Left, Norman Finkelstein in Gaza, June 2009.
Earlier this week, Norman Finkelstein summoned me to his apartment in Brooklyn to talk about the Goldstone reconsideration in the Washington Post.
Finkelstein is a stunning textual analyst, and I urge you to read what he says, but a few of the high points: The Goldstone Report had been a godsend to the movement--for the first time Israel was going to have to pay a price for brutality; the report removed Israel's ability to start wars, and now Goldstone has bent with the remover to remove, thereby damaging his reputation and delegitimizing international law; Goldstone was under pressure, a proverbial gun to the head, to recant; there is no new evidence, as the jurist claimed, to support his reconsideration; Israel has produced hundreds of drone images and if it really had one of the single most shocking incident of the conflict, the al-Samouni attack of Jan. 5, 2009, as Goldstone and Israel state, why has this image not been produced? And finally, Finkelstein's one meeting with Goldstone and his analysis of the judge's significance as a Jew.
When did you see the Goldstone reconsideration?
I was lecturing in Georgia and I had all these great plans, I’m working on a new book, actually completely overhauling an old book manuscript... I was coming home, refreshed and exhilarated from the Georgia lectures. And I opened up my computer [on Saturday April 2] and it was just a mixture of being shocked and shattered. I was shocked and shattered.
Elaborate.
I immediately understood it was going to do terrible damage, and it’s damage on many fronts. It’s the damage to truth and justice, it’s the damage to Jewish-Palestinian relations, it’s the damage to Israeli dissidents. It was huge damage.
You write in your paper that it might pave the way to further attacks. You know that during recent attacks in Gaza, some tweeters have held Goldstone responsible. Do you?
It depends. Frst of all, there’s been the tit for tat going on for a long time, so he is not personally culpable for the current tit for tat. If however this climaxes in a second massacre on the scale of Operation Cast Lead 1, then of course he’s responsible, he would have given Israel the impunity it needed, otherwise it could not have launched a second attack on Gaza.
I often quote the title of your book, This Time We Went Too Far, and I infer from that, not so much they learned their lesson, but there’s less impunity. They understand that this operation, whatever it did or didn’t do, it really hurt their image around the world.... That’s a political reality. My conclusion is, No more Cast Leads.
I can’t predict that. The problem I have with your argument is, that it’s premised on the notion that Israelis think that they have another option except the resort to massive force. But that’s just not how Israelis think. The Israeli mentality is, the Arabs only understand the language of force, and if they get out of hand, you have to go in with the big stick or big club and break some skulls. For Israel the big problem with Goldstone is that it was preventing them from launching future wars. That’s what they were worried about. What the Goldstone recantation did now is that it now gave them the carte blanche to attack again, to use force.
Your argument would be correct if they thought there was another option which they haven’t exercised and which they now will try to exercise. But they don’t think in terms of other options. There’s only one option, the big club.
Larry Derfner and Bernard Avishai have suggested that Israelis have misgivings about all that destruction they perpetrated, to no end.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. They did achieve something. Just as they achieved something in Lebanon in 2006. It was quite clear that henceforth Hezbollah was very careful not to provoke an Israeli attack, after July/August 2006, because Hezbollah knew that an Israeli attack would alienate the whole population against Hezbollah. So during the Gaza assault, Hezbollah was very quiet. I mean, rhetorically it was loud but it didn’t do anything in support of Gaza, and the reason was obvious, because they knew the Lebanese would turn their wrath on Hezbollah if it seemed as if they had provoked a war in defense of not Lebanese but Gazans. The Lebanese would have totally turned on Hezbollah. In the case of Gaza, it had its successes, it turned a lot of the population against Hamas, which is why Hamas had to suddenly inflate the figures for the number of its people killed, because the people were saying, it was Hamas’s reckless decisions that caused the attack. I don’t agree but that’s not the point... Hamas wants to claim a victory where there was no battlefield defeat of Israel and where there was just death and destruction. That’s why they were using the figure of only a few tens of its fighters were killed.
You’re saying that these operations were effective.
There is nothing that doesn’t have an underside. Everything is on balance. On balance Israel got some things out of it. It also suffered some deficits. And different people in Israeli society reckoned the losses and gains differently.
But it’s equivocal.
There was equivocation because in this case, they were going to have to pay a price, because of the Goldstone Report, which they’d never had to pay. This is the first time they were going to have to pay. They have already paid several prices-- the loss of immunity to Israeli diplomats and soldiers who traveled abroad, the threats of universal jurisdiction being used against them, and some alienation, not qualitiative yet but quantitative, in the diaspora Jewish communities, they paid a price. But on balance, most Israelis, you have to remember the opinion polls, more than 90 percent of Israelis afterwards continued to support the Israeli assault. So Israeli society was not exactly appalled or even against what the Israeli government did because they don’t pay any price.
I think the main consequence of the Goldstone Report is that for the first time Israel was being threatened not only with a decline in public opinion, support for it, but for the first time it was going to have to face significant consequences, the most dramatic of which was the possibility of being hauled before the International Criminal court but even short of that, the difficulty of its officers and diplomats to travel abroad. And also because of these threats of legal culpability the very real difficulty for Israel to launch future wars, and that for Israel is a disaster. Israel without the war option is their nightmare scenario. That’s exactly why they’re fearful of the revolts in the Arab world. They don’t think that Egypt is going to attack, whether the Muslim Brotherhood or anyone else comes to power. What they’re afraid of is that an Egypt led by a figure like ElBaradei, a comparable figure to Erdogan in Turkey, just won’t let Israel carry on in their reckless and ruthless fashion. Just like Erdogan said when Israel was saber-rattling against Lebanon on, a half year ago, Erdogan visited Beirut and said "Israel cut it out." Now you know ElBaradei gave an interview a week and a half ago, in which he said the same thing. If Israel attacks Gaza we’re not going to stand idly by, and that’s what Israel’s afraid of. It’s afraid that between Iran, Turkey and Egypt, the three main regional powers, each of them saying that they’re not going to stand idly by, that Israel’s going to lose its war option, and that’s what it feared with the repercussions of the Goldstone report.
The broader fear, or bigger, or comprehensive fear, is that it would no longer be able to carry on in its typically ruthless and reckless fashion, that there was a real possibility of being held legally culpable.
The great thing that’s happened in the Goldstone reconsideration, and Richard Falk echoes this, is that what was a one-day story when the report was published is now a running story. The Financial Times. Roger Cohen. The LA Times. Desmond Travers. People affirmed the report, they said, the world won’t forget. So this is not a disaster.
This is very Polyannaish. I don’t want to be a doomsday prognosticator. But a number of people climbed on the Goldstone report because Goldstone seemed safe. 'If a Jewish Zionist, the whole thing, if he says it, well now we can say it.' And people who normally would not have climbed on board did because of Goldstone. Now remember they could have climbed on board with Amnesty’s reports, with Human Rights Watch’s reports, they didn’t say anything, they climbed on board because of Goldstone. After Goldstone recanted, their reputations were dirtied as well because they had publicly aligned themselves with him. So they came out swinging to defend their own reputations. Because they looked foolish. And they didn’t want to suffer the same sort of ridicule as Goldstone did. So they came out swinging not so much because of the content of the report that they wanted now to defend, but because their reputations were at stake. So what’s going to be the consequence of the Goldstone Report-- they’re not going to go on board any more, because they’re going to be afraid of another kind of recantation. If some one else in the future of Goldstone’s stature attacks Israel, they’re not going to sign on.
But the retraction just shows that you need to count on the movement people, not the mainstreamers.
Goldstone freed up a lot of Jews to criticize Israel, that’s clear, and now that he’s recanted, no one’s really going to trust future Goldstones.
Look, there were three strategies broadly speaking for so far that have been tested to deal with Israel’s occupation. One is nonviolent civil disobedience whether in Bil’in or flotillas. A second strand has been the BDS. And a third strand has been holding Israel legally culpable. And the third strand was the Goldstone strategy, so to speak, holding Israel legally culpable. What was so disastrous about what Goldstone did is now it’s going to be very tough to go in front of Palestinian or even activist audiences and talk about the legal weapon. Because they’re all going to say "oh really-- Goldstone!" He’s delegitimized-- you talk about delegitimizing Israel, he has delegitimized before the activist community the legal weapon for holding Israel accountable. International law is going to be a very tough sell now, because everyone is going to say, "oh yeah, international law, you mean the Goldstone Report."
What was the fate of the report before the reconsideration?
It was dead. But that wasn’t—you have to be clear about why. It was not dead because the weapon itself was defective. It was killed because of the Palestinian leadership in Geneva killed the report. As a matter of fact Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, they both condemned the the Human Rights Council after the first postponement, when the first followup was issued. They condemned the HRC for then saying let’s have another postponement, which became the second followup committee, for inaction. But the reason the HRC didn’t do anything and didn’t refer the Report to the General Assembly and the Security Council was because of the Palestinian delegation. So it wasn’t Goldstone, it was the Palestinian leadership …. What happened was they kept Saying in the HRC let’s have another followup-- three months followup, three months followup-- and these eternal follow-ups resulted in the report dying.
But if the Goldstone Report was dying and I acknowledge it was moribund it was not because the weapon itself was defective, it’s because the Palestinian leadership was sold out. The distinction-- I still think it’s a powerful weapon, but it’s going to be a very tough sell now, I know that.
Now something strange did happen. They did pass a resolution in the last session of the Human Rights Council calling for the Goldstone Report to be referred to the GA, and for some reason it’s nowhere on the web, and it was a day or two days after the HRC passed the resolution that Goldstone dropped the bombshell, and maybe that’s why they didn’t post the resolution.
I don’t see that the process has been changed by the Goldstone Report. It depends on whether you want to look at it bureaucratically and diplomatically, or do you want to look at as, ultimately we want to build a movement. That’s about public opinion. We have no control over the bureaucracies and we have no control over our public officials at this point. So it’s all about trying to create a movement. It’s about credibility and in that respect the damage was fatal. Our credibility in the court of public opinion has been seriously damaged, because we had a very powerful weapon, the Goldstone Report.
And now there's this giant asterisk next to Goldstone Report.
It’s just the reverse. That’s the biggest tragedy. Because after the assault on Gaza, the big banners were Goldstone. At the University of Chicago, when the former Prime Minister spoke, they unfurled the banner on the balcony-- Goldstone in Arabic and English. When Olmert spoke, two banners.
Well now you know what’s going to happen? When Israel launches its next murderous war and you accuse it of having committed war crimes, what do you think they’re going to say. Goldstone. It’s just the reverse now, it’s become their weapon. That’s the most painful blow of all, Goldstone has now become their weapon.
Have you seen victories ala Goldstone in the past?
Let’s put it this way, my good friend Mouin Rabbani whose judgment I defer to, he’s still of the opinion that if you had a choice between no Goldstone and Goldstone plus recantation, he says we’re still better off with Goldstone plus recantation. It's an on balance argument. That to the extent that Goldstone did force any public debate on what happened in Gaza, and even though his retraction did cause a lot of harm, Mouin says it’s still better on balance. Now my lawyer Lynne Bernabei said Norman, I always thought that the Goldstone Report was too good to be true from a historical sense. And there’s a lot of truth to that. The victory we got with Goldstone came too soon, and she says if you look at where our movement is at, the Goldstone Report was like a godsend, it came almost too soon. How could we have had such a fantastic victory when our movement is so pitiful? She said when you look at it in terms of where we are, there’s truth to that, it was too good to be true, and it was bound to happen, the second shoe dropping. Noura Erekat, what she wrote in the Al Jazeera, if you remember her first statement which I was struck by because it was exactly right, she said, "in the wake of a monumental victory in the human rights community," yes it was a monumental victory and maybe we didn’t yet deserve a monumental victory. An absolutely mainstream Zionist Jewish judge saying Israel should be hauled before the International Criminal Court? [Laughing.] That was really dramatic. That’s why the Israelis went berserk.
So the Goldstone Report or I should say the Goldstone recantation was actually a sobering moment about where we really are. The Goldstone Report-- to some extent it gave us unrealistic hopes, it wasn’t yet grounded in the reality of our movement.
And now look what it's done to Israeli dissidents. He pissed on them, they were the ones who came forth and said there were war crimes committed, Breaking the Silence. Now he said, they didn’t commit war crimes.
He didn’t say that.
[Angry] You know-- I don’t go for that argument. I'm not going to parse words. He knew exactly what he was doing, he knew exactly how it was going to be spun. The moment I read it I said, they’re going to take two phrases from here, the war crimes thing and the intentionality thing, it was so perfectly obvious, and of course they ran with it within 24 hours. They did. [Goldstone: "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."] He knew what he was doing. If he did it. I'm still not convinced.
Huh?
This is purely speculative, I'm the first one to acknowledge it, but I don’t think that what he wrote was the product of his volition or reconsideration. I think there are grounds for the belief that he was pressured, as Dugard put it in very diplomatic language, he said, what made him change his mind remains a closely guarded secret.
When someone says to you or me, we are threatening the destruction of the Jewish people, we are being pressured, too.
I'm not talking about emotional pressure. I meant pressure in a more narrow sense.
Why'd he fold?
None of the explanations to date are at all convincing, that’s for sure One that he gives we can rule out straight away, there was no new information. That one we can rule out. Zero new information. The only new information since the issuance of the Goldstone Report confirmed its basic findings. Exactly zero-- we can quantify it-- has undermined in any way any of his findings. That’s a fact. So we can rule out Goldstone’s own pretext for issuing the recantation.
So we then look at the evidence. What's the evidence show? Goldstone is known to be an ambitious and opportunist person. I don’t entirely fault him because you cant get to the top of the UN system without being ambitious and opportunist, that’s just the name of the game. That’s fact number one. Fact number two is the tide has been turning in Goldstone’s favor this past year. Haaretz runs an editorial saying that Goldstone was right, says that Israeli investigations are validating what Goldstone found. In the United States, Tikkun gives him an award for his outstanding achievement. In South Africa his home community-- when Alan Dershowitz goes to visit South Africa two or three weeks ago, a large ad is taken out by legal luminaries like Dennis Davis on the constitutional court attacking Dershowitz for disaparaging Tutu and also disparaging Goldstone. When they tried to block Goldstone from attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah, it was they who were left with egg on their face, not Goldstone.
So here is the question: Why would an ambitious opportunist judge commit professional suicide right at the moment when the tide was turning in his favor? That doesn’t make sense at all. Everyone says it was because of the pressure. Yes there was huge pressure the first year, but the tide has been turning this past year.
Point two, Goldstone submits an op-ed to The New York Times March 22, they turn it down apparently because there’s no news in it. Then Goldstone puts in the bombshell, submits it to the Washngton Post. So what’s the reasonable scenario? Goldstone has a proverbial gun put to his head, he’s told he has to issue a recantation, he doesn’t want to issue a fullblooded recantation because it’s going to destroy his reputation. So he writes up a wishy-washy recantation. He submits the wishy-washy recantation to the Times. The Times says there’s nothing here, there’s no news. The clock is now ticking, Goldstone is panicking.
Why is the clock ticking?
Because there’s a proverbial gun to his head. Goldstone is now panicking and he rewrites his oped and includes the bombshell. He cant resubmit it to the New York Times, because they’re going to say, "What-- you changed your opinion from yesterday?" So he submits it to the Washington Post. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. What is the actual threat? I don’t know. I’ve told you this is completely speculative.
You say proverbial on the one hand and on the other the clock is ticking. What level of actual physical threat are you suggesting?
I don’t know. Listen Mossad, they bungle operations, but they’re also pretty effective. I don’t know. I have no idea. Little Norman lives in Ocean Park by Coney Island, he has no connections to anybody. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I admit it’s purely speculative.
I should say, a third point, Goldstone is a career bureaucrat. He’s 72 years old. He knows the ins and outs of the bureaucratic community, it’s his alpha and omega. Why doesn’t Goldstone consult his colleagues or the U.N. before he drops the bombshell? It's very obvious why, Because he would have had to justify it to them, and they would have said, ok Richard let’s see the new evidence, let’s see what you're going to write. But Richard this statement here is very murky, and Richard, this statemen can be spun out of control, and Richard this and Richard that and he knew he couldn’t defend it. My friends at the Hague who I talked about it with, they were most shocked by the violation of U.N. protocol, that he didn’t go to the U.N. first.
And you have to ask yourself why, and the reason is on the one hand he knows he has to get something in print but on the other hand he knows he can't defend it. It’s interesting, he was willing to talk to AP and give his so-called recantation of the recantation, but he wouldn’t talk to Roger Cohen. He wouldn’t talk to anyone who is knowledgeable and who he would have to defend it against-- because he knows it’s indefensible.
Weiss offers his theory, that Goldstone issued the reconsideration because he loves Israel and wants to save it.
Goldstone built his entire reputation and devoted the last 50 years of his life to building his reputation in the international legal and human rights community. He was not a Zionist in the sense of having invested a large or significant part of his life into Zionism. He worked for ORT [Jewish charity], he was on the Hebrew University board of directors…
They're all like that, Norman.
This is not a focus of his life. His life was the legal community, the human rights community, that’s where he invested his home being, and you’re telling me that because of love of Israel he’s going to commit professional suicide. He’s an ambitious and opportunistic person, it’s not Israel.
You don’t buy my theory, that’s fine.
What I would like to buy is a copy of that op-ed he sent to the Times March 22.
How much would you pay?
I would pay $2,000. You know Jack Benny, your money or your life? "I’m thinking." It would be an interesting question to ask Mr. Goldstone, why don’t you release it, what do you have to hide?
I have to go. What am I missing?
I think the most important point to get at is there isn’t a scratch, a jot, a scintilla of new information that could have rationally convinced Goldstone to issue his recantation. And so that particular explanation, which many people are writing me-- "Norman, why can’t you believe that Goldstone simply changed his mind?"-- I said, I would believe it if saw a basis for it. I’ve gone through every scratch of evidence, there’s no basis for it.
Why would you believe an Israeli claim about a drone image that they’ve never shown any more than you would believe that there were two terrorists at the door of the al-Maqadmah mosque. No evidence! Is that how a prosecutor or a judge-- is that the basis on which a judge or a prosecutor would dramatically reverse him or herself-- no independently assessed evidence? Where is the drone image? Hold on for one second!
[Finkelstein leaves room and comes back with a stack of papers.] You’re loaded for bear
This is nothing, this is just the epilogue. I must have read at this point about 100,000 pages of human rights reports. Desmond Travers said by now there must be 300 human rights reports on what happened in Gaza. This [a report compiled by the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in 2010, Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip: The main findings of the Goldstone Report versus the factual findings] is their main defense that the Israelis have issued. It’s full of the drone photographs. It’s full of them, these are all drone photographs. [Finkelstein flips through document showing scores of aerial photographs] Why didn’t they produce the drone photograph of the Al Samouni home?
[Finkelstein refers to the January 5, 2009 helicopter gunship attack on the outskirts of Gaza City that killed 29 of 120 family members who had been ordered by Israeli troops on the ground to stay in a house].
You can’t say it’s a military secret, the whole book is just full of drone photographs!
Look here! Look here--every single page!
So if this evidence is going to exonerate them of the most shocking single episode of the Gaza massacre, why didn’t they produce it, why did they even wait 22 months before they even began to hint at the explanation?
Where did Israelis make the statement on which Goldstone relied, that based on the drone image, they thought men were carrying rocket launchers to the house, when they were carrying firewood?
It’s never been made. It’s just, "we hear that, we hear that." Because none of the investigations have been publicly transcripted, there’s no evidence. There’s nothing!
[Goldstone in the Washington Post:
[The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly.]
The only thing we have transcripts for are the three indictments which are criminal indictments. Even those haven’t been made publicly available. But the investigations, the Al Samouni investigation, there’s been no indictment-- there is nothing to read. There is nothing. There is no physical evidence of the drone evidence. It’s never been produced.There is no written record. There is no visible proof of this drone image.
Ask yourself a simple question. The guy gets a drone image he claims of what looks like men carrying RPGs, rocket launchers, ok-- the first thing he’s going to do is check which of his troops are in the area. Because he’s not going to send in helicopter gunships if his troops are in the house. If the image is so fuzzy that you can’t even make out the rocket launchers-- well the Israeli troops commandeered many homes. He's going to check first.
Those guys with the RPGs could be Israelis?
It could be anything! So he’s going to check with his troops on the ground. You’re telling me he didn’t ring up his troops on the ground and say, I'm going to send in two helicopter gunships, are there any Israelis in the area, and then we have the six Israeli outposts there-- you’re telling me he didn’t ask, Is there any suspicious movement there, and they didn’t respond to him, there’s nothing. Does any of that make any sense?
What are you saying?
I'm saying he probably saw something-- yeah there were some people collecting wood. "Did you give them permission to leave the house?" "No." "I'm going in with the gunship." That’s how they act. Remember the order was, kill anything that moves, shoot anything that moves. The moment they tell him on the ground, yeah there are some people moving around-- shoot anything that moves. But the idea that he’s going to send in helicopter gunships without checking with the Israeli troops who were there, it’s just ridiculous. Otherwise not 4 Israelis would have been killed due to friendly fire, 400 would have been killed.
But the most amazing thing is, Goldstone didn’t even pose those questions. Every page of this has drone pictures. And you’re telling me they’re not going to reproduce the drone image that is going to exonerate them of the most shocking single incident of the attack from which their whole reputation is bruised? You’re telling me they only first mentioned it 22 months after the killings? No-- please, the Israelis, if you take the case of what happened on Gaza Beach [in 2006], they immediately have their press conference and they say it was a mistake and it was this, it was that. That’s what they always do. Why are they waiting 22 months to even hint at this drone image, what are they hiding? They never said anything about the Al Samouni case.
Gaza beach was sui generis, not during an operation.
I agree. But that’s why I keep quoting here--everyone was calling Al-Samouni the single most shocking incident. So why didn’t they try to clear their name of the single most shocking incident? If you said to me, it was one of among 10,000 incidents, they're not going to try to explain every one, fair enough, but the single most shocking incident, and 22 months later they come up with this explanation, just as they came up with there were 2 terrorists standing in front of the mosque that killed 13 people with a rocket attack, and I'm supposed to sit here and say, "oh the Israelis said it." But that’s what Goldstone said. So he should have fucking repudiated everything in the report, because the Israelis had an explanation for every single incident. The El Badr flour mill incident. "No we didn’t fire a missile, no it was a tank battle," even though they found an Israeli bomb in the flour mill-- no it was a tank battle. And the Sawafeary chicken farm, well we had to clear the area. They had an explanation for everything! I'm really shocked-- the Israelis have an explanation for everything. I'm really shocked. [sarcastic] I never thought they would have one. This takes it. It’s not believable.
Have you ever met Goldstone?
Yeah, I was in Gaza, he was there at the time. He had a press conference with [commissioner Christine] Chinkin, and we [Code Pink group] requested a meeting. He didn’t know me.
Did you introduce yourself?
I spoke. I said, just be fair. I asked him, as a Jew, as everything, be fair. I told him this is an important moment. Either you’re going to get Palestinians to finally believe that Jews can be decent or not-- so be fair. Don’t stretch the truth, there's no need to embellish it, just be fair. I was a little hopeful because he said, to a room full of people, there have been many reports issued on what happened, and we shouldn’t forget the Dugard report [for the Arab League]. That made me hopeful that the Goldstone report would be of quality because he respected Dugard, and Dugard had come down very hard on Israel.
Do you remember that he told Bill Moyers he would have nightmares the rest of his life after what he saw in Gaza?
What I remember was Goldstone said how fearful he was to go to Gaza because he was afraid he would be kindaped. And then he was really moved by the generosity and warmth of the people. And this was such a terrible betrayal of that. That would give me a nightmare-- to betray their generosity and warmth this way.
So you related to him as a Jew?
It’s a consideration. Goldstone is Jewish. Some people have said to me I made an error by conflating the person with the book, and we had made too much of a big deal about who Goldstone was, and therefore made ourselves very vulnerable to his betrayal. The problem was, there were thousands of page of human rights reports before Goldstone and they were all ignored. You couldn’t separate the report from the person. What made the report the report was the person. It’s true the Goldstone Report was the most comprehensive, but legally it was not the most impressive, Dugard’s was a much more impressive legal analysis. And it was very far from the most devastating report. Goldstone didn’t call for an embargo of arms to Israel, Amnesty did. Goldstone did not call the use of white phosphorus war crimes—Human Rights Watch did. Goldstone did not charge any Israeli with genocidal acts, but the Dugard report did. The Dugard report said that individuals might be guilty of genocidal acts. So the Goldstone Report was in crucial respects although the most broadly sweeping the most conservative.
And what made it the report of the moment was the person. My friends-- you know I talk to my friends, they said it unleashed all this ugly anti-semitism among Arabs. I'm embarrassed to have to say it, but my best friend called me up and said, his first words were, you can never trust a Jew, in the end they’ll stick by their own. That’s what he did.
Thanks Norman. I feel like you're a Talmudist, and teaching me how to read.
I work out of my room. You remember the famous scene in Watch on the Rhine, the little boy goes up and asks the guy on the train, he's a partisan, what do you do for a living?
He says, "I fight against fascism."
So—I read documents. That’s all I do. Read documents.
Interesting interview. There was a lot in it.
As I’ve said a number of times, that I believe that Goldstone did change his substantive overarching opinion of what constituted a legally admissible scale of operations, and that it was an opinion.
And, that he changed his view of what was within the range of reputable Israeli military training and practices from rogue, that even in the report were repeated discussions of ongoing normal accepted (even laudable) training in the rights of civilians in war time.
In a word that his opinion went from dark gray to neutral gray, and that neutral gray was a qualitatively different nature than the accusations of “crimes against humanity” committed in Rwanda, or Sudan, or Yugoslavia.
The question of goal of the reports is critical. The emphasis of goal in the Goldstone report was reform of operations, primarily recommending internal investigations, and only secondarily recommending referral to international court system.
Its a different emphasis than Norman and other activists refer to.
And, again, I think Hamas is responsible for the shift in admissible targets, by the statements made describing their readiness to fight a ground war, their statements that they would “wipe the Gazan streets with Israeli blood”, and their escalation of shelling of civilians indicating an actual intent to be in a state of war with Israel.
So you don’t think it’s a crime against humanity for Hamas to shoot rockets at Israeli civilians and it wasn’t a crime against humanity to blow up people in restaurants? Is that what you’re trying to say?
(Incidentally, it’s wasn’t a possessive pronoun in the above paragraph, and “wasn’t” isn’t either, and neither is “isn’t”.
Richard, do you have a Column A/Column B stash somewhere of paragraphs you blend together to create these top-of-the-thread responses in record time? They are never on point. They don’t refer to the original. And they make no sense.
They certainly indicate you’re not thinking about the original.
“and it wasn’t a crime against humanity to blow up people in restaurants?”
This is the first that you’ve mentioned anyone blown up in a restaurant.
You stated (you alone, thank you) that you thought that a focused targeted attack at a rocket launcher is the only military action that you think Israel would admissibly do.
I think the responsibility of the IDF extends beyond that limited scope. If it was a one-time event, then maybe that would pass. When the shelling occurs over years, then additional military measures are required, regardless of the inter-national? context.
What scale is admissible is an unanswered question, inevitably grey.
You don’t even want to acknowledge that that question is a relevant question to the determination of whether war crimes were committed or not.
Have YOU seen the drone image, Witty? Goldstone hasn’t.
I’ve said before that Israel had the right to do very carefully targeted strikes on actual people and objects (like rockets) that really did threaten civilians. The same also applies to Palestinians, who have the right to use violence, though on practical grounds this is a bad idea, as it will just lead to further Israeli brutality and narcissism.
But this is arguing in a very narrow context. In the larger context Israel is the aggressor, Israel steals land, Israel imposes an apartheid like system, Israel imposes a brutal inhumane blockade and Israel does most of the killing of civilians. So it is the height of cynicism for Israel to do all this and then claim it acts in self-defense when some of their victims react badly. If they want to protect Israeli civilians they should be prosecuting their own war criminals and they should end the occupation. Clearly this is not their top priority.
As for civilians being killed, you’ve referred with feeling to Palestinian crimes against Israelis as terror, or as barbaric acts and I suspect you wouldn’t object to the term “crime against humanity”. You say nothing similar about Israeli crimes. Instead you rationalize. It’s why I don’t value your approval. Most of us (not just me) agree that Palestinian violence against civilians is immoral. I don’t think the others would say Israel has the right to hit rocket launchers because of the larger context I mentioned. It’s exactly like acknowledging that Tony Soprano has the right to defend his family if one of his innocent victims goes nuts and tries to avenge himself on one of Tony’s children. Does Tony Soprano have the right to protect his children from an enraged victim of his own violence (perhaps a family member of someone who Tony had killed?) Yes. Is there something else that Tony could be doing to protect his children, like maybe get out of the organized crime business? Yes.
Maybe Richard should meet Yonatan Shapira. Yonatan is the Israeli pilot who became a resister after his conversation with the head of the Israeli air force. Yonatan asked why the air force was ordered to fire missiles into densely populated areas of Gaza, trying to strike at alleged “terrorists,” but if the same “terrorist” were located in Tel Aviv the same order would not be given. The air force commander waffled. “So Palestinian civilians are worth less than Israeli civilians,” Yonatan concluded. “Get someone else to fly your aircraft.”
link to mondoweiss.net
There was some time ago , Israeli official research, that how do those palestinian suicide bombers get in their way into the Israel. Through the gates and security checks was their conclusion.
So they built the wall, while front gate was open…..
Ring any bell anyone ?
“scale of operations”
Scalification, that’s the ticket!
But Richard, you left out scopification and contextualization.
“wipe the Gazan streets with Israeli blood”
Can you give me your source for this quote. In most cases it seems to surface in your comments in the comment sections wherever.
I’d really like to know.
Richard: Where’s the source?
Hell, I don’t care if the quote is real–it doesn’t change the fact that Israelis used indiscriminate firepower in urban areas and that can’t be justified because of a quote, real or imagined. Harsh language doesn’t actually kill people–if it did, Hamas could have laid ambushes with curse-spouting Palestinians on every street corner. You don’t use heavy weaponry in urban areas and spare your own soldiers any risk unless the lives of Palestinian civilians means nothing and if you see a benefit in punishing the civilian population.
Though I don’t doubt that Richard thinks a nasty quote (real or imagined) coming from a Palestinian is worse than white phosphorus dropped by an Israeli warplane on a Palestinian town. (And I’m only half-joking.)
Philip, your friend RW is trolling. He did not even read the piece.
Why do you expect me to be serious then?
Eguard,
You are wrong. I read the piece, every word.
You call differing, “trolling”. You are not alone.
Maybe you read it, but not before this post. As others noted, your post here is not about the piece, and does not reflect on any point of it. But OK, you were the first one to write a comment whatever. Which is, in some way, a quality.
EGuard,
You are guessing, but asserting anyway.
My response was the first in the topic, and I read every word with interest.
“You call differing, “trolling”. You are not alone.”
No he is not, is he? I bet lots and lots of people agree with him.
For God’s frickin’ sake Richard, English, it’s your goddam native tongue.
I agree that the recantation, even though it is a very slight recantation, is a disaster. That’s because of the way that public relations machines, including Obama’s, will amplify it for the benefit – maybe that’s not the right word – of people who have the patience to read only a few sentences about these things.
I still suggest that the likeliest explanation is that the people who matter – Netanyahu, Obama – told Goldstone that either he signed the document they’d written for him or there would be another death and destruction episode in Gaza.
“told Goldstone that either he signed the document they’d written for him or there would be another death and destruction episode in Gaza.”
That’s the one motive I’ve seen suggested that would be morally justifiable, but I doubt it.
“You know– I don’t go for that argument. I’m not going to parse words. He knew exactly what he was doing, he knew exactly how it was going to be spun. The moment I read it I said, they’re going to take two phrases from here, the war crimes thing and the intentionality thing, it was so perfectly obvious, and of course they ran with it within 24 hours.”
Damn right. I agree with Jerry Haber about almost everything, but he’s all wet about Goldstone’s op ed. Anyone with an IQ above the double digit range could have predicted exactly how it would be read, and all the fine parsing of words that show Goldstone really didn’t say this or that doesn’t make him look better–if anything, it makes him look worse.
I’m guessing it was just the emotional pressure myself, but who knows? Whatever the motive, it was a disgusting thing to do.
Honestly, I think the Goldstone retraction, if you call it that, was just one more brick in the idea that you can never trust a Zionist – well you can usually trust them to lie.
It isn’t that Goldstone was Jewish, it was that he was a Zionist & supporter of Israel that made the report more credible, and his stature in other war crimes investigations. We thought we had found an honest and decent Zionist. There may still be some.
I’m sorry if all Jews are confused with Zionists.
lyn, i think there are some honest zionists. there’s evidence of them all the time, everyday they’re moving over to our team. it just took them a while to see straight that’s all.
This is just one person who may have broken under pressure. It doesn’t prove or even suggest that there aren’t Zionists (like Slater, for example) who wouldn’t.
The crowd here almost “successfully” alienated Slater as well, for the sin of regarding the two-state solution as more rational than the single.
“you can never trust a Zionist”.
Witty,
No one alienated Slater. They argued with him about an intellectual/political point, albeit viciously in some cases. Put your Hungarian violin down. It’s unbecoming to invoke your whiny amygdala to make your point.
Uh, Slater alienated himself right quick. Anybody who takes in terms of justifying or trivializing ethnic cleansing tends to invite that. I guess you’ll just accuse the rest of us actual liberals for being “intolerant” because we find ethnic cleansing of any quantity of people to be repugnant and unjustifiable.
um that is not why he was “attacked”. he was “attacked” for justify and saying Isreali ethnic cleansing was ok and it shouldn’t be tried to be rectified. in other words he was viewed much like you are a thug who hates justice and the rule of law.
As to why Goldstone did what he did while of course the Mossad or etc. could have threatened him or etc. that is pure speculation, and when you get to the level of something o extreme being speculated upon the chance of it having any validity just gets to the point of being near nutty. Moreover, how could they know that he wouldn’t go public with any kind of real threat and really really hurt ‘em that way?
No, it seems to me that what’s overlooked is his family connection, and the ostracizing of same that seems to have been more clearly in play. Yeah when they talked of trying to ban him from his relative’s own bar mitzvah it was aimed at him, but nevertheless it brought the totality of the personal situation into focus: In short … “do you really want your family’s name in S. Africa (and elsewhere?) to be eternally covered with shit in the eyes of our community? Do you really want them forever more to be made to feel that their blood is the blood of someone on par with a Nazi? A … blood libeler of Israel and jews?”
… Because you know damn well that kind of language and accusation and parallel was exactly the kind used against Goldstone.
Might be bolstered by thinking of just what Goldstone did in that Post piece: Knowing that what he had done with his Report was already a crossing of the Rubicon and that he couldn’t make it disappear so that himself would never be forgiven totally, he tried to eat just as much carpet as he could so as to at least hopefully get his family off the hook.
Anyway, as I said in an earlier thread, and as was not discussed by Phil here or Mr. Finklestein, I think the biggest consequence of Goldstone’s retraction in the West is the underground antisemitic sense that nope, one can never trust a jew to be honest about jewry or Israel.
Ugly, but Goldstone ought to have considered that.
Sin Nombre,
… as was not discussed by Phil here or Mr. Finklestein, I think the biggest consequence of Goldstone’s retraction in the West is the underground antisemitic sense that nope, one can never trust a jew to be honest about jewry or Israel.
Finkelstein did discuss it at the end, unless you are referring to the wider West, and not just the Arabs as Finkelstein does. I think the Al-Jazeera documentary shows which friend he is talking about.
But you are absolutely correct about the “underground antisemitic sense.” I’m hearing it with snorts, rolled-eyes, and a wave of the hand, as in: whaddyu expect?
These consequences will add up one day into a future Israel hadn’t planned for. That’s as inexorable and sure as the tide. It’s how reality works. There isn’t a religion, political thought, philosophy — or intentionality — on the planet that can change that. It’s the same for everybody, everywhere, for all time.
What Israel did, during Cast Lead, what it chose to do is recorded in that document. You transcend the role of victim when you choose to act evilly.
I think the biggest consequence of Goldstone’s retraction in the West is the underground antisemitic sense that nope, one can never trust a jew to be honest about jewry or Israel.
it’s sad reading this from anyone. i don’t agree with it but it segues into my own opinion which i will launch from here.
i think the retraction just adds to a certain mystique about some secret power in the background of jewish elite. i agree w/norm something made him do it, something divorced from any evidence because if he had any evidence he would have waved it high like a flag. so this pall spreads over everything.
and this pall is what’s going to have a more effective impact than the legal aspects of the retraction because of public opinion. i don’t think most people are going to make jews responsible for this or flip on all their jewish friends and relations and think no one can be trusted. i think the idea of an influential jewish elite is going to be enhanced and it’s going to be enhanced in a way people resent it or fear it or comprehend it. it is a mystery what they did, but something happened. so i think the idea of this pressure is going to be attached to israel and this elite. instead of the little israel special friend there will likely be a more realistic idea of the way power works around the zionist agenda. one that will be harder to keep in the bag.
maybe we already know about it but that idea will grow and as it grows people will resent it (anyone who isn’t a part of it which of course includes jews). it isn’t ‘goldstone’ the man and his ‘turn’ it is the turning mechanism itself, it is the reputation of the whys, whos and hows. i think that public opinion will be spread evenly and will leave the elite more isolated, still powerful but more isolated. it is in that isolation we will have more opportunity for clarity.
clarity, truth and exposure is the key to resolution.
I don’t see this as a Jewish thing. It’s more of a Zionist problem. Zionists are thugs who play dirty. They created this culture and they live it.
Judaism will get over Zionism. It survived so long without it.
Yeah, I agree, seafoid. And annie, I agree with you. Apropos seafoid’s comment, when the Zionist problem starts to really hurt Jews, and it will, the Exodus Redux that Danaa talks about is going to be mental. Massive movement away from those thugs.
I mean when you get David Remnick (New Yorker) describing how Netanyahu’s father was uttering the most breathtakingly vile racist comments at a private dinner, and you sense Remnick’s American revulsion at listening to it, it’s going to spread. I can only imagine what he listened to. I had one year of west bank settlers emailing me stuff that gave me a physical headache to read. Like a huge iron nail through my eyebrows. Just. Vile. Just. So. Coarse. Absolutely no prefrontal cortex development whatsoever. Just ignorant stupidity (not redundant) and anger. Like a Hollywood mob of peasants from the 17th C.
Al-Jazeera is sponsoring American Radical a documentary in parts about Norman Finkelstein. I urge you all to watch it; it gives you such a picture into his commitment. The first part went up April 12. The next part is on April 18.
link to english.aljazeera.net
It’s telling that not once during this interview did either of you mention that the Report also accuses Hamas of war crimes. That indicates that you are using the Report politically, not as a tool of international law. Clearly, one reason Goldstone wrote his op-ed was to remind people that this was a fact-finding mission, not a political advocacy mission, as Phil, Norman, and others have distorted it. The report called for action on both sides. One side took action. The other side did not. I actually agree with Phil somewhat. Goldstone did not write the Report to destroy Israel, as Weiss and Finkelstein would like to see happen. Goldstone got involved in the first place because he thought he could lend some credibility to the enormously flawed UNHRC.
I don’t know where Finkelstein gets his theories from and I won’t pretend to guess. But Israeli leaders have had no more trouble traveling abroad post-Goldstone than pre-Goldstone. The US is never going to vote to indict an Israeli soldier for ICC anything. That will happen when the US votes to indict its own soldiers, because if the UNHRC sent teams in Falluja or Kandahar, I think we all know what the reports would look like. I don’t think the US Army would get raving reviews.
In fact, I would guess that if any Western European countries dared to actually indict an Israeli leader, they would face immediate United States sanctions, because the US would fear its soldiers would be next. It’s no accident that the British government has taken steps to avoid the indictment of Israeli leaders on their soil. They don’t want the same to happen to their soldiers.
Goldstone certainly wasn’t happy about the reception the report received in the Jewish community. I believe he felt he was doing Israel a favor by taking what would have been a mission exploring Israel only and expanding it to include an examination of both sides. It is similar to what he did in South Africa; he became a judge in apartheid South Africa and helped change a flawed structure.
But he was also not happy about how he was used in the pro-Palestinian community, where he was misused as a latter-day Pablo Christiani, as if he or the report had invalidated Israel’s right to exist in security and as he supported the persecution of Israeli soldiers and leaders wherever they go. I do agree that the explicit recognition of Israeli investigations is the implicit recognition that universal jurisdiction, which calls for other countries to get involved only if the home country is incapable of investigating itself, has been satisfied.
I have followed Goldstone since this happened (and before). He has never abandoned his feeling that whatever the international legal implications, the destruction in Gaza was widespread and the people’s testimonies moving, that Israel has long gotten a raw deal from the UNHRC, that he was shocked when Israel refused to cooperate with him, and that he supports Israel’s right to exist. I also know from talking to him personally that he hates the settlements.
None of this changed with his op-ed. And yes, it’s interesting to watch the same process of distortion happen all over again – right-wingers claiming that the op-ed is a recantation of the whole report and left-wingers either claiming that it changes nothing or that Goldstone wasn’t that great a guy anyway, and the antisemites claiming that Jews are untrustworthy.
Goldstone was always interested in international law for its own sake, not to serve a political purpose. That’s borne out by his career as a prosecutor at the ICTY and as one of the world’s foremost promoters of Universal Jurisdiction. You guys have always been interested in it as a political weapon, and the protagonists you support frankly couldn’t give a damn about it.
Actually, it’s because American politicians would be told to do so by the lobby. Remember how, after Israel murdered that Turkish-American citizen on the flotilla, within a day Anthony Wiener was addressing one of NATO’s most prominent members as “our former ally?” I’m pretty sure that had nothing to do with any threat to US soldiers.
It doesn’t have anything to do with the lobby. The US hasn’t signed on to the ICC because it does more fighting than anyone else does, and it does not want its soldiers harassed internationally. That’s pretty clear to anyone who remembers the debate over the ICC.
“The US hasn’t signed on to the ICC because it does more fighting than anyone else does, and it does not want its soldiers harassed internationally. That’s pretty clear to anyone who remembers the debate over the ICC.”
I do remember it and I do remember that was the debate in the US and I also think it was pure hypocrisy, as so much of our political discussion is. They said they were concerned about “soldiers”, but I suspect they were also concerned about people like Henry Kissinger and every other US official who might credibly be accused of complicity in human rights violations. But no Serious Person in those days (the Clinton era) ever talked openly about the possibility of an American official being a war criminal or sponsor of terrorism.
But yes, it’s more than the Lobby. Israeli and US officials have a common interest in laughing off the notion of a Western official being guilty of war crimes.
Well its in deeper than that really. Most of the europe example, the international law is a vis a vis a national law. Not so in US.
And why hasn’t Israel signed on to the ICC? They seek the same sort of immunity from human rights abuse prosecution?
why hasn’t Israel signed on to the ICC?
You really shouldn’t have to ask, but it was the criminalization of the Zionist enterprise beyond the Green Line. Colonizing occupied territory was always a violation of Article 49(6), but it was declared a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime in accordance with Article 85 of the First Additional Protocol (1977). About 170 countries subsequently became parties. So, it was determined to be reflective of customary international practice by the Rome Statute Diplomatic Conference and they included it in Article 8(2)(b)(viii) as one of the crimes within the jurisdiction of the new ICC.
The Head of the Delegation of Israel was obviously conscious of the fact that Israel was guilty of committing all of the material elements of the crime “with knowledge and intent”, so he played the “holocaust” and “politics” of antisemitism cards and voted against the Statute. Here is a link to the (confession) Statement by the Head of the Delegation of Israel Judge Eli Nathan, at the UN Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the establishment of an International Criminal Court, 9th Plenary meeting, 17 July 1998.
actually clinton signed the rome statute Bush the second removed his signature.
That Hamas committed war crimes isn’t under dispute, and if Goldstone’s op ed had emphasized that both sides had committed war crimes, as did the original report, and that neither has been held accountable for it, then I doubt anyone would have objected.
“I do agree that the explicit recognition of Israeli investigations is the implicit recognition that universal jurisdiction, which calls for other countries to get involved only if the home country is incapable of investigating itself, has been satisfied.”
This is farcical. You’d do better to point out (as so many Israel-defenders tend to do these days) that the US is no better on investigating its own crimes. That’s true, and it’s equally disgusting. Goldstone might as well say the prosecution of Lyndie England puts the whole torture era behind us and shows that the US is capable of investigating itself.
Forgot to say that this part is true, with one correction–
“In fact, I would guess that if any Western European countries dared to actually indict an Israeli leader, they would face immediate United States sanctions, because the US would fear its soldiers would be next. It’s no accident that the British government has taken steps to avoid the indictment of Israeli leaders on their soil. They don’t want the same to happen to their soldiers.”
Not just soldiers, but leaders. The very last thing that the US (or GB) wants is a world where high-ranking Western officials can be prosecuted for war crimes. That’s why the State Department says Israel didn’t commit any in Gaza.
Hophmi wrote:
“I do agree that the explicit recognition of Israeli investigations is the implicit recognition that universal jurisdiction, which calls for other countries to get involved only if the home country is incapable of investigating itself, has been satisfied.”
Yeah, a very intelligent post, Hophmi, and this I think was really the ultimate point Goldstone was trying make in his Post article. One doubts that the fans of that article of his would agree that we should trust a Hamas internal investigation as much as an Israeli one, but, nevertheless, this is the logic of what I think was Goldstone’s big point and so long as he’d agree to go along with it, you can’t fault him.
However, your other good big (and I think astute) observation is that Goldstone is motivated by a deep belief in international law, and while I think that’s true I think one has to say then that his Post article very much betrayed that. That is, okay, where does a mere member of a legal panel get off, after that panel has spoken, saying that the panel’s report would have been different if he himself knew X or Y?
That’s not following any kind of legal or procedural norms. Nor even sensible ones, as seen by the fact that I believe all his other co-panelists have now said baloney.
So while I have no doubt Goldstone’s original motivation was to validate international law, he has badly … very badly indeed … betrayed and hurt that cause. Not only in this instance, but in setting a kind of precedent too for future panel members and etc. by saying this is how they can behave.
If he felt so strongly that the Report should be changed, or that some subsequent addendum should be added, then he should have gone to his co-panelists and the U.N. and argued same. Or at least the right to append a solo addendum. That he did not, and I believe that he says he will not, is perhaps the strongest evidence possible that he knows full well how extraordinarily out of bounds his Post article is.
In short how … purely political it was, rather than legal or quasi-legal or etc.
Because I think he was such a believer in international law processes and etc. once again I think this only reinforces the evidence that some extraordinary pressure was put upon him to trash same, which again I tend to think was the clear implication that he had blackened his entire family name in jewish circles, including in So. Africa, by letting things stand as they were in his original Report.
I feel for the guy, but he ought to give some thought to the kind of people he’s dealing with who would allow any anger at him to be taken out in any way involving his family. Even just the whiff of that business of barring him from attending his own relative’s bar mitzvah is just beyond repugnant.
hophmi,
Your analysis is always consistently flakey. The Prime Minister’s office was furious when Yishai invited Goldstone to visit Israel without consulting them. They have to arrange for the legal defense of Israelis in foreign court proceedings. The spokesman disagreed with your appraisal of the damage:
I think you are confusing “universal jurisdiction” with “complementary jurisdiction”. Failure of Israel or the ICC to launch investigations would not have any effect on proceedings in other courts under the auspices of national laws granting “universal jurisdiction” for the crimes described in the various reports on Gaza.
The Human Rights Council resolution that Norman mentioned is A/HRC/16/L.31. It calls for the General Assembly to refer the entire Goldstone report to the Security Council, not just the Israeli war crimes. While Israel is singled out for condemnation, Palestine has cooperated and has already requested that the ICC investigate crimes committed on the territory of Palestine. The inability of a State to investigate or prosecute on its own behalf “due to a total or substantial collapse or unavailability of its national judicial system” is one of the conditions that triggers the complementary jurisdiction of the ICC in accordance with Article 17 of the ICC Statute. There is nothing “political” about that provision. If your state regularly bombs the judicial system of neighboring states “back to the stone age”, the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting any war crimes shifts to the ICC and courts of other states.
Great interview. I like Finkelstein’s attention to detail. What he had to say about the original report underscores what Slater wrote just two days ago about what the report missed by a mile.
Whereas I believe that his change of opinion represented a recognition of truth, and that the reaction to his qualification is the reaction of those that used him for their own partisan purposes and now regard him as “disloyal” to the far far more disciplining cause of solidarity.
It must really scare prospective dissenters away to listen to the ways and extent that anyone that returns to thinking freely is treated here.
That is another consequence of the publishing of commentary. Goldstone’s rock into the water, and your rocks into the water.
GOD, how often are you going to spam us with your constant droning? Yes, we get it! You don’t care what factual investigations and testimony have to say about the crime, you believe Israel is faultless and now that Goldstone is SAYING WHAT ISRAEL WANTS HIM TO SAY instead of, you know, actually investigating ANYTHING — like he did when he helped write the misnomer-ed Goldstone Report — now you want to believe him, when he’s talking out of his ass instead of actually GOING somewhere and SEEING something with his own eyes.
We get it. Your a fanatic and nothing based in reality will change your opinion. WE GET IT. Please. Stop beating us over the head with your nonsense already.
Whereas I believe that his change of opinion represented a recognition of truth, and that the reaction to his qualification is the reaction of those that used him for their own partisan purposes and now regard him as “disloyal” to the far far more disciplining cause of solidarity.
there’s a little hitch here richard and that is the aspect of the nature of society in general. the thing about ” recognition of truth” is that people like little things like ‘evidence’ and he presented none. and i am curious what kind of “disciplining cause of solidarity” you are referencing? do you think if i work really hard and be really good and take the big plunge and challenge of being disciplined i can reach solidarity? with whom?
i think it is very clear goldstone took the ‘ the far far more disciplining cause of solidarity’ it is more a matter of ‘solidarity with what?’ with the UN? with the truth? (then where’s his evidence and explanation) with his inner truth? (then where was his truth before?) he’s showing discipline alright, it is just to the tribe. or that is how it looks to me.
now, could you try eliminating the ad homimen whine from your thoughts and try addressing people like adults.
Judgment, opinions, impressions are stimulated more by experiences containing personal evidence, moreso than academically documented formal evidence.
I’m sure if you gained his trust and asked him candidly, what changed your impression, he might tell you.
If you announced ahead of time, that you were looking for weapons (as Norman repeated often), I doubt that he would be candid.
“Judgment, opinions, impressions are stimulated more by experiences containing personal evidence, moreso than academically documented formal evidence.”
Ah. You mean bullsh**.
“I’m sure if you gained his trust and asked him candidly, what changed your impression, he might tell you.”
This is pathetic. Goldstone is one of four people chosen to investigate possible war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the Gaza War and he has to be coaxed into saying what changed his mind? What a fragile little flower you imagine him to be. Certainly not someone who should be running around investigating the killing of hundreds of innocent people.
We have to now suck up to Goldstone to gain his trust in order to be able to ask him candidly what caused him to recant (poorly and weakly as Finkelstein astutely notes)?
Why you are allowed to continually post such nonsensical horse pucky on this website remains one of the ten mysteries of the underside of the internet.
Donald, my bet is Phil does it to keep us all riled up. It’s just a pity that Witty doesn’t have better intellectual wares to peddle.
“my bet is Phil does it to keep us all riled up. ”
Possibly. Or since RW is a friend of the family, maybe it’s easier for Phil to deal with him by having us deal with him. I can hardly blame Phil if that’s the motive.
Witty never ceases to astound me with the brazeness of these statements. Up is down, black is white, and facts are irrelevant.
I asked this same question on another thread. after the Goldstone report was published, Goldstone made himself available for a number of interviews and debates. So why has Gooldstone suddenly gone underground after this op ed? Are his handlers keeping him away from the likes of Adam, Lizzy and co?
“So why has Goldstone suddenly gone underground after this op ed?”
I think he knows that a knowledgeable interviewer would quickly dismantle the “reasoning” in his op ed. To me (and to others I’ve read) his behavior fits the profile of someone with a guilty conscience, who tried to get back in the good graces of his community with the minimum possible amount of betrayal to the cause of human rights consistent with that goal. The goals are contradictory and he must know it.
“To me (and to others I’ve read) his behavior fits the profile of someone with a guilty conscience”
You project a lot.
Like MANY professionals, he is in the position of forming black/white opinions on what is grey. His view apparently shifted from dark grey (suitable to issue a non-binding recommendation), to mid grey (not suitable to initiate one, and not suitable to retract one).
Yawn. The dark grey to mid grey analogy is one that you like, as you seem to repeat it a lot, but where is the Israeli investigation into the policies that caused the massive amounts of death and destruction? Where is the list of Israelis sentenced to long periods in prison for killing civilians and other heinous acts? There’s no serious self-investigation going on.
“Possibly.”
Think back a couple of days; Witty wrote a stupid comment, I insulted Witty (“If you want to call Phil a self-hating Jew, just say that and save the bandwidth”) and Phil thanked me!
Nice, isn’t it? Phil is going to confront Zionism and Israel, but he can’t say “Boo” tyo Richard Witty? So he pulls the old passive-agressive? Yeah, this is gonna work!
Mooser, RE: ” Phil is going to confront Zionism and Israel, but he can’t say “Boo” tyo Richard Witty?”
Hey, maybe Phil allows Witty to stick around on Mondoweiss because Witty reminds him of what a thick wall he’s up against?
Witty’s incessant obtuse comments may also be a way for Phil to judge his own progress in fighting his own deeply conditioned superiority complex, which perhaps he grows ever more aware may be built on more than a few grains of sand? Striving for the top of the Maslow triangle as it were? Knowing thyself is a life-long chore, yes? And part of the process is comparing one’s view with a childhood pal’s? Both coming from the same petri dish?
Of course, after his “recantation,” Goldstone then said that he stands by the bulk of the report and does not want it withdrawn. Goldstone’s three co-authors have accused him of misrepresenting facts in order to cast doubt on the credibility of their joint report.
You can read all about it in The Guardian:
link to guardian.co.uk
“UN Gaza report co-authors round on Goldstone
Exclusive: Three mission members say calls to recant UN report disregard the rights of Palestinian and Israeli victims”
When Israel carries out another massacre in Gaza, Goldstone will deserve blame for facilitating it. Until Israel launches Operation Cast Lead II, however, Goldstone’s dishonorable recantation will provide Israel with sufficient cover to continue its ongoing crimes against humanity.
Look, there were three strategies broadly speaking for so far that have been tested to deal with Israel’s occupation. One is nonviolent civil disobedience whether in Bil’in or flotillas. A second strand has been the BDS. And a third strand has been holding Israel legally culpable. And the third strand was the Goldstone strategy, so to speak, holding Israel legally culpable. What was so disastrous about what Goldstone did is now it’s going to be very tough to go in front of Palestinian or even activist audiences and talk about the legal weapon. Because they’re all going to say “oh really– Goldstone!” He’s delegitimized– you talk about delegitimizing Israel, he has delegitimized before the activist community the legal weapon for holding Israel accountable. International law is going to be a very tough sell now, because everyone is going to say, “oh yeah, international law, you mean the Goldstone Report.”
there are a few thing about this segment that irk me. re: ‘three strategies broadly speaking for so far that have been tested to deal with Israel’s occupation.’
more than anything else what pushes international law? i heard lobel from the center for constitutional rights speak recently. he made the point that public opinion changes and societies change and then laws change. so there are people ‘in the know’ who’ve staked their reputations on this and you think they won’t next time but what about everyman? do you think just screaming ‘goldstone’ at them is going to turn off their brain? on the grand scale of things i would guess a minimum of 5 people will know about this by the end of the year verse the 1 person who had heard of it last year. of those 4 extra people who are just hearing about goldstone due to these retractions how many of them do you think might QUESTION what he retracted? or find out anything about the report? they do not have jobs to loose over this.
this biggest power of the lobby is the fact people don’t talk about them or know about them. they don’t. so let’s look at that second strand that’s been tested. it has not been tested very long, it is just getting off the ground. the reason i bring up bds now is because it is very much joined at the hip w/public opinion. are we going to get the government to sanction israel anytime soon? no. will people become more and more adverse to israel and practice their own kind of bds? yes. when public opinion changes that is when you start seeing the laws change so that (according to lobel) it is the society that moves change. and i happen to think these people you think will not stand up this time because of goldstone’s retraction..i think you are wrong. i think if they think the public is in back of them, and truth, i think they will.
you, norm finkelstein are a trailblazer w/steel cajones. they won’t need to be as brave as you. maybe .001 as brave as you. but once society has moved forward on this issue (they will!) then goldstone’s reaction won’t mean so much.
btw, look at obama’s veto @ the UN. do you think that strengthened americas position, or israels in public opinion? do you think people will be afraid next time around to criticize? of course not. in general people don’t like it when others buckle under to power, it’s degrading and alarming and it gets noticed and people are generally adverse to it.
so, i think there is one strategy so far that has not really been tested to deal with Israel’s occupation. and that is moving the court of public opinion, radically. i think it is moving, i think israel knows it is moving, and once it moves and hits that tipping pt the third strand (legal culpability) will open up and goldstone’s retraction will work in our favor, not against it.
“so, i think there is one strategies so far that has not really been tested to deal with Israel’s occupation. and that is moving the court of public opinion, radically”
Totally, annie. I think the new media are really helping move this along. All those flashmobs are incredibly inspiring. And the videos coming out of Palestine. And BDS. But basically people expect fairness from Israel and all they see is cruelty. Plus whining.
oh darn it! i was editing my ‘strategies’ to strategy while you were copy pasting!
thanks seafoid
Annie, this is a really intriguing post. Interesting observation of what Finkelstein was talking about. You grabbed me at more than anything else what pushes international law? i heard lobel from the center for constitutional rights speak recently.
public opinion changes and societies change and then laws change
which is why Zionists have been doing the Bernays/Media control thing for 100 years in the US: control that public opinion, with propaganda if necessary, truth doesn’t matter. [Note to others, don't even start with the that's anti-semitic schtick, I'm immune, and we all know it's true. They're doing it to Goldstone right now.]
There’s a neuroscientific aspect to this, surprisingly only nailed down via MRIs in the 21st C. “Behavior creates culture, and culture rewires the brain.” Everyone (scientists) thought the brain alone determines behavior — in the sense that as you think, so will you act — but it goes the other way as well. [Which is why Israel is marching down a black hole allowing the settlers to act as they are, in amygdala heaven; it's what they are creating within their own culture and the kind of future Jew there that will rise up to meet them in unintended ways.]
We see the exact same thing here with the Trump/Palin/Bachmann/Santorum/Tea Party (the crazier ones) crowd. The Fox News orchestra patrons. They’re rewiring their brains with ON/OFF switches, dip and dap, good and evil reactions wired right to their amygdalas. The amygdala being the flight-or-fright mechanism; Seth Godin calls it The Lizard Brain. You can see that it’s already happened. (And interestingly enough, the abandonment of prefrontal cortex usage — which doesn’t really develop until you’re in your third decade, and must be cultivated — for exclusive amygdala usage brings your IQ down about 30 points, according to MRIs. You get stupider and stupider.) I guess it’s not for nothing that our crowd backs the similar crowd in Israel: they know their own kind.
You brought up an interesting report. I’m going to go check out Lobel.
obama’s veto @ the UN? Backfired. Wait until the US vetoes the formation of a Palestinian state. . . .which it will do, probably based on all the events that just happened and will happen more in the coming months.
i am just watching Lobel now! because a poster just linked to the conference podcast on Under pressure, Cal law school ends support for conference on Palestinian rights on our front page now (read this post btw)…what a coincidence huh!
MRW, i will come back and comment more later on your ideas, after i watch listen to his speech again.
My head is reeling from all this. I’m going to put the conference podcast on my iPad and go sit in a bar and watch it. You really struck a nerve in me with that post. So I’ll catch you mañana.
PS, dont miss Al-Jazeera’ documentary on Finkelstein. It explains all. I would have loved his mother.
i’ve watched american radical at least 5 times (i love it) because they play it on link tv regularly here.
Zionists have been doing the Bernays/Media control thing for 100 years in the US: control that public opinion, with propaganda if necessary, truth doesn’t matter.
they go at it from both angles. the legislating palestine conference was amazing for many reasons but a theme that ran thru it was the prevention of resolutions via the prevention of cases even being brought to trial. gwynne skinner’s lecture was very much about this and erakat’s lecture (check my last link for a link to the post here covering this) which you should find and watch very much explains the ‘inside vs and outsiders’ wrt israels vs arabs and muslims in our culture and this has permeated our justice system. lobal references erakat’s lecture and pts made by skinner.
@ 34 minutes in lobel’s lecture he relates a story of a trial whereby the claimant is required to be a citizen of a state to bring charges and becasue palestinians weren’t the international law did not apply to them. they had no right to sue under the jurisdiction of the american court because the american justice system wouldn’t recognize them (or something).
but the part that fascinated me was the people movements (i can’t recall his exact phrasing) and using loosing (like susan b anthony did) to spread her movement. so much of this of course relied in the press which is certainly not lost on zionists. it’s that control of the narrative which you mention that is completely wedded with public perception. but kids are smart and they are more into social media and the new generation is not driven by the msm, they are driven by individual voices where one tweet can get 50,000 repeats and what rises by repetition cannot be controlled so easily. google is supposed to work like this but they put their corporate jinx into it. but twitter is not controlled that way.
what we need to realize is the landscape is unpredictable and will change in ways we cannot fathom now. think of the radical difference in communication from the cell phone as opposed to 20 years ago. only 20 years. ok it was invented before that but not massive distribution, at all. so imagine a form of communication so overpowering it leaves the normal msm in the dust. now will they control it? the way media is controlled now will look like a dinosaur.
anyway..ciao
Annie, thanks.
I enjoyed Lobel with my Cabernet. As a matter of fact, when I heard him talk about one case in the early 90s, I realized I called his office to praise him then. It all came back to me.
As for what is going to produce what you discuss in your two penultimate paragraphs, I have been screaming on here about Eben Moglen for a year. (Probably many wish I would shut up.) He has the answer. When you’re washing the dishes, or putting stuff away, his 45 minute talk that set everything off is here (first 5 minutes isn’t him). He’s a great speaker to boot. (I think you did say you listened to him before. But for newbies to this concept, this intro is a must before you get to what my point is.)
link to youtube.com
But the point is that Moglen screamed into Belgium on February 5th 2011 in the middle of the Egyptian uprising to give a talk there about precisely what you reference in your two penultimate paragraphs, and told the audience of open source software developers to get to work, that it’s now urgent, that software is politics now and that no one can prevent a shutdown of the web if they make the mini-charger-sized servers he’s talking about that plug into your electrical jack, complete with the software that will fuck oppressive governments and evil regimes, and sell for under $100 (now) but will be $25 in the future…and go anywhere in your pocket. That talk is here:
link to youtube.com
He directly addresses the kind of nonsense that Tzipi Livni is trying to pass off in her FT article as enlightened thinking. Moglen calls out 21st C despotism, and talks about how the institutions of the net are trying to help the State limit, control, or eliminate freedom.
“as you think, so will you act — but it goes the other way as well. ”
This is old news. For example, Confucius insisted that the rituals of politeness make us humane, and Pascal that acting like believers would make us believe.
smart, thanks annie
my pleasure as always phil. i’m so jealous i wasn’t there when you interviewed norm. we’re so lucky to have this amazing interview here. thank you very very much.
What a great interview.
I just wonder if little old Norm from near Coney Island isn’t prone to thinking of Israel as the Pentagon looked at the Soviet Union before it all went pear shaped. Why did it take Israel 22 months to shoot down the report and why does it matter so much to them? I think Israel is in real danger of losing the ordinary goys of Europe. The decision they made to actually recognise the Palestinians in 1991 means that we expect a Palestinian state once they get to the end of the peace process. And there ain’t going to be a state. And that offends our sense of fairness. I notice from the Israeli ambassador to Ireland that Israelis are getting more and more hysterical and less plausible. And people notice those kinds of things.
When palestinians get from UN general assembly confirmation to palestine state, they can sue Israel state to ICJ their violation against of the international law. And then starts hard times to Israel.
i forgot to say GREAT INTERVIEW!
all in all, excellent. i am a huge fan of course.
Now that I read this interesting interview, I am going to have to add the Goldstone recantation to my list of dots. Here they are, just in the course of more or less 1 month – in no particular order):
1. US veto of Settlement vote and aftermath
2. Goldstone recantation (cf Finkelstein)
3. Itamar murders
4. Phone booth Jerusalem bombing
5. Gaza rockets restart, school bus rocket and Israeli response
6. Mer-Khamis murder
7. Vittorio Arrigoni murder
As I said on the other Arrigoni thread – countering LarryDerfner in particular, I am beginning to see the outline of a pattern in this cluster. Something has changed in the past 2 months. The something is leading to an escalation, and an uptick in violence – directed towards new quarters. There could well have been a decision to take off the gloves when dealing with Israel’s delegitimization. Whatever that means. It could mean that Goldstone was threatened by a lot more than a little herem, and emotional blackmail. Just as Finkelstein hints. Crazy? yes. But only because we each continue to project our own values and emotions.. What if we just look at the facts and what they try to tell us?
People often comment here on the disdain with which Israelis in general hold non-Jews; to which I’d add even worse, the hatred a very large part of the population feels toward those they perceive as “traitors”. Has anyone considered, in light of all we have seen, what Israel might be capable of, if it truly felt threatened?
Sometimes, we speak of zealotry as a kind of theoretical artefact, because we ourselves do not feel it’s pull. Almost certainly people who align themselves with human right causes would not know zealotry in themselves, almost by definition. That can lead the best of us to underestimate what the worst are capable of doing. So what of those inside a cult defined by a most potent mix of zealotry, biblical religion, sense of exceptionalism and deep existential paranoia? can people remember how shocked we all were at what the Koresh Branch Davidians were willing to do?
I wonder whether any of that gives Avishai nightmares. I kind of doubt it because I have a feeling he can’t bring himself to believe what could happen. Not till it’s happening.
Danaa, I think you are on to something. Building cover for very bad things planned.
The big plan is for the final expulsion. I didn’t expect Gaza to be included in those plans. I’m starting to wonder.
Danna,
You remind me of the religious nuts that are always making lists proving that the end of days are nigh.
I am not totally convinced you believe what you write but I am getting there.
Eee,
You remind me of the religious nuts that are always making lists proving that the end of days are nigh.
Mr. Richy-Rich of Logic strikes again. It’s the lists. The lists made me do it! “You remind me of the convicts that are always making lists showing how they can pull off a heist once they are out of jail.” “You remind me of the politicians that are always making lists proving what they’re going to do for the people.” “You remind me of the Israelis that are always making lists of what they need the US Treasury to bend over and do.” Those lists will get you every time.
I am not totally convinced you believe what you write but I am getting there.
Oh, she believes what she writes. You’re just a little slow on the uptake. Haven’t been here long enough.
Too, Danaa’s observation “Sometimes, we speak of zealotry as a kind of theoretical artefact, because we ourselves do not feel it’s pull” is an acquired wisdom. What zealot ever thought he or she was being unreasonable? Acting “out of bounds?” Especially as zealots hang together (sometimes literally, after they’ve finally been caught).
I agree, alec. And let’s not forget that Golda or one of the PMs warned that they would take everyone else down (meaning Europe) with them now that they have nukes.
“Behavior creates culture, and culture rewires the brain.”
They aren’t going to get away with it.The Zionists have always had an inflated sense of their own importance. And capabilities.
I think the Palestine papers did a lot of damage to Israel. So now they will do anything.
I was a bit skeptical at first, but… we all knew that there would be another Operation Cast Lead style operation. Like the bully whom the teachers never punish, they continue their atrocious behavior because it is implicitly (complicitly?) rewarded.
This has echoes of Operation Wrath of God. I didn’t want to see it before but pieces are starting to fit together.
danaa, re list of dots. this post Settler rabbi says, ‘It will probably come down to a war between Jews’ was posted late on march 14th, probably because of events that week including the fogel murders. but it was written the week before and the supporting news links are from 3/7-3/8 pertaining to events and the mood in israel the weekend before the fogel murders.
people forget the tense mood the country was in and of course this was not covered in the US media (hell no they don’t cover settler mania here) and it was about the issue of israel’s expansion which was partly remedied immediately upon news of the forgel slaughter.
(sorry for repeating this, i know i keep doing that but i think the context is relevant) also march 10th (days before fogel)Global unpopularity wearing down Israeli government
if he was reportedly “preparing to lay out an initiative for the phased creation of a Palestinian state” doesn’t this beg the question where is it? or is expanding itmar part of that initiative?
if in fact netanyahu said “We are in a very difficult international arena,” then what was he planning on doing about that? anything? is there any evidence whatso ever any think tanks or advisors or anyone has mapped out an agenda since then?
or have all these events over the last month scaped all of those plans? and what would he have done about Israel’s diplomatic and strategic standing, which some analysts suggest is at its lowest ebb in living memory.
is ramping up violence a strategy?
A link for Richard, enjoy, your friend the Dersh. Absolutely disgusting.
An American Academic Supports the Targeting of Innocent Israeli Civilians by Alan M. Dershowitz
That Dershowitz excerpt is an interesting one.
Dersh says: “The terrorists on the West Bank who murdered the Fogel family”. I have not heard any name of a culprit. It may have been a Palestinian, maybe not. My question: If it turns out, that it was zionist Westbank occupiers, who murdered the Fogel family, may we all in the future refer to them as “The terrorists on the West Bank”?
And one more. Dersh says: “the war criminals from Gaza who aimed sophisticated mortars at a school bus”. So Dersh knows more: Russia just asked Israe to provide evidence for the Israeli claim, that Paestinians aimed Russian “sophisticated mortars” – as Dersh calls Russian anti-tank missiles at Israel. Where half of the world asks, whether the “Nahal Oz School Bus Attack” was real or a hasbara fake, Dersh knows.
So where does Dersh get his published knowledge from. A crystal ball? Instructions from a higher power? Or is it maybe the same source, where Goldstone got his reconsideration from?
This new shtick of claiming the possibility of a “hasbara fake” for the various deaths is frankly contemptible. There is something called agnosticism. Then there is something called bull****. When Hamas says that it fired the missile that hit the bus (but didn’t know that it was carrying children) and then comes along the Mondoweiss bull**** commenters squad and says, “Where’s the proof?” this is not the case of “innocent until proven guilty”, this is a case of bull**** has taken over part of the pro Palestinian movement represented on this blog. Has the family of the dead Mer Khamis claimed that the PA is holding the wrong person? No. No matter. Let’s spread some more bull****, that’s what the new policy of too many pro Palestinian commenters has become on this web site. If you wish to associate your cause with bull**** you’re doing a great job!
This new shtick of claiming the possibility of a “hasbara fake” for the various deaths is frankly contemptible.
Really? Take a look, you missed this. link to scribd.com
Gosh, Wondering Jew, now that we know you don’t like it, we’ll be sure to stop!
You can count on it!
Bandero, go to the last panel paper Samara Esmeir presents here, it starts around 47:00 minutes into the video.
Hat tip to Lea Park’s who alerted me to the panel and Esmeir. Her really brilliant paper gives you the larger sociolegal context of these arguments. One could also call it a macro-legal perspective, I guess.
It’s about the definition of war crimes via “precision” versus non-precision weapons. That may well be the source of Dersh’s argument.
One interesting point, for me, is this. There were other reports. Perhaps some of them were made public before The Report. It appears that Goldstone and his partners were NOT warned off BEFORE The Report was issued. Why not? Were not the Israelis on guard? Was not the writing on the wall?
Why’d Israel wait so long to force the recantation (if that is what happened)? Did Israel (or whoever it was) discover threats against Goldstone so long after the fact that they did not have earlier? Hard to imagine. Mossad can always threaten to assassinate people. Done it before. Jewish terrorists killed Jews in the days before 1948. Rabin was assassinated. Why not. Was always possible.
I propose a reason. Israel has passed an interesting point.
Until The Report, Israel never cared what anyone said. Not what people said, not what diplomats or governments said. ‘What matters is what Jews do, not what goyim say’ is a semi-quote that I remember and keep in mind. Even the ICJ 7-9-2004 advisory opinion was simply blown off. BUT NOW! SUDDENLY (and after The Report had been out and people had started to talk about it), a mere writing was seen to have frightening substance (in Israeli eyes).
OK, the recantation was bad for this, and the re-recantation hasn’t caught on much. And Finklelstein’s (as usual) wonderful arguments that there was nothing “behind” the recantation hasn’t been widely bruited about. The logic of The Report is not disturbed, but, indeed, the politics of The Report is much disturbed.
BUT — The Report has shown Israel that it matters what people say. That’s a point for our side. I think Israel will be careful before doing a CL2.
Pabelmont,
It took them a long time to finish the kool-aid. After all, it is a goyische drink.
Actually, pabelmont, it makes a lot of sense. Goldstone is Jewish, and the large Diaspora crowd is here, where all their money is coming from. Maybe there are rumblings within the really monied Jewish community that none of us here aren’t hearing about, aren’t privy to, that they had to stop by getting a recantation.
I remember a small article, just a blip on the screen, about a year and a bit ago about how some really rich Jewish donors were going to withhold their money from the mid-terms and upcoming Presidential election because the Democrats weren’t doing what they promised to do in 2008. This was going on in the western half of the country. (I think, but don’t hold me to it, it involved rich Jewish donors in CA, Utah (un-hunh) and Colorado, although the latter has some real reactionaries in that department.)
On the other hand, maybe they’re just flat-out off-the-wall.
“… that’s just not how Israelis think. The Israeli mentality is, the Arabs only understand the language of force, and if they get out of hand, you have to go in with the big stick or big club and break some skulls. For Israel the big problem with Goldstone is that it was preventing them from launching future wars. That’s what they were worried about. What the Goldstone recantation did now is that it now gave them the carte blanche to attack again, to use force.” (Finkelstein)
This is a very important statement, and mostly true. However, IMHO, it misrepresents Israel’s long-standing position vis-a-vis the Arabs. For strategic reasons, Zionists in Palestine have always, almost from the beginning, maintained that “the Arabs only understand the language of force”, etc., because the Jews knew that “the Arabs” would not accept the exclusive territorial aspirations of a Jewish State of Israel, let alone Eretz Israel.
But it is incorrect to imply that the Israeli Jews actually believe that this convenient stance they have adopted has a factual basis. They know that since the founding of the State of Israel the Palestinians and other Arabs have been searching for ways to achieve some measure of peace and justice without the use of force. On the other hand, Israelis feel that they must maintain a perpetual state of war with Arabs to hold their fractious society together, to keep U.S. Jews bound to them, and to preserve the mad-dog image that they think causes Arab governments to cower down before them.
It is not “the Arabs”, but the Israeli Jews themselves, who only understand the language of force in dealing with their neighbors. Thoughtful Israelis know that this is a deeply-ingrained characteristic of their own society.
“The problem I have with your argument is, that it’s premised on the notion that Israelis think that they have another option except the resort to massive force.” (Finkelstein to Weiss)
Contrary to Finkelstein, the Israelis know they have another option. But, as I argued above, they don’t think it is in their strategic interests to abandon the state of war that has served them so well to this point. In the interests of “the army that has a country”, the war on the ground and in the air must be rekindled periodically. By definition, this is also in the interests of the Nation.
Interesting interview, and quite a bit of speculation – but at the heart of the arguments there is this desperation to find the UN and International Law legitimate to a fault. I must admit that I did not realize the depth of the desperation to find legitimacy in these instruments. Particularly this need to tenaciously hold on to a person like Goldstone because of his mainstream bona fides (and the inability to find the contradiction between mainstream and credibility).
As I have said before, to date most (in the 99th percentile) of the criminal prosecution proceeding from this body of International Law has been that of the weak and the poor hence the exploited, as well as those who would not follow the lead of the global agenda (as interpreted by the few) , that is, the dominant nations. Specifically when you look at the overall work of International Law (not necessarily all of Goldstones activity within the realm) , as an example in South Africa it was a sop which lead to the commiseration of the majority of the black population, or look at the former Yugoslavia and one finds the same trail of misery for the people, or when you look at Rwanda you find immediate actors collared but none of those who support in the background and who gained the most in the process (Western Nations). Perhaps I should have asked people to study carefully the applications of International Law?
Even Judge Goldstone himself bemoaned the facts regarding the application of International Law, I would point you to a post not long ago here –
“Still, this issue of unequal application nags. As Goldstone pointed out under questioning, there is gross unfairness in the application of international law.”
Goldstone explains why Israel is being singled out (after South Africa and Serbia)
So why was the report mounted? Because anyone who even has done a casual observance of the application of International Law can see what Judge Goldsotne admits (above quote), which causes me to greatly wonder about the posters on this site who seem to have the strangest views as to the laws viability (in application, remedy). However it should not surprise us, if we have any knowledge of law and its application in the USA – just look at who is imprisoned! Did you think that the most prominant supporter financially of the UN (USA) would have it any differently in a foreign sense than how law is applied domestically? Do you know where the UN comes from? Earth to posters, earth to posters!
Which brings me to the another point, bifurcating Israel as if it were an agent of its own with no connection to global hegemony. You think you are going to undo the actor (Israel) from the enabler (USA leading Western Hegemony, the whole gang)? I cannot fathom the cognitive gymnastics it takes to broach this subject without its context.
The UN is an instrument for US propaganda, do you think its several parts are independent? Take as an example, there is probably no one who posts here that would not fault the World Bank as an instrument of neoliberalism – but don’t you know it is a branch of the UN? The same goes for the other defunct institution, the IMF –
“The IMF and the World Bank are institutions in the United Nations system. They share the same goal of raising living standards in their member countries. Their approaches to this goal are complementary, with the IMF focusing on macroeconomic issues and the World Bank concentrating on long-term economic development and poverty reduction.”
Do they contribute to “long-term economic development and poverty reduction,” come on now, be serious. The same goes for the WTO, does the WTO look out for any peoples interests or for the elite few?
“Today, the CEB brings together executive heads from various UN bodies (agencies, programmes, funds), the WTO and Bretton Woods institutions. As it is the designated authority for promoting coherence within the UN system and wider, the CEB serves as the main instrument for executive heads to coordinate their actions and policies. The CEB meets twice a year under the chairmanship of the UN Secretary-General and reports on its activities to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).”
Than what makes you think that International Law is any different?
“Created in 1945, the United Nations is responsible for much of the current framework of international law.”
UN IS A SHOWCASE FOR US PROPAGANDA
Which brings us to the final issue, the condition of the Palestinians and the impunity of the Israelis is something only the people can address, these bodies will not go there. However, no one wants to face the responsibility, nor take the steps to correct what is transpiring. There will probably be no following comments after this post, or in regard to what was posted. You do not want to hear, know, associate with what it will take to change this, because you think this current situation is redeemable – it will just take a little reform, etc. Here is the unvarnished truth for you, do you want to do something about it? It does not matter what Goldstone said to smear the Report, it will never be substantively applied (and that is not solely the fault of the Palestinians, whatever agency – see article) because it was never meant to be applied. It is just like some of the good things the UN agencies do, feed the poor, etc. – it is a good thing to do but does not address any of the issues for the starving and poverty stricken – the reasons for their condition, it is a nice facade, just like some of the accurate reports – it is nice to have an accurate report that cannot be gainsaid but is quite useless if it is not applied.
“but at the heart of the arguments there is this desperation to find the UN and International Law legitimate to a fault”
Israel sure likes to use the UN when they so choose. When it fits in with their agenda
Absolutely Kathleen, and guess what? The UN will bark on all fours to what Israel wants, why? Because it is part of the dominant structure, or supported by such. The entire organization of the UN dances to the tune of the Security Council, and who sits there? Who are the “permanent” members? China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, that’s who, with veto power.
We could go on about this all day, but really I don’t think anyone wants to hear the truth in regard to this issue, nor do they want to take the action necessary to substantively address what needs to be done by the people. The warp and woof of the current world process is wrapped up in any substantive address, here, let me show you part of it –
THE TRUTH
I live and work currently in Japan. They have a saying here ‘koto dama.’ It would translate into something like ‘Each word has its own Spirit’ or ‘The Spirits of words.’
So, if Goldstone wrote this op-ed, and used these words, as a judge he had to be most certainly aware of how his words and wording could be and would be interpreted, abused, spun and ripped out of their context.
I agree with Finkelstein, why would a a 72 year old judge commit political suicide? It doesn’t make any logical sense to me. However, without concrete facts, I think I keep an open mind until I’m proven wrong.
Danaa: “I am going to have to add the Goldstone recantation to my list of dots …. Something has changed in the past 2 months. The something is leading to an escalation, and an uptick in violence ….”
Finklestein: “[Israel is] afraid that between Iran, Turkey and Egypt, the three main regional powers, each of them saying that they’re not going to stand idly by, that ISRAEL’S GOING TO LOSE ITS WAR OPTION, and that’s what it feared with the repercussions of the Goldstone report.”
Weiss: “Weiss offers his theory, that Goldstone issued the reconsideration because he loves Israel and wants to save it.”
Like Danaa, I have a conspiracy theory – one that offers another explanation as to why Goldstone “reconsidered.” Like Finkelstein, I believe that Israel’s chief concern about the Goldstone Report was that it placed constraints on its freedom to wage future wars of choice. Like Weiss, I think that Goldstone, in blunting the meaning of his report, was acting possibly to “save” Israel (but not in the way Weiss described).
As Danaa said, much has changed in the last two months. The Arab Spring has occurred, resulting in the overthrow of some Arab governments, and the challenging of still more, by unpredictable democratic and Islamic forces. The Israeli government has reacted with alarm and veiled disapproval. I would think that, given uncertainties about future regimes and alliances in the region, the IDF General Staff is already busy drawing up plans for a repeat of the 1967 “preemptive war”, in which Israel launched a surprise attack against Egypt and Syria.
Maintaining their “war option”, as Finkelstein calls it, is Israel’s most important consideration in dealing with the outside world. The Goldstone Report undermined that option in a way that Israel found unacceptable. Consequently, the Israelis, through various recent contacts, did indeed apply psychology pressure on Goldstone – but probably not limited to the ways others on this blog have described. Israeli officials (according to my conspiracy theory) made known to Goldstone their concerns about the rapidly changing strategic environment in the Arab world, and urged him to consider that the Jewish State may find it necessary or expedient to “defend” itself as it has in the past, without regard to the opinions of others. The survival of the Jewish people might be at stake, etc., etc.
After reflection on this and other arguments, taking into account the changed present and an uncertain future, Justice Goldstone, the good Zionist, duly “reconsidered” and issued a new opinion. The obstacle to the “War Option” was removed.
Uri Averny’s perspective on Goldstone’s change of heart–bottom line result is it paves the way for OP Cast Lead2:
link to counterpunch.org
Ramzy Baroud’s perspective on Goldstone’s change of heart–bottom-line result is the sky is the limit for Israel’s war machine:
link to counterpunch.org
Germany use to have a motto: Deutschland uber alles. The litmus test for action or inaction was the same: Is it good for the German volk?
Goldstone agreed to join & head the UN investigation committe of four to assure
Israel would not be treated unfairly. He said he was surprised by what the investigation revealed. He was thanked by being called a self-hating Jew. Much pressure was put on him for 18 months. He wrote his retractive non-retraction unilaterally for WaPo. He didn’t offer any new evidence, but yet he alluded to same, without any specificity. Israel offered no help to the original investigation. It’s own investigation was limited to the individual acts of some low-ranking IDF soldiers. This to account for the actual results of OP Cast Lead. The facts in the Goldstone Report can not be accounted for by the unilateral actions of a few rogue soldiers.
A relevant motto might be Israel uber alles. And the litmus test might be, is it good for the Jews?
Either universal human rights exist and are to be extended to all humans, or they do not, and are not. Either Never Again applies to all peoples, or not.
Which shall it be?
Goldstone chose, as a Jew and a Zionist, to join the original investigation. And now he has chosen again, as a Jew and a Zionist, to suggest said investigation was not kosher. Given the facts, including those turned up by the report bearing his name, which he was so surprised to ferret out, maybe Goldstone has been totally consistent over the time-line? Maybe even as consistent as Richard Witty.
“Either universal human rights exist and are to be extended to all humans, or they do not, and are not. Either Never Again applies to all peoples, or not.
Which shall it be?”
Come on Citizen, the time for this dance is long past. Indeed, forge ahead with BDS, but I intend a mix of activity, and not merely pointed at Israel. You know what they say -
WHEN THE MUSICS OVER
“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down
I hear a very gentle sound
With your ear down to the ground
We want the world and we want it…
We want the world and we want it…
Now
Now?
Now! ”
(Perhaps this will be more identifiable for many who post here, or this is the impression I get. Same message, time to do something is running out)
VR, I meant what you quoted to be rhetorical question; I thought this obvious from the gist of my total comment. I am sure not one dancing; those that are dancing are the likes of Mr Goldstone, and Mr Witty. My country, the USA, should have shut down their dance decades ago; instead of feeding such dancers and the bonfire they dance around–all the while praying and braying to the moon they are actually putting the fire out. I am all for BDS. I’d also cut all aid to Israel until it joins the international community. I’d also like to cut off all donations to the US chief two political parties until they quit being lackies for Israel.
I understand what you are saying Citizen, and know you are not consciously dancing – my definition of the dance is not wanting to face what it will take to stop this nightmare. By all means use BDS and throw in the rest of your desires, but I say it is not enough. The entire system has to be destroyed.
Could we please overthrow the system on some other website? Mondoweiss is devoted to practical solutions to Middle Eastern conflicts with a specific focus on the US role in the Middle East and Israel.
Capitalism/communism will not be decided here and bringing it in on a regular basis is no less distracting than the wordy tripe and nonsense which Richard Witty’s verbal dysentery spews on every thread.
Well Mr. Kinnear, I will do that when this site stops bringing up the USA as a matter of course, which is the starship of capitalism – and than starts to suggest inadequate and ill thought out ways of approaching the Middle Eastern conflict, being totally oblivious to the whole you are dealing with in the region. In fact, thanks for the confession of not even knowing why the USA is in the Middle East! However, I am sure you think your statement in response to what I posted (above) is adequate when it is nothing but ad hominem nonsense – how clever of you, my apologies for expecting more cogent response.
This is how, by putting the blinders on, books are created (like the one championed here) with no working knowledge of the history and nature of the institutions lauded – only to be embarrassed (as Finkelstein mentioned) in the process. However, no one wanted to discuss the issue when I brought up the note of caution at the beginning, because like you Mr. Kinnear they know everything there is to know about addressing the issues.
I could make some comparisons like you did with what you have posted and quite a few other posters, but what would it accomplish? Suffice it to say I have not been wrong about the outcome of any issue of concern on this site, but rather than learning from that track record you would rather hurl insults. It will take more than your thoughtless statements to deter my posts, however I am sure that with such elegant and well thought out responses like yours I will eventually be banned – than all can resume their wandering in the wilderness without interruption.
If Finkelstein objected to the way Israel conducted Cast Lead, why wouldn’t he also object to a preventive Israeli war on the scale of the 1967 war?
Weiss: “Weiss offers his theory, that Goldstone issued the reconsideration because he loves Israel and wants to save it.”
Well, I gotta admit, Weiss’s “theory” had at least one practical benefit.
It made it impossible for me to read this blog again, pretty much.
We can parse the words of his recantation, we can emphasize the importance of his AP “recantation” of the “recantation”, we can consider the denunciation of his fellow commissioners, but facts have to be faced – the Goldstone Report as a vehicle for highlighting Israeli brutality in respect of the Palestinians is dead.
No amount of teeth-gnashing is going to resuscitate it.
Mourn Judge Goldstone’s weakness, put “what might have been” in the memory bank and move on.
That’s just weak defeatism. After such a strong report, still supported by its other authors and facts on the ground, a milquetoast recantation by Goldberg really only draws attention to Israeli injustice.
No wonder the Israelis are trying to parley this into a win. Why would you be so foolish at to believe their propaganda?
Buck up guy and get back on your horse. There’s a long campaign of BDS and apartheid ahead of us.
Mr. Kinnear, that may indeed be defeatism, but the reason for the condition of the Report goes way beyond Judge Goldstone’s recant. The very nature and use of International Law should be the subject, and as I said above this is what is missing from all of the contributions. There is a difference between defeatism and recognition, we should recognize the history of this process in the UN and International Law and never give up in spite of recognizing the truth about these processes. So indeed recognize the contribution of others to the report, move on with BDS, and I would say a stronger mix is needed. The only question there is should be why continue in this cyclical process of attacking a symptom (Israel) and not recognizing the source (Western enablers)? However I realize that subject is not welcomed here, so do what you can.
Why the focus on Israel? Most egregious violation of human rights and international law among nations claiming democracy and observation of human rights. Israel claims some kind of membership in Europe. (Given their Oriental behaviour towards the Palestinians, I don’t have the faintest notion why.)
As long as Israel claims some kind of membership in the civilized world, let the Israelis live up to the standards of modern civilisation. We are asking the Croats and the Serbs to do so. And so the Israelis too.
I imagine that by bursting the pustule of Israeli treatment of Palestinians, many other instances of Western enablement will subsequently be abated, as when a fever leaves the body. Absolute world peace and harmony it will not bring, but we’ll be a lot closer.
Mr. Kinnear, “why the focus on Israel,” was not and never has been my question – it is your interpretation or deliberate attempt to twist what I posted. There has never been a denial from me about Israeli “egregious violation of human rights and international law” (as you elaborate), and as far as it (or the USA for that matter) being or claiming to be democracies reminds me of another song by Cake – Comfort Eagle -
“Take a bite of this apple
Mr. corporate events
Take a walk through the jungle
Of cardboard shanties and tents
Some people drink Pepsi
Some people drink Coke
The wacky morning DJ
Says democracy’s a joke”
COMFORT EAGLE
The real question is will International Law ever be applied to Israel, and the answer is no. It is never applied to the “in group,” dominant nations or their allies. Israel’s Orientalist behavior is aided and abetted by the European Union, as well as the USA. Nothing having to do with human rights or chiding democratic principles will ever have anything to do with the powerful, and that is because the entire structure (hence the application) belongs to the powerful and dominant nations (see my post above, VR April 16, 2011 at 4:32 am).
You confidently cite the “the Croats and the Serbs,” when that activity by International Law had nothing to do with human rights, it was because the former republic would not tow the global line and actually became successful on a socialist model (and they used another piece of junk birthed out of the UN, the IMF to bring “sweeping reforms,” besides the undo aggression) –
THE WEIGHT OF CHAINS
So I would say before you start to tout what happened and what is going on in the former Yugoslavia you check the facts. Actually, check the facts of where South Africa is today for the majority black population, or what really transpired in Rwanda. In fact, there is an interesting post here today from Seham where International Law will be used to prosecute Mubarak and his sons, how much do you want to bet – I say it gets done, it follows the pattern (which Seham seems oblivious to today, especially the Imperial activity in Libya).
I agree with you about Israel’s claim to be part of the “civilized world,” but what are the standards of modern civilization? I do not say this as a defense of Israel which commits inexcusable atrocities, I am making a plain statement – and someone has to ignore an awful lot of the “progress of civilization” (which has been used many times to attack other nations) in order to use the loaded term.
Finally, you talk about “bursting the pustule of Israeli treatment of Palestinians,” and I agree that this must be done – but it will not be done by instruments (UN’s International Law, World Bank, IMF, WTO, etc.) in the hands of the dominant nations, because in their hands it merely becomes the wish of their reprobate desires. Absolute world peace or close to it, or even moving in that direction, will not come with this so-called “leadership,” which is nothing but exploitation and domination for the few. I trust that was clear, and if not I can further elaborate.
VR,
The situation is certainly lopsided but the pendulum swings the other way when the community of states gets fed up. I don’t believe the United States ever won a case in the ICJ. It lost the fight to keep the PLO delegation out of UN Headquarters in New York (Applicability of the Obligation to Arbitrate under Section 21 of the United Nations Headquarters Agreement of 26 June 1947); the case on Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v United States of America); and Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. United States of America).
Several of the Latin American countries that recently recognized Palestine have universal jurisdiction statutes of their own, ICC harmonizing legislation, and UN model victim reparation laws. Some of their constitutions even give legal effect to UN Security Council resolutions on the settlements, Jerusalem, & etc.
The ICC just adopted an amendment on the crime of aggression over the objections of the United States. The US showed-up as a signatory observer to lobby the members of the Assembly of State Parties that serve as the legislative arm of the ICC. That amendment will go into effect in 2017. The ICC member states will be able to opt-in to protection from aggression, so it will be a no-brainer. Investigations and prosecutions will not require a Security Council referral. Most countries will probably sign-on. The ICC will probably become much more independent over time. It was created outside the UN to avoid the difficulty of amending the UN Charter. Non-members like Israel and the US will be at a disadvantage because they have no vote or say in how the Court operates.
Hostage, perhaps you should look a little more carefully at the relationship between the ICJ and the Security Council. The ICJ always defers to the Security Council and has never crossed it, and if the Security Council refuses to recognize its rulings the ICJ has no handle to be able to force the Council to comply. If it is in regard to another state, the ICJ cannot force the Council to comply. Study Chapter 7 coercive points of the UN Charter. Yes, that is right, I know exactly what I am talking about, and a wish of the community of the states in the future is somewhat of a wispy sop. Winning against the USA has never caused it to comply (such as in the case of Nicaragua, reparations were never paid).
Jurisdictional (universal) extension is useless without rulings, and rulings against Israel (in the judicial sense) have never been forthcoming. Although it is commendable that Latin American countries would create such constitutional instruments.
There are a lot of “probable” in your last paragraph in regard to aggression. All it does is put the UN in a protocol position to have all its ducks lined up for whatever aggression blessed by the security council, which has shown ample example of its lopsided tendencies, and than it axes out the ICC aggression jurisdiction. Besides all of this the only cases given to the ICC all reside in Africa, hence my earlier statements (six I believe), 23 people have been indicted. Your assessment that the ICC was created outside of the UN is a bit faulty, particularly since it initially arose as a concern for prosecution by the UN. It arose from a meeting of the General Assembly and produced the Rome Statute, and it can only prosecute crimes after April 11th 2002 after sixty countries ratified.
VR,
You’ve suggested overthrowing the present system, but you would have to replace it with yet another system of international order if you aim to hold fugitives criminally responsible. In the meantime, the moderating political views that work against superpower interests in the UN would become much less focused and ineffective. That is why so many “conservative” groups want the US out of the UN and work to cut-off funding and discredit the human rights treaty monitoring bodies.
The International Law Commission decided to create the ICC outside of the UN organization because an insufficient number of states expressed an interest in joining such a Court and in amending the UN Charter. The ILC was very surprised when the majority of states decided to rewrite the draft statute and to join the Court.
The amendment to the Rome Statute on the crime of aggression makes it clear that the Security Council does not exercise any judicial powers. Its determinations regarding acts of aggression are not binding on the Prosecutor or the Pre-Trial Chamber. At the same time, the Prosecutor can investigate and trigger the Court’s jurisdiction if the Security Council fails to take action in situations involving aggression directed against any of the member states that have opted-in. Military occupation of the territory of another state is one of the constituent acts of the crime of aggression that is enumerated in the amended statute. So, it will tend to put an end to military occupations after 2017 on the territories of the participating member states. There are international agencies that will pressure countries to opt-in. Ironically, that would naturally include the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency of the World Bank Group. Mr Fayyad and the MIGA have been running investment guarantee trust funds for the West Bank and Gaza for a long time now. See for example the The United Nations Juridical Yearbook for 1999 That step may be a wispy sop, but simply overthrowing the current political order does not guarantee any prohibition against military occupation or aggression like the deliberate devastation of Gaza. In the absence of a benevolent world dictator the prohibitions in international or interstate law against bills of attainder, letters of mark and reprisal, piracy, slavery, genocide, & the threat or use of force have always been evolutionary. They are based upon consensus building and a combination of societal forces including financial interests.
The ICJ only handles cases that are comparable to civil torts. The ICJ statute is part of the UN Charter. It can only be amended with the consent of the P5. The ICC handles criminal cases in which the consent of the accused is not required. It is independent and has its own legislative body that can amend the Rome Statute. It could decide to end the cooperation and association agreement with the UN. The members have an equal say, and the majority of the world’s states have chosen to join. The African states were self-referrals with the exception of the situation in Dafur and Libya. There isn’t any doubt that crimes within the jurisdiction of the court were committed in either of those cases. It remains to be seen if the Prosecutor will act on information contained in the expert panel follow-up reports on the Israeli and Palestinian investigations or on the basis of the PA declaration. The fact that the Court’s complimentary jurisdiction went into effect in 2002 does not prevent member states from prosecuting crimes committed before that date under their own national statutes. In fact, that is how the majority of war crimes investigations are supposed to be conducted under the ICC regime, e.g. link to justice.gc.ca
FYI, the ICJ has subjected the decisions of the Security Council to judicial review, and the Court has held that some of those decisions have violated international law. The Security Council has never been provided with its own armed forces, so it has no means of compelling the members to obey an illegal decision or enforce illegal sanctions. In the Bosnia genocide case, Judge Lauterpacht found that the Security Council arms embargo had denied the Bosnians the means to defend themselves against the crime of genocide. Lauterpacht noted that, while the decisions of the Security Council preempt the conventional obligations of the member states, the Security Council is unconditionally bound by jus cogens norms. The matter was addressed to the Security Council as a provisional measure during the proceedings. See para 98 on Page 64 through para107 on page 71 link to icj-cij.org
The failure of the Security Council to end the Gaza blockade despite reports of malnutrition among the poor or to end the ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinians constitutes a similar situation. The occupation and apartheid situation in Southwest Africa/Namibia resulted in several ICJ cases. I expect the situation in Palestine will be referred to the ICJ again for an opinion on colonialism and apartheid. That might also trigger an ICC investigation and prosecutions.
Hostage, I appreciate you’re time in addressing this subject, but let me clarify my position and you’re assumptions in regard to these institutions. My designs are the total undoing of the current world system, that is, leveling the playing field – bringing it to a round table of equality if you please. The current system of “international order” (as you say) is fatally flawed.
Which brings me to my second point in regard to assumption about these institutions, that they have no intention of holding criminal fugitives responsible if they represent the current dominant structure in this current world system. It is an oxymoron to think that this global system as represented in the UN, which was born of dominant design will change its colors and suddenly hold all countries equally responsible – and none of its activity to date should give any one any hopes that it will change. The UN plainly, does not work against superpower interests, it enhances them by never revealing (to this point) any of the designs of the dominant in the world behind the scenes of all manner of criminal activity for their enrichment and hence power. This makes suspect all of the rosy predictions of what is supposed to come by your unfolding case scenario.
Regardless of what the US seems to do, or as you say those conservative groups, the US activity in the UN process is unquestionable with the holding of a permanent seat on the Security Council. So the conservative groups can cry all they like (and they do even those those in the know do it deceptively) but the UN and its cognates is the goose that laid the golden egg for the USA and capitalistic entourage. That is because the UN will never adjudicate the system which has brought untold wealth to the few and misery to all others, it is not even conceivably on the docket. The assumptions in the creation of the UN will help to solidify and legitimize the actions of the few (and has done so repeatedly to this point, only questioning on the slightest quarter in order to maintain face as a valid institution in the eyes of the people). The UN also lionizes the state apparatus all over the world, which has been a means of division and has been duly exploited by the dominant (for which the Hegelian state was designed, walking as it says as god on earth).
You keep making these repeated statements about the ICC being created outside the purview of the UN which is just not true, it was initially proposed by the UN body.
“The Preparatory Commission for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court was established by resolution F of the Final Act of the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, which adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 17 July 1998…The United Nations General Assembly, in resolution 53/105 of 8 December 1998, requested the Secretary-General to convene the Preparatory Commission, in accordance with resolution F, from 16 to 26 February, 26 July to 13 August and 29 November to 17 December 1999, to carry out the mandate of that resolution and, in that connection, to discuss ways to enhance the effectiveness and acceptance of the Court…The General Assembly, in resolution 56/85 of 12 December 2001, requested the Secretary-General to reconvene the Preparatory Commission, in accordance with resolution F, from 8 to 19 April and from 1 to 12 July 2002, to continue to carry out the mandate of that resolution and, in that connection, to discuss ways to enhance the effectiveness and acceptance of the Court. The Secretary-General was also requested to undertake the preparations necessary to convene, in accordance with article 112, paragraph 1, of the Rome Statute, the meeting of the Assembly of States Parties to be held at United Nations Headquarters upon the entry into force of the Statute in accordance with article 126, paragraph 1, of the Statute…”, etc.
So I fail to see why you keep striking this point, except for those who are not aware what transpired, perhaps you will get their ear, the Goldstone Commission certainly did.
Again, all of the ideas in regard to occupation (not necessarily in the sense of the Israeli occupation) do not need to be direct actions of force, we have an entire era of covert activity which it is not necessary for a soldier to lay a foot on any territory from the aggressive dominant country. See the history of even the last 50 years for an example. Plus systemic carnage takes a large enough toll, built into the warp and woof of global commerce, etc.
You mention all the members states joining under the auspices of the ICC willingly, yet the majority of African states in many ways have been made the mere vassals of the dominant nations and have been beholden to massive cash infusions (while stripped of their own capacities for self-sustenance) and were told that they must join in order for the monetary support to be forthcoming. So they self-referrals under the umbrella of monetary coercion.
“The African states were self-referrals with the exception of the situation in Dafur and Libya. There isn’t any doubt that crimes within the jurisdiction of the court were committed in either of those cases.”
Since you have the propensity for stepping in the middle of things with inference, lets take Darfur as an example, I have read the several charges. However, once again, in all of the charges forthcoming I never read any of the dominant nation activity in the background driving the tragedy, which I addressed quite some time back in 2007 –
“Western Hegemony writers will continue to “expose” the fighting, or the bare facts of atrocities, but never expose the elements behind the war(s) or the genocide. It is just “old animosities” that suddenly are supposed to explode. Or, as in the case of Darfur, it is merely “Muslims” rather than the power struggle engendered by natural resources and who will control them, or be the benefactor of the foreign investment or the largess for the resources.”
WILL THE REAL DARFUR PLEASE STAND UP
The “real players” and investors in the conflict will never be exposed – I know, I have read the indictments. So here is something which is currently transpiring which still does not expose the dominant nations – it merely strikes at the immediate actors (which is a recurring theme in the forthcoming judgments issued by the international judicial bodies). Once again showing us the structure of the address of the “law.”
“It remains to be seen if the Prosecutor will act on information contained in the expert panel follow-up reports on the Israeli and Palestinian investigations or on the basis of the PA declaration.”
Shall I make a prediction in regard to this which will cause more future embarrassment? I won’t, because “to be right” is not the extent of my design, but to end the current processes is my goal. However, I will say it will not end without great upheaval, and must be global in scope.
I want to bring up one other misconception here, which is foundational to this entire process of legal movement. That is the dangerous idea that there is some sort of “rule of law,” when there is nothing but the law of rule. The idea of the rule of law was meant to replace the idea of fiat law by the few, or as a form of divine right. It implies (the rule of law) that there is some form of objective law equally applied, when this is not the case at all. That is because the presiding body of any state, that is its government and consequent institutions are merely the franchise of an elite – therefore, the structure of the attendant laws (and the findings of the declared corpus) always favor the few.
It is in not ascertaining the nature of the given states that we dash ourselves upon the rocks of the declared laws (which mirror one another in the states). The state is the make-up primarily of class distinctions, hence “law and order” should be seen as its opposite, order and law. Order not in the sense of the opposite of chaos, but order in the sense of maintaining the class order and the rule of the dominant few. Because this is the major design of any and all states as currently structured (with few exceptions), any body which raises itself as the overall beneficent adjudicator of law will hold the same class prerequisites – nothing else will be allowed. The only remedy either severally or totally in the sense of the current global system, is the overthrow of such by the people.
VR,
You still haven’t explained how people living in other jurisdictions will be held accountable for the events in Darfur. I don’t view the UN as being more permanent than the League of Nations. However, 90 percent of the rules and practices that states have adopted to govern their mutual relations are codified in UN resolutions or their annexes. I don’t expect consensus on all of those issues to change very much.
The General Assembly and UNHRC have asked to have the Diplomatic Conference of the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to reconvene on several occasions. That doesn’t make the conference a UN gathering. The ICC is not an organ of the United Nations. The Rome Diplomatic Conference chose NOT to adopt the draft statute that the UN General Assembly had proposed. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has not rejected the Palestinian declaration. His term of office expires in June of 2012. He has already indicted former and sitting heads of state, including Charles Taylor and Al-Bashir. So, he can hardly be relied upon to go easy on the partners of corrupt western or regional powers.
In any event we are discussing crimes for which no statute of limitations applies. The only way that current and former leaders of the US, UK, & etc. will be guaranteed to escape prosecution is if the all of the survivors or friends and families of the victims agree to stop their on-going attempts to hold them criminally liable. That isn’t very likely to ever happen.
Very well Hostage, you wait for the prosecution you call inevitable, and if it occurs lets see if some remedy is forthcoming. In the meantime nothing I posted is deniable, we will let others judge which scenario describes present reality – your explanations of moving toward some form of justice or what I have posted. In order to hold to your position (which I will call pie in the sky) you have to deny political influence on the development of law, and that wealth and power will not tip the scales of global proportions. In order to hold my view one just has to do a cursory examination of current affairs, either foreign or domestic.
I would say that some of what you posted is at least doubtful. The ICJ has ruled against the superpowers and the Security Council in the past, and there are more than 50 countries today where former US, UK, and Israeli officials have been threatened with prosecution by human rights groups for the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, e.g. Could Tony Blair be tried for war crimes? & Bush’s Shrinking World
It is no secret that many of those lawyers are employed by non-governmental organizations that are funded by rival governments.
A great deal of damning evidence against US officials also came out of allied governments, including the UK Iraq Inquiry. The Mirror article mentioned above was written before the Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala adopted the amendment on the crime of aggression. It explains that two senior Foreign Office lawyers, Sir Michael Wood and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, told the UK government Iraq inquiry the invasion was against international law and amounted to a “crime of aggression”. Human rights lawyer Sir Geoffrey Bindman said: “I would not be surprised if a prosecution were attempted in the UK. The difficulty would be to establish his personal responsibility for specific crimes against UK law.” He said there would be serious difficulties in making the case but these were not “insurmountable”.
The UK is an ICC member state. However, it has no enabling municipal legislation for prosecuting the crime of aggression directly. The principle of nullum crimen sine lege probably would not be considered applicable to future harmonizing legislation, since the conduct in question has been an international crime since 1945.
In Regina v Jones (2002) the Law Lords said:
There are just too many ambitious lawyers and rival states lined-up to dismiss the probability of future prosecutions.
Hostage, I believe you are jettisoning reality and fact for, what we have as definitive historical fact, for speculation. You are welcome to speculate all you like, and “no crime, no punishment without a previous penal law” being shelved in numerous instances for the powerful is not something that has been practiced in the least. There is just nothing substantively forthcoming. Why is this the case?
One can look as an example at the serpentine definition of genocide in legal development and find the same course apparent in any of the war crime, aggression and crimes against humanity development in reference to the powerful. In reference to genocide one sees the template of what will happen with these other possibilities (I will not use the term probability, because it requires evidence of track record which is just not there).
In the past I have posted in regard to the changing definition of genocide in order to excuse the aggressions of the powerful, which has now been enshrined not only in legal chronology but is taught in every institution of higher learning. Back in 2008 –
“This form of genocide exclusivity in regard to genocide is used as a shield, while countries commit genocide, a classic case example being what Israeli Zionists have and are doing to the Palestinians. However, they are not alone, this same exclusivity has been built into the warp and woof of the United States, and other strong nations which excuse themselves from genocide of the past, present, and the future because they do it without goose-stepping. You could call it an unspoken unholy alliance.
The notion of hundreds of thousands dying while not foreign to genocide, does not relate to a need for the extermination of hundreds of thousands or a majority of a population. This is because even the definition of “genocide” is misconstrued. The definition of the word is genos (Greek) meaning “type,” and the Latin word cide, killing which someone would think means killing a group by Lemkin who coined it. When you read Lemkin’s formulation of the word genocide, nothing requires the total killing of a group or all (most) of the members. Not the eradication of a gene pool. Chapter 9 of Axis Rule.
“…destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves [even if all of the individuals in the group themselves survive]. The objective of such a plan would be the disintegration of political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity…”"
GENOCIDE: SILENCING THE VICTIMS MORALLY AUTHORITATIVE VOICES
Peruse it at your leisure, it speaks for itself although not exhaustively. I have a very busy schedule today and must be off.
I’ve already commented on the topic of genocide myself. However, the trend in cases like Jorgic v Germany and Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu is to apply Lemkin’s broader definition of genocide in which physical destruction of the members of the group isn’t necessary. The editors and regular contributors to the genocide journal that recently discussed Israel and its policies of ethnic cleansing include jurists and heads of university law departments who provide continuing education to attorneys that practice in the ICJ and ICC.
There are offers to fund cases in the ICJ against the US, UK, or Israel, e.g. Qatar to pay for taking Israel to ICJ The non-aligned states have the votes in the General Assembly to request advisory opinions on the blockade and the law of the seas any time they’d like.
“There are offers to fund cases in the ICJ against the US, UK, or Israel, e.g. Qatar to pay for taking Israel to ICJ ”
Um-hmm. Will they be paying for cases against Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya as well?
Will they be paying for cases against Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya as well?
Qatari-financed Al-Jazeera broadcasts shows critical of all other governments in the Arab world. It has probably done a more effective job of exposing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen than some human rights groups like HRW or AI. Qatar provided flights from a base in Crete to help enforce the Libyan No-Fly-Zone. and has backed the call for President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s resignation and creation of an opposition-led national unity government in Yemen.
The new governments in Egypt and Tunisia have charged former leaders, their family members, and political allies with crimes. They have not asked for assistance in conducting prosecutions.
Perhaps I should have been more explicit about my gloom – I believe that the recantation has killed any prospect of the report ultimately being referred to the ICC, which, if it occurred, would have made it impossible for even the US MSM to ignore.
As to the fight against apartheid and BDS, bring it on!!
The Palestinians have already referred the Gaza situation to the Office of the Prosecutor and have accepted the jurisdiction of the Court in accordance with Article 12 of the Statute. The Prosecutor can start investigations on his own initiative based upon information from open sources, like the Dugard, Goldstone, AI, and HRW regarding crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.
The jurisdiction of the ICC can only be triggered if the state(s) with jurisdiction are unable or unwilling to conduct investigations and prosecute the responsible individuals. “Unwillingness” (Article 17) includes “The proceedings were or are being undertaken or the national decision was made for the purpose of shielding the person concerned from criminal responsibility for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court”
Jordan and Comoros are member states of the Arab League, OIC, and ICC. I think either might be able to make a State Party referral using the Dugard-Arab League FFM report. The Mavi Marmara was flagged in Comoros and was bringing humanitarian aid to assist Gaza with an illegal blockade. The peace treaty between Israel and Jordan contained a safeguarding clause (Article 3(2)) with respect to any territories that came under Israeli military control in 1967. All the reports cite crimes in the West Bank and the 2004 Advisory Opinion in the Wall case. At the least, the Palestinians will try for recognition of statehood and leverage the threat of ICC prosecutions for concessions from the Israeli side. Realistically, that is why recognition of statehood is “counter-productive” to Israel’s plans for more and more “peace process”.
If getting Goldstone’s recantation was this important to Israel, maybe it was important enough for Israel to conduct a false-flag operation to motivate it.
So, were The New York Times a good paper, any journalist worth their own word would publish the earlier version, or leak it.
interesting thought. But who would that be at the New York (bloody) Times?
Intense
Finkelstein: “But they don’t think in terms of other options. There’s only one option, the big club.”
Are there any examples of times where Israel did not operate like this?
Finkelstein :” I think the main consequence of the Goldstone Report is that for the first time Israel was being threatened not only with a decline in public opinion, support for it, but for the first time it was going to have to face significant consequences, the most dramatic of which was the possibility of being hauled before the International Criminal court but even short of that, the difficulty of its officers and diplomats to travel abroad. And also because of these threats of legal culpability the very real difficulty for Israel to launch future wars, and that for Israel is a disaster. Israel without the war option is their nightmare scenario.”
Being pulled in front of the International Criminal Court is what jumped out at many of us as soon as the Goldstone Report came out.
Finkelstein: “What they’re afraid of is that an Egypt led by a figure like ElBaradei, a comparable figure to Erdogan in Turkey, just won’t let Israel carry on in their reckless and ruthless fashion. Just like Erdogan said when Israel was saber-rattling against Lebanon on, a half year ago, Erdogan visited Beirut and said “Israel cut it out.” Now you know ElBaradei gave an interview a week and a half ago, in which he said the same thing.”
And Andrea Mitchell, Richard Engel, Rachel Maddow and others started undermining El Baradei the minute that they could during the Egyptian uprising. El Baradei has also brought up over and over again that Israel should sign the Non proliferation treaty.
My questions for Finkelstein: I wondered immediately why Goldstone had not gone to the other UN committee members. Protocol and all of that.
So if committee members have been threatened in any way shape or form is there a requirement for an investigation by the UN into those threats? A hearing and investigation into those threats?
And are you saying thatbecause Goldstone questions whether Israel had stated or written “intentions” to kill civilians that this has discounted the whole report? When it comes down to being brought in front of the International Criminal Court for war crimes. What do written or stated policies have anything to do about the facts on the ground?
The numbers dead
Hey Phil did you ask Finkelstein about any personal threats that he received. He is so amazing. So willing to stand up for what he believes based on facts even at a personal cost. Amazing person
Went back to read parts of this:
“Did you introduce yourself?
I spoke. I said, just be fair. I asked him, as a Jew, as everything, be fair. I told him this is an important moment. Either you’re going to get Palestinians to finally believe that Jews can be decent or not– so be fair. Don’t stretch the truth, there’s no need to embellish it, just be fair. I was a little hopeful because he said, to a room full of people, there have been many reports issued on what happened, and we shouldn’t forget the Dugard report [for the Arab League]. That made me hopeful that the Goldstone report would be of quality because he respected Dugard, and Dugard had come down very hard on Israel.
Do you remember that he told Bill Moyers he would have nightmares the rest of his life after what he saw in Gaza?
What I remember was Goldstone said how fearful he was to go to Gaza because he was afraid he would be kindaped. And then he was really moved by the generosity and warmth of the people. And this was such a terrible betrayal of that. That would give me a nightmare– to betray their generosity and warmth this way.”
Just makes me weep. For so many Goldstone coming out and reporting in a way that trumped his own emotional attachments based on the facts impressed so many of us. Gave so many hope. As Finkelstein so clearly points out Goldstone partially rolling over just does not add up. Not contacting the other members of the committee, an op ed in the WaPo after being turned down by the Times, clarification after the op ed in the Associated Press. I am with Finkelstein a man as brilliant as Goldstone had to know exactly what he was doing
I hope the appropriate body at the UN investigates any threats or pressures directed towards any of the committee members should be documented. And those who threatened or pressured held accountable.
“As Finkelstein so clearly points out Goldstone partially rolling over just does not add up. Not contacting the other members of the committee, an op ed in the WaPo after being turned down by the Times, clarification after the op ed in the Associated Press. I am with Finkelstein a man as brilliant as Goldstone had to know exactly what he was doing
I hope the appropriate body at the UN investigates any threats or pressures directed towards any of the committee members should be documented. And those who threatened or pressured held accountable.”
Kathleen, I do not find it shocking, what has happened. Also, if you think it is merely Israelis or “the Jews” that are responsible for this, you do not know what interests are involved (read my other posts in this section). In other words it was not merely Israel that pressured Goldstone, I believe it was the entire structure which is set for very limited agenda with International Law. My sources tell me it was more than Israel, it was the entire bloc of Western Hegemony – and there are more sources of threat there than anything which Israel could mount alone. We could say this was Goldstone’s retirement plan, if you please.
If you are waiting for some investigation from the UN body you are in for a long wait, it will not occur. That is because you have the operation of the UN complicit in the process which caused Goldstone’s recant. This is because the operations of the UN are nothing you conceive of, not just you but others on this site – it is a shame because when no one wants to face the truth there will be no remedy.
Finkelsteins site
link to normanfinkelstein.com
I agree with Finkelstein 100%.
“If he did it. I’m still not convinced… This is purely speculative, I’m the first one to acknowledge it, but I don’t think that what he wrote was the product of his volition or reconsideration. ”
It was my immediate gut reaction to first hearing about Goldstone’s recantation.
I remain in awe of Finklestein’s critical and scrupulously methodical analyses of the evidence. I also admire and highly respect the fact that he thoroughly considers his analyses before positing any opinions. I, on the other hand, shoot from the hip, using my only defensive weapon – common sense. I mean, come on.
Merely passing this along:… from today’s [18 Apr 11] OpinioJuris.
link to opiniojuris.org
Israel’s Changes in Response to the Goldstone Report
by Kevin Jon Heller
Publicly, Israel has been nothing but critical of the Goldstone Report. Netanyahu responded to Goldstone’s recent partial retraction, for example, by calling for the “twisted and nonfactual” Report to be thrown “into the dustbin of history.”…
may be of some interest to your readers
>> Merely passing this along:… from today’s [18 Apr 11] OpinioJuris.
. . .
>> Israel’s Changes in Response to the Goldstone Report
>> by Kevin Jon Heller
Taken at face value, that is positive news.