with murder in Iraq and Afghanistan, that American red lines were ephemeral, and that the United States was not prepared to stop its nuclear program, Tehran has grown bolder. Iranian diplomats might talk, but the powers that be will not abide by any deal. The IRGC and its proxies will continue to test American red lines until the United States forcibly pushes back.

This is not calling for America declaring war on Iran, though, I suppose, some would consider it such. But if red lines are necessary for limiting the spread of Iranian influence, what does it mean that President Obama has nominated Sen. Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense?

Seth Mandel asks (and answers)Are Hagel and Obama “Soul Mates” on Defense Policy?

They would travel to Iraq together, where Hagel was dismissive and suspicious of the military’s top brass. Obama would take office and do the same. Hagel would speak out against tough Iran sanctions, and Obama would work against them from the White House, opposing several iterations of them and finally watering them down when he couldn’t prevent sanctions from passing Congress. Hagel would loudly criticize even the contemplation of military action against Iran, and Obama would have his secretary of defense deliver a similar message to Israel. It is this pattern that has led Hagel’s critics to express concern about his nomination to be secretary of defense. Many worry Obama shares Hagel’s views; Obama’s defenders assure us he does not. The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward says the critics are right, and relays a conversation Obama and Hagel had at the beginning of Obama’s first term:

Mandel quotes a recent op-ed by Bob Woodward answering the question in the affirmative.

The AP reports:

Iran's elite Quds Force and Hezbollah militants are learning from a series of botched terror attacks over the past two years and pose a growing threat to the U.S. and other Western targets as well as Israel, a prominent counterterrorism expert says. Operating both independently and together, the militant groups are escalating their activities around the world, fueling worries in the U.S. that they increasingly have the ability and the willingness to attack the U.S., according to a report by Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. His report points to two attacks last year -- one successful and one foiled by U.S. authorities -- as indications that the militants are adapting and are determined to take revenge on the West for efforts to disrupt Tehran's nuclear program and other perceived offenses. The report's conclusions expand on comments late last year from U.S. terrorism officials who told Congress that the Quds Force and Hezbollah, which often coordinate efforts, have become "a significant source of concern" for the U.S. The Quds Force is an elite wing of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard, the defenders of Iran's ruling clerics and their hold on power.

At a time where it appears that Iran will be more aggressive, President Obama has nominated someone who will be hesitant to fight back or establish red lines.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Chuck Hagel, Goldstone Report, International Criminal Court, Iranian nuclear threat, Middle East Media Sampler, occupation, Soccer Dad

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:44 PM 0 comments

Im Tirtzu blasts New Israel Fund again

The Right-wing NGO Im Tirtzu sent a letter this week to the New Israel Fund, the financier of all anti-Israel causes in Israel. The letter appears above. I am reproducing the text below.

Dear Mr. Lurie:

We write to ask a simple question: Do you stand by the latest accusations NIF-funded groups are making against Israel?

After Operation Cast Lead in 2009, groups funded by the NIF led a campaign that sought to portray Israel as a war criminal and human rights violator. That campaign culminated in the Goldstone Report, a ruthlessly biased attack on Israel that cited NIF groups hundreds of times. Even Judge Goldstone himself has disowned it.

Now, in the weeks after the latest conflict in Gaza, NIF groups are once again making misleading and unfounded accusations against the IDF.

B’tselem, Adalah, Gisha, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel are claiming that the IDF targeted journalists and civilians, violated international law, and is perpetrating “collective punishment,” a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

In the weeks leading up to Israel’s response, as terrorist rockets forced thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters, none of these groups criticized the attacks or stood up for Israel’s right – its human right, and its right under international law – to defend itself.

Despite this troubling record, we hold out hope for your leadership as the new president of the New Israel Fund. We ask that you hold the groups you fund responsible for the veracity of their accusations, and that you demand just as much accountability from them as they do from the IDF.

And if you do not stand by their latest false accusations, Israelis deserve to know: What will you do to reform the New Israel Fund?

Sincerely,
Im Tirtzu
The Zionist Student Movement

Here's a fact sheet from Im Tirtzu:

“After Operation Cast Lead in 2009, groups funded by the NIF led a campaign that sought to portray Israel as a war criminal and human rights violator. That campaign culminated in the Goldstone Report, a ruthlessly biased attack on Israel that cited NIF groups hundreds of times.”

Thorough documentation of NIF’s involvement in producing the Goldstone Report is contained in the 2010 NGO Monitor report, “NIF-funded NGO’s: Goldstone’s Building Blocks.” (HERE) 

As the report notes, “After the Goldstone commission was established, three major and long-time NIF grantees (Public Committee against Torture in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and Adalah) participated in a May 2009 NGO ‘town hall meeting’ in Geneva that helped shape the course of Goldstone’s ‘investigation’. In addition, seven NIF-funded NGOs (including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Gisha, HaMoked, and Yesh Din) submitted a joint statement to Goldstone, and a representative from PCATI ‘testified’ at the July 2009 Goldstone hearings, referring to ‘collective punishment’ and ‘[Palestinian] martyrs.’ 

“The resulting Goldstone report referenced B’Tselem more than 56 times; Adalah, 38; and Breaking the Silence, 27. Significantly, many of these citations referred to speculative issues unrelated to the conflict in Gaza, seeking to brand Israeli democracy as ‘repressive,’ and to widen the scope of the condemnations and the resulting political campaigns.” 

After the Goldstone Report was released, “B’Tselem, Adalah, and PHR-I, among others, have lobbied Israeli and foreign governments to support Goldstone’s report and its recommendations.”

The executive director of one of NIF’s flagship groups, B’Tselem, went so far as to boast of her organization’s contributions to the Goldstone Report. B’Tselem, Jessica Montell said, “provided extensive assistance to the UN fact-finding mission headed by Justice Goldstone—escorting them to meet victims in Gaza, providing all of our documentation and correspondence, and meeting the mission in Jordan.” (HERE) 

“Even Judge Goldstone himself has disowned it.”

 

In a 2011 Washington Post op-ed, Judge Richard Goldstone rescinded the central claim of the Goldstone Report, that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians in Operation Cast Lead. (HERE)

“Now, in the weeks after the latest conflict in Gaza, NIF groups are once again making misleading and unfounded accusations against the IDF.

B’tselem, Adalah, Gisha, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel are claiming that the IDF targeted journalists and civilians, violated international law, and is perpetrating ‘collective punishment,’ a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.”

A B’Tselem statement the day after Operation Pillar of Defense began accused Israel of targeting civilians: “As was the case four years ago [in Operation Cast Lead], Israeli officials are now using the conduct of Palestinian organizations to justify harm to Palestinian civilians….The fact that one side violates the law does not give the other side the right to violate it as well.” (HERE) Days later, B’Tselem accused Israel of targeting journalists (HERE) despite the fact that the “journalists” were well-known senior terrorists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. (HERE)

Adalah, another flagship NIF grantee – it seeks as an official position the end of Israel as a Jewish State – accused Israel of “a serious violation of the laws of war.” (HERE)  

Sari Bashi, the executive director of Gisha, accused Israel of “collective punishment” during the conflict. (HERE) Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the 4^th Geneva Convention.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel signed a statement claiming, without offering any specifics, “concrete evidence indicating the commission of war crimes” by Israel. The statement also blamed Israel entirely for Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and called for another Goldstone-style “investigation” of Israel at the United Nations. (HERE)

The New Israel Fund's (pathetic) response is here. Elder of Ziyon demolishes them here.

Labels: Goldstone Report, Im Tirtzu, New Israel Fund, NGO Monitor

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:15 PM 0 comments

International Criminal Court could investigate Operation Cast Lead

The International Criminal Court could yet resurrect the Goldstone Report from its grave.

In 2009, the Palestinians asked the ICC prosecutor's office to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the Israeli military during its December 2008-January 2009 Operation Cast Lead offensive in the Gaza Strip.

However, only a state can launch such a request under international law, which is why former prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo earlier this year decided to leave it up to the "competent organs of the United Nations" to decide whether or not Palestine was a state.

Now that Palestine has attained non-member observer status, it may ratify the court's founding treaty, the Rome Statute. That could open the door for an investigation, despite intense pressure by countries including the US, Britain and France to desist.

Independent from the UN, the Hague-based court can prosecute individuals guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, but only in countries that have ratified the Rome Statute, or countries which recognises its authority.

As in the case of Libya last year, an investigation can also be opened through a UN Security Council referral.

While a Security Council referral for an investigation remains remote -- Israel's staunchest ally the United States would likely veto the decision -- there are two other possibles routes to a probe.

The ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda may decide to ask ICC judges to authorise a probe, or an ICC member country may refer a situation to the prosecutor and ask her to investigate.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Gaza, Goldstone Report, International Criminal Court, Operation Cast Lead

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:39 AM 0 comments

Goldstone going for career advancement on Israel's back again

Richard Goldstone, the author of the discredited Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead, has inserted himself as Chairman of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), an organization that is helping to select judges for the International Criminal Court (ICC). Both the CICC and its advisory council are filled with a collection of UN hacks that should raise some eyebrows. And although Israel, the 'Palestinians' and the United States are not members of the ICC, the 'Palestinians' are seeking to have Israel hauled before the court (which could theoretically happen were a determination made that Israel's judicial system is not competent to investigate the behavior of - for example - the IDF), and that effort is likely to become more intense if the 'Palestinians' are granted full membership in the United Nations. George Soros also has a hand in this....

Officially, Goldstone’s panel has no power to dictate anything regarding the ICC; it can only advise. But at the CICC, Goldstone has embedded himself amid a clique of former U.N. officials well versed in working the system, and in some cases used to working together. For instance, the CICC’s 14-member advisory board includes one of Goldstone’s three co-authors of the Goldstone Report, Pakistani lawyer Hina Jilani. Following Goldstone’s walk-back in April, she defended the report as an important document that nothing can invalidate.

The advisory board also includes Goldstone himself, and former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour — who in 2006 used her U.N. pulpit to protest the execution of Saddam Hussein, and in 2008 welcomed an anti-Semitic Arab-rights charter, before waffling away from it under public criticism.

The five-member “Independent Panel on ICC Judicial Elections” includes a Chilean former judge, Cecilia Medina Quiroga. She’s a veteran of a pre-Goldstone U.N. fact-finding mission dispatched by the Human Rights Council to Gaza which also included a British lawyer who later was another co-author of the Goldstone Report, Christine Chinkin.

Two other panel members have served as judges for the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where Goldstone in the mid-1990s was chief prosecutor. They are South Korean former justice O-Gon Kwon (still serving on the near-eternal Yugoslavia tribunal) and an American former judge, Patricia Wald, former chair and current member of the board of George Soros’s Open Society Justice Initiative.

The fifth panel member is a Swedish lawyer, Hans Corell, who served as legal counsel to the U.N. from 1994 to 2004. Under former secretary-general Kofi Annan, Corell was heavily involved in the creation of the ICC. He also had a hand in the creation and management of the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food Program, a relief plan so badly designed, so mismanaged, and so globally corrupt that Annan was finally forced in 2004 to call for a special inquiry — in which Goldstone served as a member of a three-man panel, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. The committee exonerated Annan of deliberate wrongdoing, but not of a “cumulative management performance” that “fell short of the standards that the United Nations Organization should strive to maintain.” Today, Kofi Annan chairs the CICC advisory board.

And what, exactly, is the CICC, which has gathered all these folks together? Funded by donors such as George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the European Union, it is a program run by a nonprofit organization called the World Federalist Movement/Institute for Global Policy. Registered in New York, with another office in The Hague, the World Federalist Movement enjoys consultative status with the U.N., and campaigns for “World Federalist government.”

A spokesman for the CICC, reached by phone, says Goldstone’s report on the ICC judicial candidates will probably be released sometime next month. Nothing here precludes the possibility that Goldstone might have learned from his self-confessed mistakes. Nonetheless, there’s something in this CICC welter of old U.N. hacks and fresh presumption that gives added heft to the obvious question: Does the world really need another Goldstone Report?

What could go wrong?

Labels: Christine Chenkin, Goldstone Report, Hina Jilani, International Criminal Court, Louise Arbour, Richard Goldstone

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:23 PM 0 comments

Why Palmer did so much better than Goldstone

Gerald Steinberg and Gidon Shaviv explain why the Palmer Commission report is so much less biased than the Goldstone Report. Aside from the obvious (panel makeup and mandate), they come up with this.

Finally and most importantly, the methodology and sources which the two commissions relied upon were entirely different. The Palmer report, as per its mandate, was based mainly on reports submitted by the governments of Israel and Turkey. As a result, the analysis was informed by numerous details and a credible summary of the events. Where the Palmer Commission could not fully reconcile or verify the submissions, they modestly acknowledged this fact.

The Goldstone Report however, relied heavily on submissions from highly politicized, mainly pro-Palestinian NGOs. The claims and so-called eyewitness testimony, quoting Palestinians whose allegations could not be verified, resulted in highly dubious conclusions. Highly distorted NGO analyses of international law were also reflected in the controversial interpretations of law in the Goldstone report. The weight given to such suspect sources is evidenced by over 500 references to NGOs in Goldstone’s publication, while Palmer cited NGOs in three places, without accepting their claims.

At least in the case of Israel's report, that's because the Israeli report was an official government commission of inquiry which did not rely on NGO's - the IDF sent witnesses to the civilian Terkel Commission. There was much discussion at the time about who should be sent and whether anyone should be sent at all from the IDF. By contrast, after Operation Cast Lead, the government refused to set up a non-military investigation at all.

We have a great military justice system, but to the rest of the world, the IDF investigating the IDF isn't always going to pass a smell test. Perhaps, if a commission is made up of non-military people whose credentials are unquestioned, like the Terkel Commission, such a commission is not a bad idea.

UPDATE 3:30 PM

I've corrected the last paragraph to make clear that I meant that the Terkel Commission was not a bad idea for Israel.

Labels: Goldstone Report, Palmer Commission, Terkel Committee

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:25 PM 1 comments

White House opposes Ros-Lehtinen bill on UN

On Monday, I reported on a bill introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl) to cut off funding for the United Nations in the event that it upgrades the status of the 'Palestinian' mission to the United Nations. There's actually a lot more to the bill than that - I am embedding a summary issued by Ros-Lehtinen's office below. As you will see, the bill would also seek to:

1. Make UN funding voluntary.

2. Allow the GAO to audit the use of US contributions to the UN (and allow funding only to UN agencies who pledge to cooperate in such audits).

3. Require the State Department to report to Congress on UN reform and personnel practices.

4. The 'Palestinian' provision I discussed on Monday.

5. Several measures that would nullify the Goldstone Report.

6. Takes the US off the 'Human Rights Council' until its membership is cleaned up.

7. Withholds funding from the Durban process.

8. Withholds funding from UNRWA.

9. Seeks to reform the IAEA to make it better able to monitor member states' compliance.

10. Reforms UN peacekeeping.

The full summary is below (2-page Word document). I have more about this after the fold.

Summary- United Nations Transparency, Accountability, And Reform Act

The State Department opposes Ros-Lehtinen's bill.

The State Department said it was opposed to Ros-Lehtinen's legislation to revamp UN funding because, as spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, it would "seriously undermine our international standing and dangerously weaken the UN as an instrument to advance US national security goals."

"We believe in U.N. reform, we just don't think that this is the right way to go about it," Nuland said. The United States called on Monday for the rescinding of a nearly 3 percent cost of living pay increase to almost 5,000 UN employees in New York, saying it was inappropriate at a time of austerity.

Jonathan Tobin reports that the White House is opposed as well and will cause the Senate to oppose Ros-Lehtinen's bill.

But while Ros-Lehtinen’s bill is likely to pass the House, it will face a rough time in the Senate due to opposition from the White House. An administration source told Politico: “This draft legislation is dated, tired, and frankly unresponsive to the positive role being played by the UN.” This raises the question: is President Obama willing to head into a re-election contest flying the flag of the UN?

The White House claims Republican critics of the UN are ignoring the positive role the institution has played in Afghanistan and Libya. It argues that American influence at the world body is maximized when the U.S. is fully engaged and paying the 22 percent of the UN’s budget that flows from Washington. But Obama’s “don’t worry, be happy” approach to the UN has done nothing to convince its members to stop trying to kill the peace process by voting to recognize an independent Palestinian state without first requiring it to make peace with Israel. Nor has the administration used its supposedly weighty influence at Turtle Bay to transform UNRWA or the Human Rights Council, both of which exist primarily in order to perpetuate the Arab war against Israel. Despite progress on some fronts, the UN and its affiliate agencies remain a cesspool of anti-Semitism and bias against Israel as the upcoming Durban III UN conference (which, to its credit, the administration plans to boycott) proves yet again.

Read the whole thing.

The US pays anywhere from 22% (general) to 27% (peacekeeping) of the UN's budget. For 2010, the US contribution came to more than $3.8 billion, and for 2011, the Obama administration has requested nearly $4.3 billion. Given the current economic crisis in the US, it is incredible to me that an organization that does so much that is anathema to the American people, and which has been shown to be corrupt so many times in the past, is given such huge amounts of American taxpayer money without any oversight.

And Obama's friend Rashid Khalidi is worried about $3 billion that is given to Israel, with whom the US shares democratic values, and most of which is spent in the US anyway.

Republicans need to get behind this bill and either push it through or make the Democrats pay a heavy political price for its failure.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Durban process, Goldstone Report, IAEA, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, United Nations, United Nations Human Rights Council, UNRWA

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:32 AM 2 comments

'Human rights' groups to lose National Service volunteers?

It never would have occurred to me that the Israeli 'human rights' groups that provided the fodder for the slanderous Goldstone Report have the right to benefit from National Service volunteers - people who choose to serve the country in ways other than through the IDF (mostly religious girls). But they do have those rights - at least for now. And there's a movement afoot - which could even be called bipartisan - to revoke them (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).

Behind the initiative is MK Israel Hasson (Kadima ), who recently asked Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz (Habayit Hayehudi ), the minister responsible for the National Service administration, to formulate new criteria for determining which organizations in the country are eligible to receive National Service volunteers, as part of new legislation that will govern the activities of the National Service.

After conducting an initial investigation, Hershkowitz discovered that among those organizations that receive National Service volunteers are the Association for Civil Rights Israel (ACRI ), Amnesty Israel, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Physicians for Human Rights Israel. Hasson's initiative comes on the heels of similar attempts to impinge on the activities of Israeli organizations that provided information to the Goldstone Commission, while it was compiling its report on IDF activities in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Ever since the Im Tirtzu movement published a list of such organizations, focusing in particular on support they received from the New Israel Fund, a number of MKs have put forward proposals aimed at cutting their funding.

In his letter to Hershkowitz, Hasson accused the organizations of slandering the IDF and its officers and called for new criteria to be set to prevent such organizations from benefiting from National Service volunteers in the future. He noted that the groups "urged the UN inquiry committee headed by Judge Goldstone to accuse Israel of anti-humanitarian activities and severe violations of human rights during Operation Cast Lead."

"The organizations have made statements based on mere assumptions regarding the motives of the IDF actions against Hamas," Hasson wrote. "They claimed the operation was a punitive one, which used destruction as a means of deterrence and punishment, not as a means for attaining any real military objectives. As a result, it raises serious suspicions about the legality of the entire operation. This was said despite the fact that these organizations did not have the information on which to base such statements."

As I said at the top of this post, it never would have occurred to me that these organizations would have the right to benefit from National Service volunteers, given that their work is a national disservice. Maybe now that wrong will be set right.

Labels: Goldstone Report, Im Tirtzu, New Israel Fund

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:37 AM 2 comments