Goldstone’s shameful U-turn

by Ilan Pappe / Voltairenet.org

A self-confessed Zionist, Judge Richard Goldstone’s disgraceful retraction of his own report was not unexpected.  Subject to enormous pressure since it’s release, Goldstone caved in and returned to the Zionist fold.  But pressure isn’t the only explanation.  According to dissident Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappe, being a Zionist is a frame of mind that cannot accept the 2009 Goldstone Report.  It’s either/or; “if you do both, you will crack sooner rather than later.” 

“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.

The United States Middle East Foreign Policy Cul-de-sac

By Rizwan A. Rahmani

When the UN resolution against Israeli settlements—which was co-sponsored by 130 countries—came up for a vote and all fourteen members of the Security Council voted for the resolution except for the United States: it vetoed the resolution with a statement that was peculiarly full of absurd logic, contradictions, and balderdash which bordered on inane. And it was not the first time the U.S. found itself alone on a limb on this issue. So why the U.S. is being made to walk this razor sharp knife edge of a Middle East policy, shoeless and bloodied in the process? Moreover, it stuck to its counter intuitive policy at a time when any gesture towards Middle East peace may actually win goodwill for the United States, now that the Middle East is making overtures to democracy all over the region—and the rather incongruous paradox to all the newly kindled democratic fervor is that United States didn’t have to fire a single shot to realize these changes (I realized I spoke too soon after hearing the news of the air attack on Libya).
Current events in the Middle East fly straight in the face of the Bush administration’s sophist political rhetoric and cowboy doctrine which tried to forcibly shove democracy down Iraq’s throat, and his ‘axis of evil’ cover story for a war that was already scripted. With this policy, he decimated a country and its populous and went through over seven hundred billion dollars of our money (and counting) to go after a lone dictator with negligible influence (out of many worldwide with equal or worse human rights records). As the macabre saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat—of course, cogitating other alternatives would have been asking too much from a person who once self professed, “I don’t do details”.
The Bush administration with its myopic view of the world effectively outsourced its Middle East foreign policy to the American Enterprise Institute’s Likudnik Neocons. Whether it was Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perl, Bill Kristol, Norman Podhoretz , Douglas Feith, John Bolton, or Frank Gaffney of Center for Security Policy (to name a few) , they all seem to have the solutions for the Middle East problem, and quite a few of them had key positions in the Bush administration to promulgate their agenda with carte blanche access. Wolfowitz had ingeniously paid for the war in his lofty oil revenue estimates before the real war even began, and had the Iraqis welcoming them as liberators. Richard Perl had the Iraqi people naming grand squares after Bush, and Rumsfeld thought that war was going to be a walk in the park and fired people who raised concerns!

Alan Dershowitz- You're Not Welcome Here

By: Gilad Atzmon
In a recent article, notorious Zionist Alan Dershowitz reveals the scale of rejection he faced on his recent visit to Norway:

Ahead of his visit to the country, Dershowitz’ lectures were offered (without any charge) at the three leading Norwegian universities.  These universities, who on earlier occasions had been happy to host Harvard Scholar Stephen Walt and Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, clearly said ‘no’ to Dershowitz.
The Dean of the Law Faculty at Bergen University told Dershowitz that he would be honoured to have him present a lecture on the O.J. Simpson case -- as long as he was willing to promise not to mention Israel.
I guess that the message was clear -- while the Dean of the Law Faculty thought that his students may benefit from learning about the legal advocacy of a ‘single murder suspect’ -- he probably could not see any academic justification in educating them about the possible defense of a ‘murderous collective’ i.e. the Jewish State.

Goldstone report: the unanswered questions

It is difficult, in this digital world of instant claim and rebuttal, to say that you were wrong. But Richard Goldstone's retraction of one of the claims of the report that he chaired – that Israel targeted civilians in the war on Gaza as a matter of policy – is one such instance. Mr Goldstone deserves credit for honesty. It is another matter altogether to decide whether all the other claims of a 575-page report are now invalidated. The Goldstone report was a fact-finding mission, not a judicial inquiry. It was not a document of verdict, but put forward evidence for further investigation. So which facts caused Mr Goldstone to retract? Three, principally: that the shelling of a home in which 22 members of one family died was the consequence of an Israeli commander's erroneous interpretation of a drone image; that the officer was still under investigation; and that Israel has since investigated over 400 allegations of operational misconduct. Had he known then what he knows now, he concludes, the report would have been very different.
Two of the three other members of the mission disagree with their former chairman's change of heart. Hina Jilani, who served on a similar fact-finding mission on Darfur, said that nothing changed the substance of the original report, and Desmond Travers, an expert on international criminal investigations, still feels the tenor of the report stands "in its entirety". Mr Goldstone has parted company with the other members of his mission. It is therefore worth returning to the original report. The retracted allegation refers to the attack which killed 22 members of the Samouni family, who, following instructions from Israeli soldiers, were sheltering in a house in Zeitoun. But there are 35 other incidents that Goldstone's team investigated. It found seven cases where civilians were shot leaving their homes waving white flags; a direct and intentional attack on a hospital which may amount to a war crime; numerous incidents where ambulances were prevented from attending to the severely injured; nine attacks on civilian infrastructure with no military significance, such as flour mills, chickens farms, sewage works and water wells – all part of a campaign to deprive civilians of basic necessities. The key paragraph of the report states: "The Mission finds that the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility." On the Samouni killings it states that even if it amounted to an operational error and the mission concludes that a mistake was made, "state responsibility of Israel for an internationally wrongful act" would remain. All of this still stands, as does the charge that Hamas's rockets deliberately targeted Israeli civilians.
Clear to one side the superheated flak of the debate today. It arises from Israel's current international isolation, of which the Gaza operation formed only a part. It is now said that the Goldstone report became the cornerstone of a campaign to delegitimise Israel. None of this is relevant to what happened in Gaza between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, events which led to the deaths of 1,396 Palestinians, 763 of whom, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, were not taking part in hostilities when they

Netanyahu to travel to Berlin, lobby for a third off price of Israel's fourth Dolphin, official says

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who travels to Germany on Wednesday, will lobby Berlin to sell Israel a sixth naval submarine at deep discount, an official said.
Talks on the Dolphin submarine deal stalled last year after the Germans declined to underwrite it, as they had done with Israel's previous purchases. Israel sought up to a third off the $500 million to $700 million price for the new Dolphin.
"We're still hoping for a discount, and the prime minister will raise this matter" in a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel scheduled for Thursday, the Israeli official said without elaborating.
Political turbulence in the Middle East has led Israel to float higher defence spending, which may allow it to absorb more of the cost of a new Dolphin. The diesel-powered submarines are widely regarded as an Israeli vanguard against foes like Iran.
Israel has three Dolphins in service, and two on order from Germany with delivery expected in the next two years.
Germany is dedicated to the security of the Jewish state, founded in the wake of the Holocaust. Merkel has championed an international campaign to rein in Iran's contentious nuclear program, which Israelis consider a potentially mortal threat.
But Berlin has budgetary constraints and in the past heard misgivings from German opposition parties about exporting weapons to crisis areas.
Netanyahu's agenda in Germany will also include trying to curb Palestinian efforts to garner European support for a unilateral declaration of statehood.
Merkel lambasted Netanyahu earlier this year when he phoned to complain that Germany had backed a UN Security Council vote criticising the settlements. 
She was reported as saying she was very disappointed that Netanyahu had not done more to promote peace initiatives.
After his brief visit to Germany, Netanyahu will travel for talks to the Czech Republic, which is seen as one of Israel's closest European allies.

Source: ynetnews

Challenging the evangelical bias against Palestinians

By Aziz Abu Sarah
Last week Ynetnews.com published an article by Johnnie Moore, a Christian evangelical pastor and vice president of Liberty University (the largest evangelical university in the world, founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell). Moore was visiting Israel with a group of students on a trip that ended 24 hours before the bombing in Jerusalem. A Christian tourist was killed in the bombing, and Pastor Moore was moved to write about the terror attack and his views on Israel and the Palestinians. The article, entitled “No Excuse for Brutality,” was one-sided and inflammatory, asserting that Palestinians are entirely to blame for the conflict.
Normally, as a Palestinian I would brush off such an article as an example of the natural, emotional responses that arise from tragedies and traumas like last month’s bombing. However, Moore’s article is more than a reactionary piece; his comments also reflect the views of many Christian evangelicals in the United States. As a result, I feel it is important to respond to some of the points Moore raised.
Moore opened his article by claiming that the media is biased against Israel, and has justified the terror attack. The effort of some media outlets of putting the attack in context is not to be interpreted as a bias. The political stalemate, the continuation of the occupation, the confiscation of land and demolishing of Palestinian homes, and the “price tag” attacks by settlers executed all over the West Bank explains the rise of violent tendencies. These things should not be used as a justification but rather provide contextual analysis for the cycle of violence endemic to the conflict.
Moore writes that the Jerusalem bombing “should be an embarrassment to every supporter of the Palestinian cause. Instead… this act of war will be met with cheers in Hamas’ training camps even as Palestinian leaders give lip service to the international community and condemn the attacks in English, while praising them privately in Arabic.” This is problematic, first because many supporters of the Palestinian cause did view the bombing as shameful, and second because Moore assumes that the Palestinians are praising the attack in Arabic. As a writer for Al-Quds I can testify that Arab leaders condemned the attack in Arabic just as they did in English, and many Palestinians were outraged by the bombing.

Charges against Gazan engineer show Israel still controls strip

Dirar Abu Sisi was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Ukraine. He is charged with developing rockets, missiles and mortar shells for Hamas

Israel has kidnapped, apparently with the Ukrainian authorities turning a blind eye, a Gazan engineer named Dirar Abu Sisi. He was detained for several weeks under the usual schtick of a double gag order: one gag order preventing making public the fact that he is held, another denying the public the right to know there is a gag order. This buys the GSS (Internal Security Service) precious torture time, and allows him to present the prisoner to the press after he has confessed, which is as it likes it. Yesterday, the veil of secrecy was lifted as Abu Sisi was indicted, confessions and all. His lawyers say they have been tortured out of him, which is a reasonable claim.
The GSS claims Abu Sisi provided Hamas with weapons technology and developed rockets, missiles and mortar shells for it. Which is where it all turns to farce. Abu Sisi, who is not an Israeli citizen, is charged with violations of Israeli law, which has no standing either in the Gaza Strip or in Ukraine, where he was kidnapped. Specifically (Hebrew), the charges are: Membership in a terror organization (residing outside the borders of Israel), contact with a foreign agent (again, this law is invalid in Gaza), conspiracy to commit crimes (likewise), an attempted murder (likewise), and manufacturing of arms.
The last charge is particularly twisted. As far as the Israeli authorities are concerned, the manufacture of any weapon – including the anti-tank rockets Abu Sisi allegedly developed – is a felony. In the hugely asymmetrical armed struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a Palestinian who produces weapons is ipso facto a criminal.

Goldstone’s rethink: The cleansing of Israel's war crimes

by Jonathan Cook

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 defence 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 favourably 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 newspaper 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 cimes 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 travelling abroad.

 

Judge Goldstone Alters His Verdict

Indeed, a short list of Israeli massacres runs to 57, and those are just the major ones.

Given such a consistent pathological pattern, what are the odds that the estimated 773 civilians who died in the invasion of Gaza were killed accidentally, just collateral damage?

by Dr. Lawrence Davidson

It will be recalled that after the September, 2009 issuance of the Goldstone Report suggesting that Israel might be guilty of war crimes, Judge Richard Goldstone was barred from attending grandson’s bar mitzvah. That is how much resentment was produced by the critical report that bares his name. Well, Richard Goldstone has just assured himself access to all future family celebrations. He has accomplished this by calling into doubt his offending investigatory work.
Part I – Judge Goldstone Has Second Thoughts
In a Washington Post op-ed, “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and War Crimes,” published on 1 April 2011, Judge Goldstone declared that new information coming from Israeli investigations, allegedly conducted “transparently and in good faith,” now indicate (at least to him) that “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” Since there was no policy of targeting civilians, all of the non-combatant victims (the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem tells us that of the 1,387 Palestinians killed in the invasion, 773 were civilians) become mere “collateral damage.” Voila! Israel is off the hook when it comes to the charge of war crimes. Or so Goldstone now believes.
But hold on a moment. In a thorough analysis of Judge Goldstone’s new position, Adam Horowitz, writing in Mondoweiss, turns things around once more. Horowitz points out that since the Goldstone Report, which was admittedly a preliminary document, there have been other investigations by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Committee of Independent Experts (CIE). These inquires suggest that Goldstone’s faith in Israel’s investigations is seriously misplaced.

On the so-called Goldstone retraction

The Mideast-focused blogosphere erupted over the weekend after Justice Richard Goldstone wrote a piece in the Washington Post about “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report” in which he stated, “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” The report, which was the outcome of an extensive UN investigation led by Goldstone, was damning of Israel’s conduct in its assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008/09 which left some 1400 Palestinians dead (mostly civilians) and 13 Israelis (mostly combatants). That Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation despite Judge Richard Goldstone’s eminence and credentials as a staunch supporter of Israel reinforced the conviction that Israel had plenty to hide. Goldstone’s surprising “reconsidering” of his report predictably triggered a wave of outrage among supporters of Palestinian human rights and a sense of vindication among supporters of Israeli policies. But is either sentiment really warranted?

Starting with the core argument, to say that the report would be “different” if new information were taken into account is elementary common sense, and pretty far from a retraction.  On analogous lines, to say that just about any science book would look different if written today, after taking new discoveries into account, than it did when written a couple of years ago is hardly a “retraction” of all preceding science; it’s merely an updating modification.
So what specifically is this new information that would have “probably” influenced the report? The answer lies in Israeli internal investigations which, in Goldstone’s words, “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” Fair enough, but what does Goldstone think about these investigations? Well, he shares the “concerns” that most have yet to be concluded, that their length is “frustrating,” and he is critical of their behind-closed-doors proceedings which “should have been held in a public forum.”  If I can put Goldstone’s “reconsideration” into my own blunt words, it would sound something like this: while Israel’s lengthy and nontransparent investigations raise concerns, their conclusions about the cause of civilian deaths would have nevertheless been taken into account and probably influenced our report if Israel had cooperated with our investigation.

Top defense official: Israel faces isolation 'no less severe than war'

In remarks made behind closed doors, Amos Gilad warns that ongoing freeze in the peace process could yield third Intifada as Palestinians prepare to ask UN for recognition of statehood in September.

By Barak Ravid

The chief of Israel's diplomatic-security bureau warned this week that Israel faced an isolation "no less severe than war" should the United Nations recognize Palestine as an independent state this September.
In remarks carried by Channel 10, General (res.) Amos Gilad said behind doors that the Palestinian Authority leadership was organizing an "international assault against Israel".
The Palestinians have warned that if peace talks with Israel do not resume by the deadline set for December, they will ask the UN general assembly to recognize their sovereign state.
"Israel's isolation in September, the beginning of the isolation, will be no less severe than war," Gilad told participants in a private session.
The central issue facing Netanyahu come September was whether Israel should enter "a partnership for peace [with the Palestinians] and spare itself international pressure or go head to head with them," said Gilad, hinting that the ongoing freeze in the peace process was likely to bring about a third Intifada.
"If you don't enter negotiations, you gain stability, but also international isolation," said Gilad. "The isolation will legitimize the clashes that could erupt from a coincidental event or incident that with Twitter and Facebook could spark an entire fire."
Gilad's remarks were similar to those made by Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently in an address to the National Security Institute in Tel Aviv. Barak warned then that a "diplomatic tsunami" would wash over Israel should the world recognize a Palestinian state according to 1967 borders in September.

A congressional double standard on incitement

By Matthew Berkman

 

This week, in response to the highly publicized murder of a Jewish family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, a group of 27 U.S. senators signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to press Palestinian leaders to end "incitement directed against Jews and Israel within the Palestinian media, mosques, and schools." According to the letter, the grisly killings in Itamar (for which no suspects, Palestinian or otherwise, have been identified), "is a sobering reminder that words matter, and that Palestinian incitement against Jews and Israel can lead to violence and terror."
As evidence for the allegation of pervasive anti-Jewish incitement in Palestinian society, the letter cites a recent, official ceremony honoring Delal Mughrabi, a perpetrator of the 1978 coastal road massacre in Israel, as well as a payment of financial compensation made by the Palestinian Authority to the family of a deceased terror suspect.
Such actions are deserving of condemnation. But if it is indeed the case that "words matter" -and if the elimination of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric is, as the letter says, "critical to establishing the conditions [for] a secure and lasting peace"-then what can explain the senators' silence on the veritable carnival of hate and racist incitement against Arabs and Palestinians that has lately engulfed Israeli society?
Anyone who reads Israel's press these days will find it difficult to do so without chancing upon yet another outrageous example of such incitement. Be it the declaration of Rabbi Dov Lior, a senior authority on Jewish law in the Religious Zionism movement, that the offspring of non-Jews possess "genetic traits" of "cruelty and barbarism"; or an open letter signed by dozens of Israel's municipal chief rabbis calling on Jews "to refrain from renting or selling apartments to non-Jews"; or the wives of those state-sponsored rabbis urging Jewish girls not to date, work with, or perform national service in the company of Arabs; or even news of the publication of "The King's Torah," a theological text widely endorsed by settler rabbis that authorizes the killing of non-Jewish children and babies, since "it is clear that they will grow to harm us."
Could it be that the senators who so rightfully condemn the glorification of violence when it issues from an obscure Palestinian official are simply unaware of the multiple proclamations of such a prominent figure as Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party (a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu's governing coalition) and a former Chief Rabbi of Israel's Sephardi Jewish community?  "It is forbidden to be merciful to [Arabs]," Yosef was quoted as saying in 2001, "You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable." More recently, Yosef sermonized that "Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] and all these evil people should perish from this world." "God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," he said.
The poisonous effects of these statements are no less publically available than the statements themselves, and of equal concern to anyone seeking "to establish the conditions for a secure and lasting peace." Polling has routinely documented the explosion of anti-democratic and militaristic sentiment in Israel, particularly among the youth population. In a Tel Aviv University poll released last year, 49.5 percent of Israeli high school students responded in the negative when asked whether "Arab citizens should be granted rights equal to that of Jews," while a majority of 56 percent said that Israel's Arab citizens should be ineligible to serve in the country's parliament. "While an overwhelming majority (91 percent) expressed a desire to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces," reported Haaretz, "48 percent said they would not obey an order to evacuate outposts and settlements in the West Bank." As recently as this week, a new poll was released attesting to the diminished importance of "democracy" among Israeli teens (only 14 percent of whom consider it a national priority), as well as unprecedented levels of reverence for Israel's military and a marked desire for "strong leadership" at the expense of minority rights.
Not surprisingly, this rising tide of racism in Israeli society has translated into both discriminatory legislation directed against Israel's Arab citizens and into violent hate crimes which, while not as gruesome as the massacre in Itamar, are more pervasive, bordering on quotidian.
As the New York Times reported last week, a law passed by Israel's Knesset on March 23 allows "that communities with 400 or fewer families [in the Negev and Galilee, areas with large Arab populations] may set up committees to screen potential residents for whether they fit in socially" - a statute intended to legitimize the barring of Israeli Arabs from Jewish villages. Yet another law, passed during the same legislative session, imposes financial penalties on state-subsidized organizations that would publicly mourn the losses incurred by Palestinians during Israel's 1948 war of independence. This flurry of anti-democratic legislation follows the successful attempt last year by Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman (who supports a form of ethnic population transfer), to establish a "loyalty oath" requiring non-Jews seeking Israeli citizenship to pledge allegiance to the "Jewishness" of the state.

Goldstone: An act of negligence

Downplay of Israeli aggression towards civilians during the Gaza War, causes scholars to question Richard Goldstone

In the wake of a monumental victory in the human rights community to move the Goldstone Report out of the Human Rights Council (HRC) to the General Assembly where it can be underpinned by actionable follow up, Justice Richard Goldstone’s recent editorial makes some human rights practitioners wish it had been left to languish in the HRC.
Goldstone sought to do two things in his op-ed: to amend the record by stating that Israel’s attacks may not have been deliberate and second, to emphasise Hamas’s culpability under the laws of war. In the best case scenario, Goldstone’s intervention is a problematic attempt to cajole Israel to participate in the international process for accountability.
However, even in that case, the editorial is counterproductive, short-sighted, and casts Goldstone's attempts as no less than curious.
Just last week, I had the chance to speak to Goldstone at Stanford Law School where I participated in a debate on the report featuring him as a discussant.
Goldstone seemed struck by recent revelations made in Israel’s investigation of itself that its murder of 29 civilians in the Sammouni home, where approximately 120 civilians had taken refuge, was the result of negligence and not a deliberate attack.
He emphasised that had Israel participated in the investigatory process rather than boycott it, it would have been able to contest the mission’s findings before the report’s release thereby correcting its alleged bias.
He echoes this sentiment in his op-ed where he writes:

I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.