In Praise of Israeli Justice: A Riposte to the Boycotters

In the wake of the reprehensible Boycott of Israeli goods that forms part of the platform of the Green Party in New South Wales, and in the wake too of Richard Goldstone's recent mea culpa in the Washington Post, political scientist Raffe Gold has written the following hard-hitting piece,  Entitled "Israel's Record of Self-Investigation: Obvious to Anyone Who Looked," it comes via the antipodean J-Wire service:

'With the NSW Greens so busy demanding a boycott of Israel for various crimes against humanity it appears that they have failed to keep up to date with the news. Richard Goldstone, lead investigator of the UN inquiry into the 2008 Gaza conflict, recanted some of the reports most incendiary findings and praised Israel for her ability to investigate herself and ensure that those few Israeli soldiers who violated the laws of war are brought to justice.

The far-left is hoping that Goldstone’s OpEd article was simply an aberration of history brought on by social pressures. This mea culpa, however, is par for the course in Israel’s long war of fighting not just its Arab neighbors, but the persistent tide of Western left-wing opinion that erroneously believe that the Zionist nation is fundamentally racist, amoral and colonist.


Over the course of her sixty-year history Israel has been forced to fight a number of wars for her survival or to ensure that her citizens remain free from the threat of suicide bombers, sniper attacks or rockets on kindergartens. During this time she has constantly evaluated her actions and taken appropriate measures to ensure that mistakes are learnt from and civilian harm is minimised.


In the aftermath of every conflict with her neighbors there is a major government investigation free from interference. In the aftermath of the 1982 War in Lebanon the Kahan Commission was established in order to investigate the events surrounding the Sabra and Shatilla massacres and found both the military and political echelons guilty to a varying degree.


Israel has consistently been willing to assess and evaluate the conduct of both her military actions and her political imperatives, yet the IDF’s self-investigatory measures pales in comparison to the role that the Supreme Court plays in deciding security policy. Time and again Palestinians have brought cases before Israeli jurists and time and again they have had their petitions to alter certain policies granted. The Supreme Court outlawed physical interrogation despite its proven record, it outlawed the use of the ‘neighbor policy’ despite the fact that it saved lives, and it ordered the IDF to change significant sections of the West Bank security barrier to ensure that it does not unnecessarily impede Palestinian daily life.


In short, Israel has a well-deserved record of self-assessment and investigation, yet more often than not this record is dismissed or maligned in favor of a good media story or scoring political points. The initial accusations made against Israel are usually shouted, yet when the accusers should recant they often do so in a whisper.


Israel’s enemies regularly accuse her of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or massacres. The infamous Jenin Massacre in 2002 occurred when Israel, tired of multiple suicide bombers against her citizens, launched a military operation into the Jenin Refugee Camp which had been a primary base of terror groups. When the IDF finally withdrew there were claims of ‘thousands dead’ being propagated by the Palestinian Authority and greedily being published by a willing media hoping to spin a David vs Goliath story with the Jewish state as the Philistinian giant.


Throughout the few days of combat the rumors of the massacre reached a crescendo before multiple investigations agreed with the IDF assessments that only 52 Palestinians, mostly gunmen, and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed. To this day, the ‘Jenin Massacre’ is still quoted amongst Israel’s list of ‘war crimes’ by her enemies and despite independent verifications that no massacre had taken place the myth refuses to die.


During Operation Cast Lead, Israel was accused of shelling a UN run school in Gaza and causing more than 40 deaths. Eventually, when the smoke cleared, the truth emerged that the IDF had never fired directly on the school, the total number of dead lay at 12 and a number of eyewitnesses testified that Hamas terrorists had fired from the street outside the school. This led to the UN admitting, after a vicious media campaign slandering the Israeli army, that a ‘clerical error’ was to blame for falsely accusing Israel firing on them.


During the heat of Operation Cast Lead, Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan stated unequivocally “the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare”. His call for understanding of Israel’s positions fell on deaf ears with Goldstone failing to heed his testimony. However, even with Goldstone’s recantation, Kemp’s words will not change the course of the anti-Israel mantra of ‘denounce first and ask questions later’ that has become the norm for both the international community and the media.


Far too often Israel’s actions, whilst at times deserving of criticism, are condemned prior to any evidence being demanded. The inevitable television shot of a destroyed building is more than enough for people of the world to accuse Israel of crimes that it never committed. Boarding the Gaza Flotilla IDF soldiers were equipped with paint ball guns to defend themselves. With the world too quick to assign Israel blame it seems we must go one step further and arm our soldiers with pillows. Maybe then Israel will get a fair trial in the court of public opinion.'

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".

An IDF Spokesman on Hamas Aggression and Israel's Response (video)

This is an interview with Captain Avichai Adraee of the IDF.  It occurred around the time of Operation Cast Lead, when Israel responded to the provocation of years of rocket attacks from Gaza on but is still relevant given on-going aggression from Hamas and the condemnation of Israel's defensive actions by much of world opinion.

How Sweet It Is! Judge Bathurst-Norman Reprimanded

Remember George Bathurst-Norman, the retired judge who this summer at Hove Crown Court, after an 87-page summing up containing a tirade about Israel's counter-terrorism operations in Gaza, presided over the acquittal of anti-Israel protesters who had smashed up a Brighton armaments factory suspected of supplying Israel and who had claimed as their defence the principle that they were breaking the law in order to prevent a greater breach of law (i.e. by Israel)? Well, the old gentleman has been formally reprimanded by the two most senior law officers in the realm, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice.

In a statement released a few hours ago, a spokesperson for the Office for Judicial Complaints said: “At short notice, the judge assigned to try a politically sensitive trial at Hove Crown Court on 28 and 29 June 2010 was unable to sit. To avoid an adjournment, His Honour Bathurst-Norman agreed to replace to him.

A number of complaints were made about some of the observations he made during the trial and summing up. An investigation found that a number of these observations did not arise directly from the evidence at trial and could be seen as an expression of the judge’s personal views on a political question. This was an error.

The Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice considered the conclusions of the investigation and H[is] H[onour] Bathurst-Norman was formally reprimanded.”

In many respects, this outcome is a tribute to the tireless persistence of Jonathan Hoffman, co-Vice-Chair of the Zionist Federation, who took the trouble to acquire a full transcript of Bathurst-Norman's summing up, and a vindication of Mr Hoffman's sometimes unappreciated zeal.  The full transcript, which proved that Bathurst-Norman's remarks had been even more scandalous than had been immediately imagined, was publicised by the doughty Mr Hoffman http://cifwatch.com/2010/07/14/the-judge-who-thought-he-was-defence-coun...
with the result that the Office of Judicial Complaints received numerous protests over the judge's conduct.
 
Here's how today's development is reported in the London-based Standpoint magazine (a highly recommended fairly new right-of-centre political journal) by that doyen of law correspondents, Joshua Rozenberg:
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3462

Jonathan Hoffman responded to today's news thus: "As a result of this politically biased Judge, thousands of taxpayer pounds have been wasted and the criminals who vandalised the EDO factory walked away scot free. Let the disgracing of this Judge be a lesson to any other Judges who similarly encourage the delegitimisation of Israel. The Judge or magistrate who tries the case of the vandals who committed aggravated trespass at the Ahava shop in London on Saturday must punish them with the full force of the law."


"Hear, hear!" to that!