Hanan Chehata of Middle East Monitor goes to Dublin to interview Desmond Travers, the retired Irish colonel who was one of the authors of the Goldstone Report. The money:
The best statement I can make about that is the one that Richard Goldstone made when an American spokesperson for the State Department said it was a very biased, flawed report and he said to them by way of response, “Show us where the bias is and where the flaw is and we’ll do our best to correct it.” That invitation stands. I have subsequently issued the same invitation in a Dutch newspaper and elsewhere; so far, no substantive critique of the report has been received.
Funnily enough, I did get a reply back from a most virulently, anti-Goldstone, pro-Israeli, right-wing, blogspot saying more or less, “Travers doesn’t realise that various academics, politicians and military officers have written magnificent tracts disproving the Goldstone Report…”, but they haven’t. They’ve just written magnificent whinges.
The attacks on two of my colleagues have been really horrific and they have included death threats. They have also targeted family members.
…the critiques, if you go through them, would fill several times the volume of material compared to the report and none of them are valid. The tsunami of criticisms that have been slapped against the report funnily enough already started long before the report was published. Such early criticisms suggest, perhaps, an awareness of the guilt of the perpetrators; a question of getting one’s retaliation in first, in a manner of speaking. They are signalling their guilt….
The very first public statement made by the American government, the State Department, while it criticised in its opening paragraph the Report for being flawed, on the third or fourth paragraph down they said nevertheless Israel should investigate. Now that is the strongest statement America has ever made in its history about the state of Israel. It’s the strongest criticism, and in that, both myself and my colleague Professor Richard Norton of Boston University, who was a peacekeeper with me, we’ve both said, the abuse they heaped on the report in the opening paragraph allowed them to make this statement three paragraphs down. So, in reality, it was an amazingly important letter.
…The court of world opinion has decided this Report’s merits. Politicians and diplomats should take heed of that fact, no matter what they believe their governments want them to do. Israel has been frightened severely by this. It wandered around Europe begging Europe not to impose sanctions on it. It’s jet-setting around the place. They are now on notice as far as I am concerned, that they want to think twice before they try on another similar act again. Did you hear *Israeli Prime Minister+ Netanyahu make this statement, “Israel has three problems, three enemies, Iran, Palestine and Goldstone”?/
…Efforts to muddle the report and to block it have failed. The court of world opinion seems determined to see the report prevail and therefore we must be hopeful that this process continues to achieve one or other of the recommendations in the report’s findings with respect to the ending of impunity…
Gaza has now come into the history books in the same way as Guernica, Dresden, Stalingrad. Gaza is a gulag, the only gulag in the Western hemisphere; maintained by democracies; closed-off from food, water, air.
The intensity of the Isreali reaction to the report makes it clear that they regard it as a real threat. That if Israel can be shown to have committed war crimes, this will do it great harm. In short, it displays the depth of Israeli vulnerability as well as the lengths they will go to cover up the truth.
It’s noteworthy that one of the Israeli accusations against the report was its “bias;” that the committee was alleged to have reached its conclusion before conducting its investigation.
Yet Israel’s reaction now is to conduct its own investigation to discredit the report – that is, they have a prior conclusion that they intent to find evidence to support. In short, profound bias.
If I were the Israelis, call it ‘The court of world opinion’ as far as you want…but we will never edge in our stand. Call us ‘evil’, ‘demons’ (is this proper among atheists, irreligious, and the ‘ungodly’?) illegitimate, cruel, bias, etc… but we will continue what is our right to govern…After all true justice and rationality, that has strongly legal and historical basis always and forever prevails in whatever court on this planet…and that rationality has long divided the world on this Palestinian issue among ‘fools’ (either us or those against us). You will go deep and blue in anger, but legal right is right, and moral is moral…Israel was given as recognized by the community of nations, the ‘right to govern’…
As usual your comment is nonsensical.
You begin your mindless rant by saying, ‘call us’ :
Yea. That’s correct. You only exist there because you stole the land, and ethnic cleansed the original inhabitants. You’re still stealing land.
I don’t give a damn about how many times you repeat ‘we’re not going anywhere’ – no one is intending on destroying ‘Jewishness’. You’re a Zionist, and it would be antisemitic to imply Zionism = Judaism.
It was the Jewish State that illegal harvested organs. So if I say Zionism = Judaism, then I’m framing your actions as a State as demonstrative of Judaism’s values. That is not the case at all.
You are a colonist. You can choose to lecture us on your mythology of ‘returning’ to land, you stole from the Palestinians. No one buys your bullshit anymore except Christian fanatics and the ignorant racists in our country.
No one will allow YOU to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. Your only power is brutal force. No longer will YOU be able to kill innocent civilians, and especially children and get away with it.
Gaza woke up the world. You will no longer be able to steal and lie. Jews and Jewishness will live on. And the Zionist project will crash and burn.
This is the Colonel who made a fool of himself when he said Hamas didn’t store weapons in Mosques, despite the facts that there are numerous videos and pictures proving him very sadly and completely wrong.
link to youtube.com
How do we know that video wasn’t staged in some TV studio by the Israeli army?
More anonymous sources, eh?
Better luck next time.
avi, because everybody knows the most moral army in the world never lies?
because israeli’s are not technically inclined and faking films is hard work?
because it would be too difficult to move a big weapon like that into a mosque?
3 good reasons why julian’s youtube video must be accurate!
you should read the interview julian. that was addressed. you having a video of guys in uniform alleging they have found weapons in a mosque is only as good as the source. this is israel mythmaking, their specialty.
hey guys watch this Hasbara video link to youtube.com its published by the same guy who published the Hasbara video Julian posted above.
Julian’s sources are always peccable.
Most Israeli videos purporting that “weapons” or “Armed militants” were in the area proved to be hoaxes.
link to news.bbc.co.uk
As was Julians video.
Julian: This is the colonel who specifically mentioned mosques ‘used as stores for weapons
The Youtube show Julian mentions merely shows a lot of bits of dusty and disorganised weapons held in storage for a very, very long time, none of them ready for use, and all of them photographed in a basement somewhere else, spliced onto the bit where the Israeli soldiers talk a lot of Hebrew
Julian perhaps your asshole referrals to phony websites would have some relevance if they also quoted this:
The interview with Desmond Travers is fascinating. link to middleeastmonitor.org.uk
It is the first opportunity I have had to read the frank opinions of another member of the Goldstone Mission. Two sections stand out; the first saying that mistaravim were present in Gaza:
And the second was the evidence that Israel used human shields extensively:
He also says, about ‘the most moral army in the world:
A civil service in uniform or trained goons sent into Gaza to terrorise the inhabitants.
Major criticisms I might make against the Goldstone report are:
- the Mission had no expert on the aerial suppression of ‘asymmetrical warfare’ by the Israeli Air Force, who dropped 95% of the munitions used
- the Mission made no mention of the Gazan’s problem of ‘where to go? They had nowhereas the borders were sealed.
“the Israelis” always assume the enemy is up to the same dirty games to which they subscribe.
these are exactly the segments that jumped out at me. them and the ones on pg 11 and 12.
Gaza: israel’s Waterloo
Phil writes: “Travers doesn’t realise that various academics, politicians and military officers have written magnificent tracts disproving the Goldstone Report…”, but they haven’t. They’ve just written magnificent whinges.
I can’t comment on the Goldstone report not having read it but this statement jumped out because it could be applied directly to the response of W&M’s “The Lobby”. Here I read the book cover to cover and checked out many of the references especially on the chapter describing how Israel led the US to war in Iraq. I also read many of the reviews. Over and over again I came across denunciations of the conclusions but not a single example of undermining a substantial finding within the book. Then later we can find other reviewers who confidently cite these earlier reviews as having demolished the ‘Lobby’. And it was never done.
Just reading the criticisms of the ‘Report’ we can see the same pattern — there is no specific facts that are disputed. There are, of course, some of the hasbara that present material here and elsewhere but gets quickly demolished by the readers.
Israel’s only enemy is its crimes. Palestinians and Iran are not credible threats to Israel’s national security in any way. Critics of Israel with evidence of crimes against humanity, on the other hand, are at great risk. Israel has a long history of extra-judicially assassinating people all over the world.
One of the four member-panel of the UN report, retired Col. Desmond Travers (Irish Army) was nterviewed by the Harpers magazine in October 29, 2009) – when he confirmed that Hamas did not use civilians as hostages as claimed by Israel. When asked that Israeli claim that its forces (IOF) are the “most moral army in the world” – Col Travers replied: “Given the tactics, the weapon used, and the indiscriminate targeting, I think this is a dubious claim.”
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Is it IDF or IOF?
Why it is IDF oh questioning ever present ignoramus –
Immoral
Destructive
Force
Also, BSD stands for –
Bull
Shit
Denunciations
I = Israeli
D = Dum-dums
F = F**king crashing goons
Badly trained and badly led