Goldstone's New Year Gift Package

This is the time of indecision! Faced with the task of sending greetings for the Jewish New Year I try to avoid the tired time-worn platitudes. I shy from the graphic designs portraying honey soaked apples, pomegranates and other traditional New Year symbols. I suppose I could have found an e-card for the purpose and dispatched it in an impersonal manner to all the relatives, friends and acquaintances in my NATO-sized distribution list. I don't know why I hesitate, we all want a good year and hope it will bring us peace, health happiness or at least contentment.

Before I close the list perhaps a little prosperity will soften life's rough edges, especially now.

Despite everything I’ve said and all my efforts to produce something original I will, nevertheless still have to use a few clichés. So I hope the New Year will bring us peace knowing fully well I will be making the same wish next year. I hope regardless of the rigours of advancing old age we will enjoy good health and remain active. Of course we all want plenty of nachas/nachat, contentment, the kind of satisfaction derived from children, grandchildren and the wider family circle. I have probably overlooked something so I will cover it by a simple – etc.

Shana Tova

The nation at large dispenses New Year greetings in tangible festive packages.

From the highest echelons of government, to local authorities, businesses large and small and irregular groups like my kibbutz and the place where I work, Israelis receive either a packed assortment of wines, honey, olive oil and a calendar, or alternatively a cheque.

Richard Goldstone sent Israel his own New Year gift package, a damning 575 page report of the UN war crimes investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, often referred to as "Operation Cast Lead" .The investigation led by former South African judge Richard Goldstone concluded that "Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity," during the Dec. 27-Jan. 18 Operation Cast Lead against Palestinian rocket squads in the Gaza Strip.

The report "concludes there is also evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity, by firing rockets at cities in southern Israel,"

My instinctive gut-reaction is to shred the honourable judge's report in my office shredder. However considering Richard Goldstein's distinguished career, his daughter's insistence that he is a supporter of Israel, even a Zionist, the report and its recommendations deserve more than my angry impulsive response.

Sifting through dozens of articles on the Goldstone Report that have appeared recently in responsible newspapers, journals, blogs and web sites, I think a penetrating assessment posted in The Economist’s on line site this week is by far the best analysis I’ve read so far.

“From the very start,” claims the lead article entitled ‘Opportunity Missed’ “this report had to overcome the taint of prejudice. It was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, an anti-Israeli outfit notorious for having congratulated Sri Lanka’s government on brutal conduct that led to appalling loss of life among Tamil civilians. Israel refused co-operation. But the mission was headed by a respected international jurist, Richard Goldstone. A Jew himself, Mr Goldstone insisted on scrutinising the conduct of Hamas as well as Israel. There was hope that he might wrestle the inquiry into balance.

Yet the report takes the very thing it is investigating as its central organising premise. Israeli policy in Gaza, it argues, was deliberately and systematically to inflict suffering on civilians, rather than Hamas fighters Israel’s assertions that, in the difficult circumstances of densely populated Gaza, it planned its military operations carefully and with constant legal advice are taken by the report as evidence not of a concern to uphold international law but of a culpable determination to flout it. Israel’s attempts to drop warning leaflets, direct civilians out of danger zones and call daily humanitarian pauses may well have been inadequate, but the report counts them for nought. As many as 1,400 people died in the fighting. It is a grisly thought, but if Israel really had wanted to make Palestinian civilians suffer, the toll could have been vastly higher.

Israel has argued that Hamas fighters endangered civilians by basing themselves around schools, mosques and hospitals. The mission had Hamas’s co-operation, but its fact-finders could detect little or no evidence for this—despite plenty of reports in the public domain to support it. The report does criticise Hamas for firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel and for using the conflict as cover to settle scores with its Palestinian rivals. But its seemingly wilful blindness to other evidence makes that look like a dash for political cover.”

“To some, Israel’s Gaza war will always be in principle unjust: a disproportionate response to Hamas’s rockets. Indeed, the suffering in Gaza, from war and the economic blockade, has been grievous. They may be tempted to applaud Mr Goldstone’s report for that reason alone. Yet if the mere fact of Israel’s attack were enough to condemn it then Mr Goldstone’s report was pointless all along. And there is a danger of double standards. American and European forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo also caused thousands of civilian deaths, without attracting a Goldstone.”

When an Israeli soldier goes to war equipped with the best weapons, body armour, optic devices and communications systems that money can buy he adds the IDF code of ethics to his batle pack. He is acutely aware that he is being watched and scrutinised even more so in retrospect, after the din of battle has abated. A score or more NGOs are out there waiting for him to falter and miss his target. From Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, to the home-grown B’tselem and lesser known watchdogs. No military force in the world is as intensely under surveillance as the IDF.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians?

Maybe “NGO Monitor “(Non-governmental Organisation Monitor) described as a non-governmental organisation based in Jerusalem whose stated objective is to stop other NGOs from promoting perceived "ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas.

It claims it was founded "to promote accountability, and advance a vigorous discussion on the reports and activities of humanitarian NGOs in the framework of the Arab-Israeli conflict." The organisation was founded jointly by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, an organisation which has "developed and implemented an array of cutting-edge programmes to present Israel's case to the world", and the U.S.-based Wechsler Family Foundation.

NGO Monitor criticised Amnesty International for its disproportionate attitude to Israel. For example, by comparing Amnesty International's response to the twenty years of ethnic, religious and racial violence in Sudan to their treatment of Israel. NGO Monitor said that Amnesty International issued seven reports on Sudan, as opposed to 39 reports on Israel. Although failing to decry the slaughter of thousands of civilians by Sudanese government and allied troops, AI managed to criticise Israel’s ‘assassinations’ of active terrorist leaders.

In another analysis The Economist referring to the Goldstone Report states, “The incendiary premise of his report, to be delivered to the UN’s 47-country Human Rights Council in Geneva this month, is that Israel is guilty of one of the worst crimes: deliberately and systematically attacking civilians and making them suffer as a war aim. The Israelis knew they would get pasted, as the council is a serial Israel-bashing outfit that often lets more egregious human-rights abusers around the world off the hook. But the report was even more critical than they had feared.”

Israeli damage assessors differ over estimating the worst case scenario for the report’s outcome.

Military observer/analyst Ron Ben Yishai claims the report will constitute the basis for proposed anti-Israel resolutions to be submitted by the immense Arab-Muslim bloc in the United Nations – either in the UN General Assembly, where Third World countries enjoy an automatic majority, or in the Security Council. The General Assembly’s decisions are non-binding, but a Security Council resolution may mean big trouble for Israel: Ranging from acceptance of the recommendation to indict officials at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, to a demand to impose sanctions on Israel should it fail to lift the Gaza Strip siege.

On the media front the damage is grave, as the report provides an international seal of approval to the war crime claims. The attempt to balance it by mentioning the rocket fire at Israel and the abduction and treatment of Gilad Shalit is only for appearances’ sake. The criticism is worded in an incredibly moderate and cautious style. In fact it indirectly justifies Hamas’ attacks and hints that they came in response to the siege imposed even before Operation Cast Lead. While Israel is a sovereign democratic state, Hamas is just a military and political organisation, the report noted – that is, it should not be required to adhere to the Geneva Convention.

Amir Oren in Ha’aretz believes, “When the smoke of Goldstone's report clears, the IDF and the government can emerge from the bunker to find that little damage has been done. Israel's cooperation is needed in the diplomatic arena. After ‘Operation Defensive Shield’(2002), Israel succumbed to external pressure and agreed to establish a committee of inquiry headed by U.S. General William Nash on the massacre-that-never-was in Jenin. Only after Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland and UN envoy Terje Roed Larsen intervened was the committee called off.
Then, U.S. president George W. Bush preferred to push his diplomatic initiative to establish a Palestinian state. And that is what President Barack Obama will probably do: He will curb the propagandistic trend of slamming Israel for war crimes in order to extract tangible concessions from it as a peace partner.”

Well for the time being that’s enough of Richard Goldstone and his infamous report. We have guests for the New Year celebrations, notably our family including my daughter Daphna and her husband Mark from New Zealand who are visiting us now.

Have a good weekend and a very good New Year.

Beni 18^th of September, 2009.