Haaretz says the State Department has clambered on to the Richard Goldstone statement in the Washington Post to say that Israel committed no war crimes in Gaza. Astonishing-- a nullification of everything that Obama said about protecting civilians in Libya:
State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said that the Obama administration read the op-ed "with great interest," adding that the U.S. Government did not see any evidence that the Israeli Government committed any war crimes, nor did it intentionally target civilians.
Toner observed that in light of the op-ed, it appears that "Justice Goldstone has reached the same conclusion." He commended Israel, saying that the U.S. administration believes that Israel "has undertaken credible internal processes to assess its own conduct of hostilities".
So is the outcome of all this that the Palestinians will be indicted for war crimes for actions that killed four civilians and the Israelis will be blessed for the killing of nearly 400 children?
Like Witty, the entire goddamn State Department hasn’t actually read the report.
Anyone else think this smells of long phone calls between Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu? And then the way Mondoweiss itself suddenly found itself blitzed with new Israeli voices all bleating in unison with our usual suspects.
Somebody put a lot of effort into orchestrating this.
Totally agree with that.
I think whoever is behind this is clearly overestimating its hand. Truth is few people know about the Goldstone report so the old man getting cold feet will not change much (plus the report still stands).
People do know that there was roughly one “Israeli DEFENSE Forcer” (aka soldier but thankfully we have the sophistication of the Israeli propaganda) dead for every hundred Palestinian dead (13vs 1400).
And people do know that civilian objectives (poultry farm and bakeries…) were hit.
So I understand Phil has a stake in the significance of the Goldstone report but let’s not forget the big picture here. Palestinians have been slaughtered.
Also can someone remind me on what grounds “Hamas” is demonized by the Israelis? What is the argument for considering these people untermensch? Just that they are not as subservient as their Fatah counterparts? The way we let the Israelis spread the idea that opposing them with some backbone is a mortal sin is a big mistake. What is the Hamas guilty of that is different from the PLO in the 70s? They always make it sound (including Phil) that as long as people were “Hamas” during Cast Lead, shooting them down like rabbits was fair game. And Hamas rings to people hears in the Western world like “Hussein”, “Amadinejahd” or “Gaddafi”. What gives? Can someone remind me what the Israeli have against them to brand them untermensch?
This was all a dog and pony show to sell the US torpedoing any effort in the UN to hold Israel account for its crimes against humanity to the American public. That’s why Goldstone’s “retraction” appeared in the Washington Post. This whole thing is, very probably, a PR stunt meant to sell to the American public.
Nobody in the rest of the world would buy this shit.
“Can someone remind me what the Israeli have against them to brand them untermensch?”
Suicide bombing after suicide bombing after suicide bombing. Not to mention rocket attack after rocket attack after rocket attack. And must you use a Nazi reference?
If Israelis are going to act like Nazis, they’re going to be referred to as such.
Robert Fisk: Ariel Sharon.
They may not use the word “Untermenschen,” but what’s the difference?
“Can someone remind me what the Israeli have against them to brand them untermensch?”
Because zionism, the “Jewish state” and contemporary jewish identity are not viable without Enemies (and war)?
Read Avraham Burg in Haaretz: When the walls come tumbling down
link to haaretz.com
“Anyone else think this smells of long phone calls between Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu?”
Just wrong
N’yahu helping C’ton for 2016? (“Winning is not just the main thing, it’s everything” ??) (Think not what you can do for your country or for the world or for peace or for justice or for the rule of law; think only of what holding political power can do for you, for your own feelings of ubermenschlichkeit). Obama’s slogan for 2012 : “I’ not an actual troglodyte”.
In that case we can expect the US to support the trying of Livni, Barak and Olmert in the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Since they’re innocent they’ll be exonerated. Let’s see the State Department/Obama Administration walk the talk on this. Let’s see Livni get on a plane and fly to the UK and let herself be arrested under universal jurisdiction for war crimes, confident in the knowledge she’s not a war criminal.
Unfortunately the British Government has just within the last day changed the law on Universal Jurisdiction. Israeli war criminals are now free to come and go as they please with complete impunity thanks to the Prime Minister David Cameron who is a fanatical Zionist(his Government also voted against the Goldstone Report claiming it was Hamas that started hostilities). He said changing the law would be one of the first things he would do if elected. Universal Jurisdiction still stands “claims” the Government but the Attorney General will now be able to veto any arrest warrant by a private prosecution on political grounds. This will apply no doubt to Mousa Kousa who will be given amnesty despite his blood drenched record including the Pan Am bombing of 1988 which he was almost certainly involved in.
I’ll bet the British public is going to just love being forced to welcome Mousa Kousa by their own Prime Minister.
Universal jurisdiction is the “dead horse” of international law. It is much too great of a threat to the impunity of the political leaders of the major powers. The Security Council always had a veto over prosecution in the ICC:
Article 16, “Deferral of investigation or prosecution”: “No investigation or prosecution may be commenced or proceeded with under this Statute for a period of 12 months after the Security Council, in a resolution adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, has requested the Court to that effect; that request may be renewed by the Council under the same conditions.”
The African Union, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Conference States have noticed that the new Court is not prosecuting obvious cases of western war crimes. So, they have adopted their own veto powers in cases like Al Bashir.
The ICC was established outside of the UN organization due to the difficulties involved in amending the UN Charter. It has its own legislative organ, the Assembly of State Parties which can (and has) adopted amendments to its own statute without UN consent. So, the situation may improve over time. If not, it will end-up on the scrap heap of history like the League of Nations and other attempts at international cooperation and organization.
Universal Jurisdiction and the ICC will end up on the scrap-heap of history — like the Fourth Geneva Convention and anything else the USA is pleased to get rid of in the interest of imperial efficiency (and favors to friends), consistent with its utter indifference to (if not hatred for) human rights.
The Assembly of State parties recently adopted an amendment to enable the Court to exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. The US lobbied against it but lost the battle.
It may actually help turn the Security Council back into a political body. Unlike UN subsidiary organs, the Court is not legally bound by a non-judicial determination by the Security Council that an act of aggression has occurred. If the Security Council fails to act to protect one of the member states, the Court can start an investigation and prosecute individuals on its own behalf.
Not that the US State Department needed any evidence or pretext to vindicate Israel of any wrongdoing. The Op-Ed was simply a bonus — See we told you so.
Case closed. Don’t be surprised if the U.S. Congress now demands Goldstone and the HRC for a formal apology. And Goldstone “will” apologize.
sajepress
If the oil sheiks hadn’t agreed to go along with it, it would not have happened. The set-up to exonorate Israel was perfectly choreographed; Israel had only the US to worry about and the US had only the sheiks to worry about and the sheikhs had no one to worry about. La vie est belle; Israel can keep on stealing and killing with nothing to worry about. Pity the Palestinians and what’s in store for them because of this US decision.
I don’t know that it had to be orchestrated. This is done by reflex. These are government bureaucrats who are paid to lie, and of course our State Department always pretends its allies are sweetness and light. If anything, I like to see things put on the record like this–it makes it clear to everyone just what we’re dealing with. The Arab world can look at it and tell exactly who Obama really is, in case they had any lingering illusions.
It’s always been like this–if you have the time, there’s a very long New Yorker article that came out in 1993 that was later made into a book (yes, it’s a very long article and a short book) about the massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador. The point is, if you read it you’ll see State Department people lying their rear ends off about the mass murder of 700 people. It’s just another day at the office.
link
Phil, though, is a little naive to be astonished. I hope that was just rhetorical. Did he seriously expect anything different?
Congress had already shot it down with its non-binding resolution. What State is doing now is simply laying of the groundwork for another kick at the can by Israel. Hamas has to be neutralized to clear the way for a bit of elections and for Abbas to give away what little is left of the store.
.” Did he seriously expect anything different?”
Many of us keep hoping and pushing.
I’m disgusted but not surprised in the least. Our politicians are sooo corrupt it’s a freakin’ joke and the people en mass should demand the legal right to punch them square in the nose.
Uhhhhk! So morally low I can’t even look at the dirty, dirty Obamites.
Not astonishing – predictable.
I’m glad our State Department responds to the facts as they come in.
This is the same State Department that dismissed the report as flawed and baseless when it first came out in September 2009.
So long as you think you did your part to defend Israel, that’s truly what counts. Whether anyone buys into that shtick anymore is irrelevant. It’s your sense of accomplishment that’s important.
This is the same State Department that dismissed the report as flawed and baseless when it first came out in September 2009.
Exactly. It’s not as if the op-ed made State change it’s mind about the report. I suspect that this is the way things will go (barring further clarification by Goldstone, one way or another): Those who dismissed the report as a “blood libel” will continue to do so, and those who took it seriously will not be swayed by a wishy-washy op-ed that doesn’t actually change anything. I really find it hard to believe that anyone affected by the report will now think “Oh, it was all just a big misunderstanding but, thankfully, the Israelis have cleared that up now.”
You guys are missing the point. This is about getting to first base on the narrative that is told to the American public. Right now, most of them don’t even know this report exists, let alone who Richard Goldstone is. The first thing that these Americans are going to learn about it is Goldstone’s “retroactive” prevarications in the WaPo op-ed.
This whole exercise has been about dumping another layer of cement over the heads of the American electorate so that the truth can never reach them. This has been an exercise in poisoning that well before the majority of Americans even get the chance to take a sip.
Israel is convinced that as long as they can play the whole United States collectively as dupes, nothing else matters.
Chaos,
I’m sure you have a better feel for the American public than I do, but it strikes me that those who have never heard of Goldstone will not care one way or the other about an op-ed he has written, or the reiteration of standing State Department policy with a little twist.
The majority of those that read of the op-ed brouha only, will conclude “another smear job of Israel”, NOT “awareness of the condition of Palestinians”.
And, that is because the effort will be to angrily smear Israel rather than an effort to inform the world of the condition of Palestinians.
Most in the world sympathize with idea that civilians should not be shelled. They do NOT hold the view that ‘any means are justified in resistance’. They do not conclude that ‘international law sanctions violent resistance’.
It is only a small minority that that think of Hamas as ‘moral leadership’ rather than ‘violent troublemaker’.
And, that so few are aware of Palestinian conditions, is the fault of the left, that they adopt in the slightest any concept that allows for the elimination of Israel as part of its “information campaign”.
And, if one is to believe Palestinian militants, they don’t want to be presented as victims desiring mass education of their tragic condition. They want vindication.
And whose fault is that? You were flaming the Goldstone report before you even laid a proverbial finger on it. You were right up there with other Zionist Jews, holding hands to bar Goldstone from his own grandson’s bar mitzvah.
What? Because if we don’t support you and your extended family in the wholesale slaughter of every man, woman and child within fifteen kilometers of anyone identifying themselves as Hamas, then we’re working with the terrorists?
The only one making mass murder possible, Witty, is you and your ilk. You’re the one with offspring in zealot indoctrination camp, not me.
Parallel universe!
For a change, you are lying about my views.
I defended Goldstone’s right to attend his grandchild’s bar mitzvah, and I stated that Israel should take the report seriously and implement the suggested reforms.
I did not use the report as a weapon against Israel, to enable Hamas terror to continue as ‘sanctioned by international law’.
A terrorist is a person with a bomb but without an air force.
Witty, you straw man the report as simply a weapon of Hamas. You are no different from the right-wing nationalist, eee who links BDS with Hamas as well.
I honestly do not understand why you post here when we have known you for years. Nothing gets past us – you are transparent.
Why don’t you spam another blog? What do you gain here by posting the same inane incoherent claptrap over and over, only to have it deconstructed over and over? You’re not getting to anyone. You’re a distraction.
Or maybe thats what you enjoy – the attention. Sad.
Who did Richard?
Palestinians have the legal right to armed resistance against “colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination” (as articulated in the 1977 Additional Protocols 1 to the Geneva Conventions) but they have to observe the same Geneva Conventions as regular armies eg. don’t target civilians, treat POWs properly and in the event they were militarily occupying Israel they’d have all the same obligations as Israel does as the occupying power in Palestine.
Who is claiming Palestinians have the right to terrorise Israelis? Why is it you obsess over “Hamas terror” but gloss over the exponentially larger amount of “terror” Israel practices daily (a multitudes of actions illegal under Geneva Conventions) in order to maintain control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories?
“Right now, most of them don’t even know this report exists, let alone who Richard Goldstone is.”
Nailed that
They do not conclude that ‘international law sanctions violent resistance’.
But Witty, international law does sanction violent resistence. Get that through your head.
This is nothing but an utter abomination. Or should I say Obamanation? Utterly sickening. And where does it lead? To yet more discredit of the US in the Arab world, if not worldwide. One has to wonder what Goldstone could possibly have gotten from this change of heart.
barf me
Good editorial in the Los Angeles Times, asking “What’s Behind Goldstone’s Flip-Flop?”
link to latimes.com
This is a brilliant move by the Lobby, one has to give it to them.
People don’t get involved in the nittry gritty. From now on the Lobby can just say “See? Goldstone has completely changed stance in this WaPo op-ed, the report is now a fraud” and people will believe it.
Never mind the fact that he went at this solo, and that the other inspectators, all of them, are standing by the conclusions. So he’s totally outnumbered. But of course, he alone bore the brunt of the brutal attack the Lobby perpetrated, they even went after his family and the head of the Zionist organisation in South Africa even boasted how much pressure they filed up on him to change. This is a broken man, and one can understand his turn-around, given his treatment. He was essentially put into a state of cherem, and it got to him, ergo the op-ed.
If people would actually read the report they would have known that the course of specifically targeting civilian infrastructure was intentional and not even something Goldstone commented on. And, lo and behold, targeting civilian infrastructure actually kills civilians – who’d thought that?
OK folks it should be clear where the Obama administration stands on this issue. Who among us are willing to come out and say that we will no longer support him? I suspect that most of us did in the last election. I certainly did, not just voting for him but putting in about 20 hours in his campaign and donating $400. What will I do if he runs against a Palin or a Bachman or some similar Republican cretin? This is a tough question. It really pisses me off knowing that my choice is a liberal democrat Zionist pod or a conservative republican Zionist pod.
“It really pisses me off knowing that my choice is a liberal democrat Zionist pod or a conservative republican Zionist pod.”
Never been much of a choice on this issue. Keep pushing
Look at the front page of the US State Dept.
link to state.gov
Contact the US State Dept.
link to contact-us.state.gov
# Main address:
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
# Main Switchboard:
202-647-4000
TTY:1-800-877-8339 (Federal Relay Service)
So vote third party. I’ve been doing it for years.
If enough people do it, it might actually start making a difference.
But, in the meantime, at least you don’t have to feel guilty over what you did.
Oh, here’s an interesting article:
link to haaretz.com
Scroll down to the very end for Foxman’s quote:
“Abraham Foxman said the eventual outcome would depend on how far Goldstone would be willing to go. “If you leave it as an op-ed – it is a 2-3 day wonder, material for columnists, analysts, why did he do it? The question really is whether he’ll take another step and will advocate what he said, and I am not sure. He will probably hunker now for a while. Who knows why he retracted? Maybe he has another grandson with a Bar-Mitzvah. But every time Israel has to take steps for its self-defense in an unfriendly diplomatic environment, it makes it that much worse, and I hope that op-ed will help to change it.”
Look at that again, at the bottom of the quote:
“He will probably hunker now for a while. Who knows why he retracted? Maybe he has another grandson with a Bar-Mitzvah.”
More than a hint of what has caused Goldstone to do the Lobby’s work for them. And expect to see him at the U.N. not before long.
And this is Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, mind you. Who would have thought “anti-defamation” involved so much ripping Jewish families apart and ruining bar mitzvahs?
I dare say the only invitation Goldstone is going to get to the UN will be a subpeona. Nobody is going to trust him, now, and unless he can be compelled to be truthful under threat of punishment, anything he’ll have to say will be worthless.
But every time Israel has to take steps for its self-defense in an unfriendly diplomatic environment,
I think this is the key phrase, and I think this was completely orchestrated as part of a campaign to lay the political and legal groundwork for Cast Lead II.
Never mind that the op-ed sounds like it was written by someone other than Goldstone and that it has no legal standing or implication whatsoever. It’s a marketing campaign and it is of a piece with the heating up of assassinations, etc. Mark my words, we are heading into Cast Lead II. And Cast Lead II in the era of Arab revolutions is going to be mighty hard to sell to the world, but that isn’t going to stop Israel or the US apparently. In fact it probably pushes them to move faster – quick, before Egypt has its act together enough to stop the Grand Scheme. Those pesky natives have to be eliminated from the enclave where huge natural gas deposits lie offshore, or at the very least, permanently marginalized. They are just an obstacle that poses the threat of a viable unified Palestinian state which could eventually pincer Israel in two. Renewed stirrings of Palestinian unity are particularly threatening in this regard and provide another accelerator for Cast Lead II.
Ali Abunimeh:
What we are seeing is the deliberate unravelling of the tiny little legal constraints that the world had attempted to place on Israel for its military offenses. And this is in preparation for more.
“Mark my words, we are heading into Cast Lead II.”
And Goldstone and the US State Dept just cleared the way
I think Israel is jumping the gun. The report won’t be retracted. It was one article he wrote under duress. Israel won’t get clearance for Cast Lead 2. The Arab revolutions happened in the meantime.
Israel knows all about PR and it knows how damaged the Israeli brand is. Goldstone’s article might have caused a stir in the beltway and over at AIPAC but the average thinking Westerner has seen Cast Lead, the Mavi Marmara, the Dubai assassination and the Palestine Papers . Israel can’t go back to business as usual. And the goys expect that 2 state solution which. Israel cannot deliver.
So it is a hollow victory for Israel.
From the article:
“For a variety of reasons, Obama feels more comfortable with Peres than with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Peres’ vision of the world is certainly closer to his. And Richard Goldstone’s op-ed in The Washington Post this weekend, which cleared Israel of “intentional war crimes” charges, provides a good counter-balance to the eventuality of yet another settlement construction report. Whether it will have a lasting effect, however, remains doubtful. ”
Counter balance to another report about illegal settlement expansion
“Abraham Foxman said the eventual outcome would depend on how far Goldstone would be willing to go. “If you leave it as an op-ed – it is a 2-3 day wonder, material for columnists, analysts, why did he do it? The question really is whether he’ll take another step and will advocate what he said, and I am not sure. He will probably hunker now for a while. Who knows why he retracted? Maybe he has another grandson with a Bar-Mitzvah. But every time Israel has to take steps for its self-defense in an unfriendly diplomatic environment, it makes it that much worse, and I hope that op-ed will help to change it.”
————————————————————-
This is basically what Ilan Pappe said in his article about “Goldstone’s U Turn”
Spread Ilan Pappes article far and wide, write or call the US State Dept, contact your Reps
link to electronicintifada.net
Goldstone’s shameful U-turn
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2011
Every now and again many liberal Jews seem to liberate themselves and allow their conscience, rather than their fear, to lead them. However, many seem unable stick to their more universalist inclinations for too long where Israel is concerned. The risk of being defined as a “self-hating Jew” with all the ramifications of such an accusation is a real and frightening prospect for them. You have to be in this position to understand the power of this terror.
Just weeks ago, Israeli military intelligence announced it had created a special unit to monitor, confront, and possibly hunt down, individuals and bodies suspected of “delegitimizing” Israel abroad. In light of this, perhaps quite a few of the faint-hearted felt standing up to Israel was not worth it.
We should have recognized that Goldstone was one of them when he stated that, despite his report, he remains a Zionist. This adjective, “Zionist,” is far more meaningful and charged than is usually assumed. You cannot claim to be one if you oppose the ideology of the apartheid State of Israel. You can remain one if you just rebuke the state for a certain criminal policy and fail to see the connection between the ideology and that policy. “I am a Zionist” is a declaration of loyalty to a frame of mind that cannot accept the 2009 Goldstone Report. You can either be a Zionist or blame Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity — if you do both, you will crack sooner rather than later.
That this mea culpa has nothing to do with new facts is clear when one examines the “evidence” brought by Goldstone to explain his retraction. To be honest, one should say that one did not have to be the world expert on international law to know that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza in 2009. The reports of bodies such as Breaking the Silence and the UN representatives on the ground attested to it, before and after the Goldstone report. It was also not the only evidence.
The pictures and images we saw on our screens and those we saw on the ground told only one story of a criminal policy intending to kill, wound and maim as a collective punishment. “The Palestinians are going to bring upon themselves a Holocaust,” promised Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy minister of defense to the people of Gaza on 29 February 2008.
There is only one new piece of evidence Goldstone brings and this is an internal Israeli army investigation that explains that one of the cases suspected as a war crime was due to a mistake by the Israeli army that is still being investigated. This must be a winning card: a claim by the Israeli army that massive killings by Palestinians were a “mistake.”
Ever since the creation of the State of Israel, the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel were either terrorists or killed by “mistake.” So 29 out of 1,400 deaths were killed by an unfortunate mistake? Only ideological commitment could base a revision of the report on an internal inquiry of the Israeli army focusing only on one of dozens of instances of unlawful killing and massacring. So it cannot be new evidence that caused Goldstone to write this article. Rather, it is his wish to return to the Zionist comfort zone that propelled this bizarre and faulty article.
Its because the US believes that terror directed at civilians should just stop.
They regard the assertion that ‘all means of violent resistance is sanctioned under international law’ is a FALSE assertion.
They are right.
A blanket “there were NO incidents of war crimes” is prejudicial. But, they regard the obligation to defend civilians against intentional terror as reasonable, and what you are naming as war crime, they are describing as war.
“Its because the US believes that terror directed at civilians should just stop.”
No they don’t. The US government habitually lies about terror directed at civilians when it is done by allies or ourselves. RW claims to have known about US policies in Central America in the 80′s–if he did he’d know that the US government employs the same double standards he does.
“They regard the assertion that ‘all means of violent resistance is sanctioned under international law’ is a FALSE assertion.”
But they say nothing against Israeli claims of self defense when the actions are clearly directed at civilians. Standard US government hypocrisy, which Richard shares. That’s RW’s significance around here–read him and (bizarre English aside) you get a pretty good sense of how an apparatchik thinks.
In your simplistic either/or maybe I’m an appartchik.
You really want to renounce nuance from your thinking, that your only options then become “support Israeli abuses” OR “support Hamas abuses”.
But not, pursue live and let live and mutual humanization.
I’m sure there are inconsistencies with US policy. Do you really believe that the US adopts solely cynical power related motivations, or at least multiple concerns?
Do you know any politicians, any former presidents say? The precedents of the US Latin America policies were prominent during Carter’s administration. Do you think he is a man that forms (formed) policy on the basis solely of power or of multiple concerns?
Any president, even the most confused and ideological?
Richard Witty – could you explain how you being pro-Nakba, and pro-ethnic cleansing is not a direct contradiction of a “live and let live” philosophy?
I’m not “pro-Nakba” for one or “pro-ethnic cleansing” for one, in the real present.
I am a strong advocate for the nakba stopping, and of improvement to Palestinian personal and collective health.
You can’t get past either/or, huh?
>> I’m not “pro-Nakba” for one or “pro-ethnic cleansing” for one, in the real present.
“in the real present” – I like that qualifier. You’re right to have included it, though, given your approval of “necessary” ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the real past, and your refusal to rule out further “necessary” ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the real future.
In fact, you haven’t ruled out any kind of ethnic cleansing which, at some point in time, you might consider “necessary”:
- RW: I cannot consistently say that “ethnic cleansing is never necessary”.
You get pleasure out of that misrepresentation, don’t you?
Ever been to a birth?
I’m vaguely reassured that Witty isn’t planning on stealing my car or defecating in my hastas in the real present either. Aren’t you?
Witty, just change the word Nakba for holocaust and this is what you get:
I’m not pro-holocaust for one or pro ethnic cleansing for one, in the real present.
Tsk tsk tsk: deny-deny-deny: always the predictable double-standard of supremicists ideologues.
>> Its because the US believes that terror directed at civilians should just stop.
You’re either pretending to be naïve or you are stunningly dense.
>> Standard US government hypocrisy, which Richard shares.
+1. He truly is an amazing hypocrite.
- US and Israeli offensive attacks (“starting it”) NEVER constitute “terror”.
- Palestinians offensive attacks (“starting it”) ALWAYS constitute “terror”.
- US and Israeli retaliations / defensive actions NEVER constitute “terror”.
- Palestinian retaliations / defensive actions ALWAYS constitute “terror”.
Its true that the non-yet state of Palestine is not respected as the state of Israel is respected.
Its true that the non-yet state of Palestine is not respected as the state of Israel is respected.
Read the March 4, 1919 petition to President Wilson in the NYT written by “Representative Jews” (in order words the head guys in the country) about the country Palestine, and what they thought of it.
You will need to use the archives.
The non-yet state of Palestine is not respected or loathed as the state of israel is respected and loathed.
>> Read the March 4, 1919 petition to President Wilson in the NYT written by “Representative Jews” (in order words the head guys in the country) about the country Palestine, and what they thought of it.
Thanks for the pointer…
link to palestine-encyclopedia.com
>> But we raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misinterprets the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.”
No, Witty, it is you who are dead wrong.
“They regard the assertion that ‘all means of violent resistance is sanctioned under international law’ is a FALSE assertion.
They are right.” [RW declares as if he knows what he is talking about.]
From Craig Murray, former Ambassador:
The latter point is unknown to 99% of Americans since Bush destroyed the thinking mind in this country. We declared War on Terror. Our opponents cannot be declared as terrorists. Or as someone once said, “Bullshit baffles brains.”
Belgium newspaper article (translated to English with Google, so, rather crappy):
Goldstone report will not be revoked
The report by former Justice Goldstone, Israel is accused of various war crimes.
The issue of an enforcement or revocation of the Goldstone, which accuses Israel of “war crimes” during his 2008-2009 winter offensive in the Gaza Strip, has decided not. This is the French Foreign Ministry said today. Israel wants the report is canceled.
“The Goldstone was published in September 2009. It’s a document at the request of the United Nations not to be maintained or abolished,” said ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, at a press briefing.
Valero had questions about the request that Israel did after the author of the report, Richard Goldstone, said that he had recognized the Jewish state had deliberately targeted civilians.
“We regretted the Israeli decision then to not participate in the mission chaired by Richard Goldstone,” said the spokesman. This Goldstone could not bring together all the elements.
link to hln.be
Just wait until Erdogan finds out about this. He’s going to be mad as hell. He’s still waiting for an apology from the “baby-killers” that also killed some of his citizens in cold blood.
Here’s the Samouni family’s message to Goldstone on his explanation for the massacre of 27 members of their family as a “mistake”:-
link to youtube.com
Everybody watch this video uploaded Monday April 4, 2011.
One of the Samouni men is holding up one of his children with a bullet in his chest, then he picks up another dead child with two bullet holes in its chest. (From January 2009 Al Jazeera report, long before Goldstone wrote his report.)
This was not shelling from above. This was flat-out murder.
As another Samouni woman says, Israeli soldiers shot her husband right in front of her kids.
Goldstone is a flat out liar, and there is no excuse for what he has done. May he endure everlasting shame, and I hope his reputation is damaged. Forever.
>> One of the Samouni men is holding up one of his children with a bullet in his chest, then he picks up another dead child with two bullet holes in its chest.
Yeah, but where are the “nuances”, Rorschach? Absent the “nuances”, Israel appears to be at fault and should be held accountable. And, well, that clearly won’t do.
I had absolutely no idea at the time that they shot the Samouni children point blank in the chest. No idea. I don’t know how I missed it, or I didn’t gel that it was the Samouni family.
This was the same family that was denied medical care or ambulances for five days. They found some of the children still alive on top of their parents. I remember they made the medical aid workers walk .5 mile to bring out the bodies. The Israeli soldiers wouldn’t let the Red Cross in.
Revulsion is teeming in my throat. This is out and out sadism.
There is much we don’t know yet about the op-ed. I would council a bit of restraint and patience. The Magnes Zionist had an interesting take on the op-ed. Seems as though he has been following Goldstone somewhat closely. link to jeremiahhaber.com
There is just too much we don’t know that it is worth having a bit of caution on this issue. I want to know more before I make a judgment about his op-ed. (Not in the sense of whether there is “new” evidence that exonerates Israel – there are enough crimes that Israel has committed and continues to commit against Palestinians inside and outside of the green line to prevent the exoneration of Israel.)
As far as his reputation goes, so goes the report. Be careful what you wish for.
Watch the video, Edwin.
As far as his reputation goes, so goes the report. Be careful what you wish for.
Hardly. As someone pointed out on another thread: an Op-Ed in an American paper (without new evidence) does not nullify a 572-page report conducted by qualified UN inspectors with months and months of interviews.
As for Haber’s ohev yisrael, and an ohev medinat yisrael argument, so what? That trumps judicial integrity? Falk wouldn’t have done that. Neither would our resident Avi, and he’s an ex-native.
I am very interested in how the investigation will be re started?
Only in Israel can you put two bullets in a baby at point blank range, call it a mistake, and whine that you’re the victim.
“not part of Israel’s stated intentions” “written or stated policy” The horseshit that Israel comes up with is despicable.
I hope the peasants can use this argument. Judge it was not part of my “written or stated policy” to kill, rape, steal from that person. Even though there were witnesses to the crime, that was really not my intention.
We are being treated these days to some remarkably tortured legalese, which may not be altogether surprising given Goldstone’s background in jurisprudence. Bear with me while I try to pick some of it apart. Goldstone did not write that his report would have been different, rather that it ‘probably’ would have been so, a qualification one can imagine being accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders as if the differences would have been only minor and not enough to affect the conclusions in any meaningful manner. The wording appears to have been carefully selected to preserve Goldstone’s integrity while allowing Netanyahu a foothold from which to dismiss the whole report.
Next we are told the Obama administration read the op-ed with interest. Just like everyone else. We are also told that they didn’t see any evidence the Israeli Government committed any war crimes, nor intentionally targeted civilians. That is consistent with their having read the op-ed since there is no such evidence in it.
Turning to this business of targeting civilians intentionally, targeting something involves selecting it and aiming at it and I do not see how that can be done other than intentionally; one might select the ‘wrong’ target so that civilians and civilian infrastructure simply got hit unintentionally but the scale on which one would have to accept that explanation in Gaza would make the IDF the worst trained army in the history of warfare. Which it obviously isn’t.
There exist rules of engagement designed to minimise collateral casualties. Being a bit like requiring rapists to employ condoms such rules operate in an equivocal area but they do exist. In February 2010 the UK newspaper, The Independent, carried a persuasive piece about the way these rules may have been modified for the Gaza incursion. link to independent.co.uk . I prefer not to quote or summarise any part of it because it is important and needs to be considered in context. If one accepts the broad validity of this piece, however, it is clear that although no one actually drove them off, the stable door was opened and the horses were left free to escape.
Israel is edgy; in eight weeks a far larger flotilla will be headed for Gaza on the anniversary of the Mavi Marmara debacle and they are understandably anxious to whitewash everything in sight.
The wording appears to have been carefully selected to preserve Goldstone’s integrity while allowing Netanyahu a foothold from which to dismiss the whole report.
Precisely.
As for this:
Turning to this business of targeting civilians … intentionally
Did you see petersz linked video?
(I read that that Independent piece when it first came out.)
You have a neat talent for synthesising my verbiage. One thing that bothers me, and it doesn’t only apply to this matter, is that with one’s head down, picking apart events like Goldstone’s op-ed, one can too easily lose sight of the on-going process of which it is but a part. It is like a pickpocket’s trick where concentration is distracted while the wallet disappears. I have been sitting here toying with an illustration of this point which you may care to glance at: link to njow.co.uk
And, yes, I did see the petersz video. These things take me some time to view as I am in a small village in Southern Spain with an Internet connection that is supposed to be 1 MB but rarely reaches 600 kB.
Share Ilan Pappe’s
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Goldstone’s shameful U-turn
Source: electronicintifada.netLast shared 1 hour ago
Richard Goldstone’s shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the …
GETTING QUITE A BIT OF ACTION. Share this article. Call your Reps. Tell them to read the Report. Send them Ilan Pappes article. Contact the US State Dept
Gulf News have picked up an AP report that Goldstone has accepted an invitation to visit Israel from no less than Eli Yishai.
It is absolutely hilarious to see venom heaped on the man who inspired a book by the administrators of this site and was lionized just a year or two ago.
I think I may be the only one unsurprised by any of this. I knew Goldstone. I said from the beginning that what he was most upset about was that Israel did not cooperate, because he felt he was doing Israel a favor by using his influence to get a more balanced investigatory mandate from the UNHRC. I also said from the beginning that he was naive to think Israel would cooperate, given the UNHRC’s history.
I also said from the beginning, based on my personal interactions with Goldstone (limited as they were), that he is extremely critical of the settlements, and very possibly saw this as an opportunity to make a statement against them. And I agree that on a very basic level, Goldstone has not retracted anything greatly significant. If you watch his interview of February 17, you will see that he says again that he was shocked by the destruction in Gaza and that he was moved by the testimony of the Gazans he spoke to.
I never supported the amount of venom spewed on Goldstone by some parts of the Jewish community here, because I always had great respect for Goldstone, and I felt the criticism was mostly attacking the messenger. Even now, the same people are vastly overplaying Goldstone’s retraction, which is completely in line with most of what Goldstone has said over the last two years. Goldstone’s history is that of a man who believes in his personal ability to affect change from within; thus, he served as a South African Judge during the apartheid era, and he served on a UNHCR team while acknowledging, as he always has, that Israel has long gotten a raw deal from the UN. At the end of the day, Goldstone is one of the most important practitioners of international criminal law in the world, and I think this experience will perhaps inspire him to work on creating a more workable system of international justice.
I was in no way surprised by the Report. The reality is that international law is highly politicized, and, as currently interpreted by most, does little to acknowledge the problem of non-state terrorism. It does not reflect the modern challenge of urban warfare in situations where non-uniformed militant secrete themselves in populated areas. It was inevitable that given the scale of destruction, examples of mistakes, some egregious, would be found, particularly by team sent by the UNHCR. I’m not aware of any completely clean wars in the recent past.
That many misused Goldstone’s report to argue that Israel targeted civilians as a matter of state policy and went further to argue that Israel had no legitimacy as a state doubtless upset him over time, and I’m not so naive to think that the ostracization he has faced in parts of the Jewish community didn’t have its effect as well; he has said many times that the level of anger directed toward him in the Jewish community came as a great surprise to him; in South Africa, much of this anger was very personal, and mostly centered around the Report’s call to prosecute individual soldiers.
It is unfortunate that Goldstone is misunderstood by most, but that is the nature of polarization.
“venom”? Disappointment, anger, sadness expressed. Venom often kills
The reality is that international law is highly politicized, and, as currently interpreted by most, does little to acknowledge the problem of non-state terrorism.
Here we go again. The Oslo Accords and the Gaza-Jericho agreement provided that Israel would exercise its jurisdiction through its military government, which, for that end, shall continue to have the necessary legislative, judicial and executive powers and responsibilities, in accordance with international law. *Note that does not say in accordance with only those international laws that Israel chooses to accept.
The “right to life” is guaranteed by Article 6(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR):
Many years ago the government of Israel claimed that it cannot be held internationally responsible for human rights, including the right to life, in the Palestinian territories. It said that Palestinian National Authority had that responsibility:
See paragraph 8(3) in CCPR/C/ISR/2001/2, 4 December 2001
In the 2004 Wall case the ICJ ruled that the ICCPR applied to the occupied territory and that Israel:
See paragraph 112 of the Advisory Opinion
The Israeli Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the prohibitions contained in customary international law applicable to international armed conflicts apply. The Court said:
See the subsection of the ruling under the heading “The General Normative Framework, A. International Armed Conflict“
In civilized legal systems one man’s right is another man’s legal obligation. When Anat Kamm revealed that Palestinians were still being denied the “right to life” without due process of law, the Court said it
There is a legal maxim that for every right, there is a remedy; where there is no remedy, there is no right.
As the guardian of the right to life, the PNA, made an Article 12(3) declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for crimes committed by both sides since July of 2002. Israel and a few supporters have objected. Former Ambassador Dore Gold claims that Palestine is not a State. See ICC: Can PA complain of crimes on ‘Palestinian territory’?
Palestine is member state of the the Group of Asian States, the Group of 77 and China, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, the League of Arab States, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The UN has 192 members and 130 of them are in the so-called “G77 and China”. So, the majority of existing states have accepted the international legal personality of Palestine as that of another State. 169 UN member states have adopted resolutions stating that the purported annexation of the Holy City of Jerusalem by Israel is null and void and recognizing the “permanent sovereignty” of the Palestinian people over the resources of the occupied territory – including East Jerusalem.
The codification of the “Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal” said that certain acts were punishable as crimes under international law when they were committed against “any civilian population” – including communities of stateless Jews.
In 1948, Israel was recognized by less than a dozen other states. Syria wanted the question of Israel’s statehood submitted to the ICJ for an Advisory Opinion. Abba Eban explained:
That same year one of the permanent members of the Security Council reminded the members that deliberately casting doubts upon the statehood of your neighbors is a early warning sign of aggression:
See the Minutes of the 386th meeting of the UN Security Council, S/PV.386, 17 December 1948, pages 12-13
It is a standard hasbara technique to claim that the majority viewpoint on legal issues is “politicized”, while trumping every political discussion with comments about Israel’s legal and historical rights. I just thought I’d give you the treatment to show you how it’s done.
Keep pushing. Contact the US state Dept
Look at the front page of the US State Dept.
link to state.gov
Contact the US State Dept.
link to contact-us.state.gov
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U.S. Department of State
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