Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Sunday 3 April 2011

Goldstone: The Guilt of a Gullible Man

So Judge Richard Goldstone has more or less retracted that shameful, odious Report of his that found Israel guilty of war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, a report that has fed the frenzy of antisemites and anti-Zionists eveywhere, and even been touted as a death warrant for the embattled Jewish State.

In the Washington Post Goldstone, an apartheid era judge in South Africa, writes that on the basis of evidence that has since become available the Report would be "a different document". 
'The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.'
Read his entire article here :http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/AFg111JC_story.html

Appropriately enough, that article appeared on April Fool's Day.  But its readers are not the dupes.  Its author was made a fool of long ago.

No wonder Israel's President is demanding an apology to his country from the judge who by accepting blood libels put a noose around Israel's neck in the court of public opinion: http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?ID=214907&R=R1

The pity - the woeful, shameful pity - of it all is that Goldstone's original rush to judgment has had its nefarious propagandistic effects.   Binyamin Netanyahu has rightly and not surprisingly said that the Report should be thrown into "the dustbin of history".  But "mud sticks" (and no mud more firmly than when it is hurled at Jews and the Jewish State).

Just as in benighted corners of Europe even into the twentieth century ignorant country folk believed (perhaps their descendents still do) that Jews ritually murdered children at Passover to mix their blood with matzah meal, so the Report has stamped its impress on countless ordinary men and women.  Its negative impact on Israel's image is well-nigh incalculable.

As someone has so pithily described what many see as a retraction by Goldstone born of a guilty conscience: "It's a day late and a shilling short".

11 comments:

  1. Dear Daphne,

    Your giving Goldstone the "out" of possible "gullibility" is generous.

    I am more with the Jewish-Anerican talk-show host Barry Farber who has this comment attributed to him:

    "When the consequences of incompetence (ignorance,cowardice et al) become indistinguishable from the consequences of malice, it is wiser and safer to assume malice"

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  2. Thanks for your comments, Rob and Rita.

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  3. Goldstone had accomplices: two lawyers and a soldier/investigator.

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  4. No. He was not gullible. He set out to spread his antisemitic lies. By his own standard he is guilty of attempted genocide and if nothing else Israel should press to have him tried to crimes against humanity in the ICC. He is no longer a Jew, just as he wished.

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  5. n=Aish_com%3A+Goldstone%27s+Feeble+Backtrack%2C+What+is+an+Intifada+%26+more+-+April+3%2C+2011&utm_term=Goldstone_27s+Feeble+Backtrack

    ^^^ this looks like a very long address, but it's an excellent article on the subject of Goldstone!

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  6. http://www.aish.com/authors/48865357.html

    I think I messed up in my last post, this ^^^ is probably the better address in which to find Rabbi Shraga Simmons' article in which he writes:

    “Goldstone’s attempt at repentance is filled with disingenuous claims and even outright lies”

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  7. Many thanks, Rita.
    I wonder whether the UN will rescind the Goldstone Report ...

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  8. Sorry, thanks too, deegee and Empress. I didn't mean to overlook you.

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  9. Goldstone is no fool. He knew exactly what he was doing - it just didn't turn out how he expected. A man with his personality traits can shape-shift and change his allegiances in a flash and he doesn't care one whit what people think of him, regardless of his overplaying the "poor me, I'm a victim" card. He wanted a position in the UN (not for nothing was he nicknamed Richard Richard-Goldstone, after Boutros Boutros-Gali, because Goldstone had his eye on the secretary generalship of the UN) so he was prepared to take the lead in a concoction of a tissue of distortions and biases which would harm his own people, in order to feed the UN beast what it wanted.

    He didn't get the position he wanted and he was pilloried, justly, by right-thinking people the world over for a biased report which he admitted had no legal standing. His community distanced itself from him so, entirely in keeping with his personality characteristics, he is trying to weasel his way back in favour by pretending to be contrite.

    He must be shocked that he has not been immediately forgiven, and I wouldn't be surprised if he is brooding upon his revenge.

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  10. A very illuminating comment, Anon - many thanks!

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