No article on RNW, on the killing of Italian activist Vittorio in Gaza by Islamists!!!!!!!!!!

Squawking about Israel or zionism in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the pinnacle of hypocrisy. While there are roughly twenty tyrannical Arab Islamic States covering an area larger than Europe, a tiny Jewish democracy about the size of Wales, is not acceptable to Islam.
Benjamin Netanyahu expresses the problem succinctly:
'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.

"If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document." Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone’s much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: "If I had known then that the report would turn me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all." And if that wasn’t the original sentence, it is certainly the subtext of Goldstone’s article.

This shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the judge, a campaign whose like in the past destroyed mighty people such as US Senator William Fulbright who was shot down politically for his brave attempt to disclose AIPAC’s illegal dealings with the State of Israel.

Already In October 2009, Goldstone told CNN, "I’ve got a great love for Israel" and "I’ve worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so" (Video: "Fareed Zakaria GPS," 4 October 2009).

Given the fact that at the time he made this declaration of love he did not have any new evidence, as he claims now, one may wonder how could this love not have been at least weakened by what he discovered when writing, along with other members of the UN commission, his original report.

But worse was to come and exactly a year ago, in April 2010, the campaign against him reached new heights, or rather, lows. It was led by the chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, Avrom Krengel, who tried to prevent Goldstone from participating in his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Johannesburg since "Goldstone caused irreparable damage to the Jewish people as a whole."

The South African Zionist Federation threatened to picket outside the synagogue during the ceremony. Worse was the interference of South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, who chastised Goldstone for "doing greater damage to the State of Israel." Last February, Goldstone said that "Hamas perpetrated war crimes, but Israel did not," in an interview that was not broadcast, according to a 3 April report on Israel’s Channel 2 website. It was not enough: the Israelis demanded much more.

Readers might ask "so what?" and "why could Goldstone not withstand the heat?" Good questions, but alas the Zionization of Jewish communities and the false identification of Jewishness with Zionism is still a powerful disincentive that prevents liberal Jews from boldly facing Israel and its crimes.

Every now and again many liberal Jews seem to liberate themselves and allow their conscience, rather than their fear, to lead them. However, many seem unable stick to their more universalist inclinations for too long where Israel is concerned. The risk of being defined as a "self-hating Jew" with all the ramifications of such an accusation is a real and frightening prospect for them. You have to be in this position to understand the power of this terror.

Just weeks ago, Israeli military intelligence announced it had created a special unit to monitor, confront, and possibly hunt down, individuals and bodies suspected of "delegitimizing" Israel abroad. In light of this, perhaps quite a few of the faint-hearted felt standing up to Israel was not worth it.

We should have recognized that Goldstone was one of them when he stated that, despite his report, he remains a Zionist. This adjective, "Zionist," is far more meaningful and charged than is usually assumed. You cannot claim to be one if you oppose the ideology of the apartheid State of Israel. You can remain one if you just rebuke the state for a certain criminal policy and fail to see the connection between the ideology and that policy. "I am a Zionist" is a declaration of loyalty to a frame of mind that cannot accept the 2009 Goldstone Report. You can either be a Zionist or blame Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity — if you do both, you will crack sooner rather than later.

That this mea culpa has nothing to do with new facts is clear when one examines the "evidence" brought by Goldstone to explain his retraction. To be honest, one should say that one did not have to be the world expert on international law to know that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza in 2009. The reports of bodies such as Breaking the Silence and the UN representatives on the ground attested to it, before and after the Goldstone report. It was also not the only evidence.

The pictures and images we saw on our screens and those we saw on the ground told only one story of a criminal policy intending to kill, wound and maim as a collective punishment. "The Palestinians are going to bring upon themselves a Holocaust," promised Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy minister of defense to the people of Gaza on 29 February 2008.

There is only one new piece of evidence Goldstone brings and this is an internal Israeli army investigation that explains that one of the cases suspected as a war crime was due to a mistake by the Israeli army that is still being investigated. This must be a winning card: a claim by the Israeli army that massive killings by Palestinians were a "mistake."

Ever since the creation of the State of Israel, the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel were either terrorists or killed by "mistake." So 29 out of 1,400 deaths were killed by an unfortunate mistake? Only ideological commitment could base a revision of the report on an internal inquiry of the Israeli army focusing only on one of dozens of instances of unlawful killing and massacring. So it cannot be new evidence that caused Goldstone to write this article. Rather, it is his wish to return to the Zionist comfort zone that propelled this bizarre and faulty article.

This is also clear from the way he escalates his language against Hamas in the article and de-escalates his words toward Israel. And he hopes that this would absolve him of Israel’s righteous fury. But he is wrong, very wrong. Only a few hours passed from the publication of the article until Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and of course the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate President Shimon Peres commissioned Goldstone with a new role in life: he is expected to move from one campus to the other and hop from one public venue to the next in the service of a new and pious Israel. He may choose not to do it; but then again he might not be allowed to attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah as a retaliation.

Goldstone and his colleagues wrote a very detailed report, but they were quite reserved in their conclusions. The picture unfolding from Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations was far more horrendous and was described less in the clinical and legal language that quite often fails to convey the magnitude of the horror. It was first western public opinion that understood better than Goldstone the implications of his report. Israel’s international legitimacy has suffered an unprecedented blow. He was genuinely shocked to learn that this was the result.

We have been there before. In the late 1980s, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote a similar, sterile, account of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Palestinian academics such as Edward Said, Nur Masalha and Walid Khalidi were the ones who pointed to the significant implications for Israel’s identity and self-image, and nature of the archival material he unearthed.

Morris too cowered under pressure and asked to be re-admitted to the tribe. He went very far with his mea culpa and re-emerged as an extreme anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist: suggesting putting the Arabs in cages and promoting the idea of another ethnic cleansing. Goldstone can go in that direction too; or at least this is what the Israelis expect him to do now.

Professionally, both Morris and Goldstone tried to retreat to a position that claimed, as Goldstone does in The Washington Post article, that Israel can only be judged by its intentions not the consequences of its deeds. Therefore only the Israeli army, in both cases, can be a reliable source for knowing what these intentions were. Very few decent and intelligent people in the world would accept such a bizarre analysis and explanation.

Goldstone has not entered as yet the lunatic fringe of ultra-Zionism as Morris did. But if he is not careful the future promises to be a pleasant journey with the likes of Morris, Alan Dershowitz (who already said that Goldstone is a "repentant Jew") between annual meetings of the AIPAC rottweilers and the wacky conventions of the Christian Zionists. He would soon find out that once you cower in the face of Zionism — you are expected to go all the way or be at the very same spot you thought you had successfully left behind you.

Winning Zionist love in the short-term is far less important than losing the world’s respect in the long-run. Palestine should choose its friends with care: they cannot be faint-hearted nor can they claim to be Zionists as well as champions of peace, justice and human rights in Palestine.

Source: Voltaire Net

"If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document." Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone’s much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: "If I had known then that the report would turn me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all." And if that wasn’t the original sentence, it is certainly the subtext of Goldstone’s article.

This shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the judge, a campaign whose like in the past destroyed mighty people such as US Senator William Fulbright who was shot down politically for his brave attempt to disclose AIPAC’s illegal dealings with the State of Israel.

Already In October 2009, Goldstone told CNN, "I’ve got a great love for Israel" and "I’ve worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so" (Video: "Fareed Zakaria GPS," 4 October 2009).

Given the fact that at the time he made this declaration of love he did not have any new evidence, as he claims now, one may wonder how could this love not have been at least weakened by what he discovered when writing, along with other members of the UN commission, his original report.

But worse was to come and exactly a year ago, in April 2010, the campaign against him reached new heights, or rather, lows. It was led by the chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, Avrom Krengel, who tried to prevent Goldstone from participating in his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Johannesburg since "Goldstone caused irreparable damage to the Jewish people as a whole."

The South African Zionist Federation threatened to picket outside the synagogue during the ceremony. Worse was the interference of South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, who chastised Goldstone for "doing greater damage to the State of Israel." Last February, Goldstone said that "Hamas perpetrated war crimes, but Israel did not," in an interview that was not broadcast, according to a 3 April report on Israel’s Channel 2 website. It was not enough: the Israelis demanded much more.

Readers might ask "so what?" and "why could Goldstone not withstand the heat?" Good questions, but alas the Zionization of Jewish communities and the false identification of Jewishness with Zionism is still a powerful disincentive that prevents liberal Jews from boldly facing Israel and its crimes.

Every now and again many liberal Jews seem to liberate themselves and allow their conscience, rather than their fear, to lead them. However, many seem unable stick to their more universalist inclinations for too long where Israel is concerned. The risk of being defined as a "self-hating Jew" with all the ramifications of such an accusation is a real and frightening prospect for them. You have to be in this position to understand the power of this terror.

Just weeks ago, Israeli military intelligence announced it had created a special unit to monitor, confront, and possibly hunt down, individuals and bodies suspected of "delegitimizing" Israel abroad. In light of this, perhaps quite a few of the faint-hearted felt standing up to Israel was not worth it.

We should have recognized that Goldstone was one of them when he stated that, despite his report, he remains a Zionist. This adjective, "Zionist," is far more meaningful and charged than is usually assumed. You cannot claim to be one if you oppose the ideology of the apartheid State of Israel. You can remain one if you just rebuke the state for a certain criminal policy and fail to see the connection between the ideology and that policy. "I am a Zionist" is a declaration of loyalty to a frame of mind that cannot accept the 2009 Goldstone Report. You can either be a Zionist or blame Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity — if you do both, you will crack sooner rather than later.

That this mea culpa has nothing to do with new facts is clear when one examines the "evidence" brought by Goldstone to explain his retraction. To be honest, one should say that one did not have to be the world expert on international law to know that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza in 2009. The reports of bodies such as Breaking the Silence and the UN representatives on the ground attested to it, before and after the Goldstone report. It was also not the only evidence.

The pictures and images we saw on our screens and those we saw on the ground told only one story of a criminal policy intending to kill, wound and maim as a collective punishment. "The Palestinians are going to bring upon themselves a Holocaust," promised Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy minister of defense to the people of Gaza on 29 February 2008.

There is only one new piece of evidence Goldstone brings and this is an internal Israeli army investigation that explains that one of the cases suspected as a war crime was due to a mistake by the Israeli army that is still being investigated. This must be a winning card: a claim by the Israeli army that massive killings by Palestinians were a "mistake."

Ever since the creation of the State of Israel, the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel were either terrorists or killed by "mistake." So 29 out of 1,400 deaths were killed by an unfortunate mistake? Only ideological commitment could base a revision of the report on an internal inquiry of the Israeli army focusing only on one of dozens of instances of unlawful killing and massacring. So it cannot be new evidence that caused Goldstone to write this article. Rather, it is his wish to return to the Zionist comfort zone that propelled this bizarre and faulty article.

This is also clear from the way he escalates his language against Hamas in the article and de-escalates his words toward Israel. And he hopes that this would absolve him of Israel’s righteous fury. But he is wrong, very wrong. Only a few hours passed from the publication of the article until Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and of course the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate President Shimon Peres commissioned Goldstone with a new role in life: he is expected to move from one campus to the other and hop from one public venue to the next in the service of a new and pious Israel. He may choose not to do it; but then again he might not be allowed to attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah as a retaliation.

Goldstone and his colleagues wrote a very detailed report, but they were quite reserved in their conclusions. The picture unfolding from Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations was far more horrendous and was described less in the clinical and legal language that quite often fails to convey the magnitude of the horror. It was first western public opinion that understood better than Goldstone the implications of his report. Israel’s international legitimacy has suffered an unprecedented blow. He was genuinely shocked to learn that this was the result.

We have been there before. In the late 1980s, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote a similar, sterile, account of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Palestinian academics such as Edward Said, Nur Masalha and Walid Khalidi were the ones who pointed to the significant implications for Israel’s identity and self-image, and nature of the archival material he unearthed.

Morris too cowered under pressure and asked to be re-admitted to the tribe. He went very far with his mea culpa and re-emerged as an extreme anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist: suggesting putting the Arabs in cages and promoting the idea of another ethnic cleansing. Goldstone can go in that direction too; or at least this is what the Israelis expect him to do now.

Professionally, both Morris and Goldstone tried to retreat to a position that claimed, as Goldstone does in The Washington Post article, that Israel can only be judged by its intentions not the consequences of its deeds. Therefore only the Israeli army, in both cases, can be a reliable source for knowing what these intentions were. Very few decent and intelligent people in the world would accept such a bizarre analysis and explanation.

Goldstone has not entered as yet the lunatic fringe of ultra-Zionism as Morris did. But if he is not careful the future promises to be a pleasant journey with the likes of Morris, Alan Dershowitz (who already said that Goldstone is a "repentant Jew") between annual meetings of the AIPAC rottweilers and the wacky conventions of the Christian Zionists. He would soon find out that once you cower in the face of Zionism — you are expected to go all the way or be at the very same spot you thought you had successfully left behind you.

Winning Zionist love in the short-term is far less important than losing the world’s respect in the long-run. Palestine should choose its friends with care: they cannot be faint-hearted nor can they claim to be Zionists as well as champions of peace, justice and human rights in Palestine.

Source: Voltaire Net

Goldstone refuses to do ‘Teshuvah’
THURSDAY, 07 APRIL 2011 09:18 REHMATS WORLD

On April 4, 2011 – Israel-Firster Dr. Alan Dershowitz in an Op-Ed in Jewish daily FORWARD, entitled “Goldstone Needs To Do Teshuvah“, wrote: “The Goldstone Report did much harm by lending an aura of credibility to some of the most defamatory and false charges ever made against Israel and its defense forces. But the Jewish tradition of teshuvah, or repentance, demands that we look forward, not backward. It also demands that the person seeking teshuvah do everything in his power to right the wrong he has committed”.

However, South African Zionist Jew judge, Richard Goldstone, in an interview on April 5, 2011 – told Associated Press that he did not plan to seek nullification of his highly critical UN report on Israel’s 2008-2009 offensive in the Gaza Strip and asserted that claims to the contrary by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai were false.

Goldstone said that Yishai had called him on Monday to thank him for an op-ed piece published Friday in The Washington Post in which the judge wrote that new information had come to light that made him rethink his central conclusions.

Goldstone also added that aside from the one point he made in his op-ed, the Goldstone Report stands as written.

Eli Yishai invited Goldstone to visit Israel and deliver lectures at University Campuses. Goldstone had accepted the invitation to visist Israel by the end of this year. However, after his refusal to do ‘Teshuvah’ – Goldstone should consider that invitation canceled.

Israeli Human Rights Watchdog, B’Tselem had this to say on original findings of Goldstone Report and Israeli ‘joy’ on Richard Golstone’s earlier retraction: “The Goldstone report blamed Israel for the worst of crimes – the possible commission of crimes against humanity. It made this claim without any factual basis and without hearing Israel’s official version (in large part due to Israel’s miserable decision not to cooperate with the fact-finding mission). Since the publication of Goldstone’s retraction, Israeli officials conclude that all its actions were carried out in accordance with law. However, it is imperative to note that in operation Cast Lead Israel killed 758 Palestinian civilians who did not take part in the hostilities, 318 of them minors. In excess of 5,300 Palestinians were injured, more than 350 of them seriously. More than 3,500 houses were destroyed, and electricity, water, and sewage infrastructure was damaged. Gaza has not yet been rehabilitated from the unprecedented destruction it suffered”.

The UN Human Right Council (UNHRC) has announced that it is committed to the original text of the Goldstone Report. The British government said on Monday that it does not support calls for a retraction of the Goldstone Report because Richard Goldstone did not ask for that in his article published in the Washington Post, last Friday.

Professor IIan Pappe (University of Exeter) warned Richard Goldstone: “He (Goldstone) has not entered as yet the lunatic fringe of ultra-Zionism as Morris did (after his retraction, Morris became an extreme anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist: suggesting putting the Arabs in cages and promoting the idea of another ethnic cleansing). But if he is not careful the future promises to be a pleasant journey with the likes of Morris, Alan Dershowitz (who already said that Goldstone is a “repentant Jew”) between annual meetings of the AIPAC rottweilers and the wacky conventions of the Christian Zionists. He would soon find out that once you cower in the face of Zionism — you are expected to go all the way or be at the very same spot you thought you had successfully left behind you.

And finally, why Goldstone betrayed the truth? Listen to an ex-Jewish blogger in the video below.

Goldstone refuses to do ‘Teshuvah’
THURSDAY, 07 APRIL 2011 09:18 REHMATS WORLD

On April 4, 2011 – Israel-Firster Dr. Alan Dershowitz in an Op-Ed in Jewish daily FORWARD, entitled “Goldstone Needs To Do Teshuvah“, wrote: “The Goldstone Report did much harm by lending an aura of credibility to some of the most defamatory and false charges ever made against Israel and its defense forces. But the Jewish tradition of teshuvah, or repentance, demands that we look forward, not backward. It also demands that the person seeking teshuvah do everything in his power to right the wrong he has committed”.

However, South African Zionist Jew judge, Richard Goldstone, in an interview on April 5, 2011 – told Associated Press that he did not plan to seek nullification of his highly critical UN report on Israel’s 2008-2009 offensive in the Gaza Strip and asserted that claims to the contrary by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai were false.

Goldstone said that Yishai had called him on Monday to thank him for an op-ed piece published Friday in The Washington Post in which the judge wrote that new information had come to light that made him rethink his central conclusions.

Goldstone also added that aside from the one point he made in his op-ed, the Goldstone Report stands as written.

Eli Yishai invited Goldstone to visit Israel and deliver lectures at University Campuses. Goldstone had accepted the invitation to visist Israel by the end of this year. However, after his refusal to do ‘Teshuvah’ – Goldstone should consider that invitation canceled.

Israeli Human Rights Watchdog, B’Tselem had this to say on original findings of Goldstone Report and Israeli ‘joy’ on Richard Golstone’s earlier retraction: “The Goldstone report blamed Israel for the worst of crimes – the possible commission of crimes against humanity. It made this claim without any factual basis and without hearing Israel’s official version (in large part due to Israel’s miserable decision not to cooperate with the fact-finding mission). Since the publication of Goldstone’s retraction, Israeli officials conclude that all its actions were carried out in accordance with law. However, it is imperative to note that in operation Cast Lead Israel killed 758 Palestinian civilians who did not take part in the hostilities, 318 of them minors. In excess of 5,300 Palestinians were injured, more than 350 of them seriously. More than 3,500 houses were destroyed, and electricity, water, and sewage infrastructure was damaged. Gaza has not yet been rehabilitated from the unprecedented destruction it suffered”.

The UN Human Right Council (UNHRC) has announced that it is committed to the original text of the Goldstone Report. The British government said on Monday that it does not support calls for a retraction of the Goldstone Report because Richard Goldstone did not ask for that in his article published in the Washington Post, last Friday.

Professor IIan Pappe (University of Exeter) warned Richard Goldstone: “He (Goldstone) has not entered as yet the lunatic fringe of ultra-Zionism as Morris did (after his retraction, Morris became an extreme anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist: suggesting putting the Arabs in cages and promoting the idea of another ethnic cleansing). But if he is not careful the future promises to be a pleasant journey with the likes of Morris, Alan Dershowitz (who already said that Goldstone is a “repentant Jew”) between annual meetings of the AIPAC rottweilers and the wacky conventions of the Christian Zionists. He would soon find out that once you cower in the face of Zionism — you are expected to go all the way or be at the very same spot you thought you had successfully left behind you.

And finally, why Goldstone betrayed the truth? Listen to an ex-Jewish blogger in the video below.

If there is a turerest allover the world, It is israel.
But the the world is blaind.THy killed mor than 3000 civilian ...!!!!Is this a craime or fun????

"While the Israeli-Hamas war raged on, we saw the usual idiots making unfounded anti-Israeli condemnations. The criticisms come at a time when Hamas terrorists are using Palestinian civilians as human shields to block Israeli fire. This is also a time when Hamas is using this war and their propaganda to cover their deliberate murders of Palestinian civilians who are part of the Fatah organization. "
posted by George Koukeas in Canada Free press in 2009. This article continues to be relevant today.
(full article pasted at the bottom of page below Lewis's cut & paste or just click this link):
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/7715

Everything, everything in war is barbaric.... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

And what would one call over 1,400 Palestinians killed? Brotherly love?

Goldstone’s Rethink

Posted By Jonathan Cook On April 5, 2011 on 'Anti-War.com'

Israeli leaders have barely hidden their jubilation at an opinion article in last Friday’s Washington Post by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone reconsidering the findings of his United Nations-appointed inquiry into Israel’s attack on Gaza in winter 2008.

For the past 18 months the Goldstone Report had forced Israel on to the defensive by suggesting its army—as well as Hamas, the ruling faction in Gaza—had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel’s three-week Operation Cast Lead. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of women and children.

Goldstone’s report, Israeli officials worried, might eventually pave the way to war-crimes trials against Israeli soldiers at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

In what appeared to be a partial retraction of some of his findings against Israel, Goldstone argued that he would have written the report differently had Israel cooperated at the time of his inquiry.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, immediately called on the United Nations to shelve the Goldstone Report; Ehud Barak, the defense minister, demanded an apology; and Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, said Israel’s actions in Gaza had been “vindicated.”

Israel would certainly like observers to interpret Goldstone’s latest comments as an exoneration. In reality, however, he offered far less consolation to Israel than its supporters claim.

The report’s original accusation that Israeli soldiers committed war crimes still stands, as does criticism of Israel’s use of unconventional weapons such as white phosphorus, the destruction of property on a massive scale, and the taking of civilians as human shields.

Instead, Goldstone restated his position in two ways that Israel will seek to exploit to the full.

The first was an observation that since his report’s publication in September 2009 “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct.”

In the past, Goldstone has made much of the need for Israel and Hamas to investigate incidents where civilians were targeted, saying that otherwise his report should be transferred to the ICC. In his article, he favorably compared Israel’s investigations to the failure by Hamas to carry out any probes.

The significance of Goldstone’s reassessment from Israel’s point of view was underlined this week by comments to the Jerusalem Post from a senior unnamed legal official in the Israeli military. He said Goldstone’s professed confidence in Israel’s investigatory system would help to forestall future war crimes probes by the UN.

That will be cause for Palestinian concern at a time when, in response to renewed hostilities between Israel and Hamas, some Israeli government ministers have called for a Cast Lead 2.

Another unnamed commander told the popular Israeli news website YNet yesterday that Goldstone’s change of tack might lift the threat of arrest on war crimes charges from Israeli soldiers traveling abroad.

However, according to both Israeli human rights groups and a committee of independent legal experts appointed by the UN to monitor implementation of the report, Goldstone’s applause for Israel’s investigations is unwarranted.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, an Israeli organization monitoring human rights in the occupied territories, said Israel had failed to conduct a prompt, independent, or transparent inquiry.

“The materials on which Israel has relied have not been made available to us, so we are not in a position to judge the quality of the investigations or the credibility of the findings.”

Likewise, the UN committee of experts, led by a New York judge, Mary McGowan-Davis, has complained that the Israeli army is probing itself and questioned the effectiveness of the investigations following “unnecessary delays” in which evidence may have been “lost or compromised.”

Human rights groups have pointed out that, despite the large number of deaths in Gaza, only three of the 400 investigations cited by Goldstone have so far led to indictments.

One of those cases involved the theft of a credit card. Another, in which two soldiers used a 9-year-old boy as a human shield, led to their being punished with three-month suspended sentences and demotion.

The second, more significant reassessment by Goldstone is that he was wrong to conclude in his report that Israel intentionally targeted civilians “as a matter of policy.”

Despite Goldstone’s misleading wording in the article, he is referring not to an Israeli order to intentionally murder civilians but a policy in which indiscriminate attacks were undertaken with a disregard to likely casualties among civilians.

Strangely, he appears to base his revised opinion on Israel’s own military investigations, even though no evidence from them has yet been made public.

Rina Rosenberg, the international advocacy director of the Adalah legal center in Israel, which has been monitoring Israel’s investigations on behalf of Palestinian legal groups, said Goldstone had given Israel a “gift” with this observation.

“Israel has tried to focus the debate entirely on whether it intended to kill civilians, as though a war crime depends only on intentionality. Israel knows that intention—outside a policy like targeted assassinations—is very difficult to prove.”

She pointed out that there were other important standards in international law for assessing war crimes, including negligence, disregard for the safety of civilians, and indiscriminate use of force.

Also, observers have wondered what new information has emerged since Goldstone published his report to justify a rethink on whether Israeli policy left civilians in the line of fire.

His original conclusion drew in part on public statements by Israeli military commanders that in Gaza they had applied the Dahiya doctrine—an Israeli military strategy named after a suburb of Beirut that Israel leveled during its 2006 attack on Lebanon. In his article, Goldstone cast no fresh doubt on his earlier premise that such a strategy would by definition endanger civilians.

In addition, the Israeli group Breaking the Silence has collected many testimonies from soldiers before and since publication of the Goldstone Report indicating that they received orders to carry out operations with little or no regard for the safety of civilians. Some described the army as pursuing a policy of “zero-risk” to soldiers, even if that meant putting civilians in danger.

Similarly, leaflets produced by the military rabbinate—apparently with the knowledge of the army top brass—urged Israeli ground troops in Gaza to protect their own lives at all costs and show no mercy to Palestinians.

The timing of Goldstone’s article has raised additional concern among Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups that he may have succumbed to political pressure.

Late last month the UN’s Human Rights Council, which set up the fact-finding mission, recommended that the General Assembly refer the Goldstone Report to the Security Council—the decisive stage in moving it to the International Criminal Court.

It is expected that the U.S., which has consistently opposed such a referral, will block the report’s progress to the ICC—further embarrassing Washington after its recent veto at the UN of a Palestinian resolution against Israeli settlements.

Shawan Jabareen, director of the Palestinian legal rights group al-Haq, said Goldstone’s article had provided Israel and the U.S. with a “new weapon” to discredit the report even before it reached the Security Council.