Israel is “vindicated”, claims FM Lieberman about Richard Goldstone’s latest op-ed in the Washington Post, adding that “we knew the truth and we had no doubt it would eventually come out.” Netanyahu has gone so far as to demand the Goldstone report be retracted from the UN. Among all the celebrations and self-congratulatory pats on the back, it is worth pausing for a moment to ask: what exactly does Goldstone’s latest essay vindicate?
The answer seems much less clear than Israel’s unconditional supporters want to argue. The most charitable portions of his piece (to Israel) suggest that “if I [Goldstone] had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” This statement is so patently obvious as to be meaningless, particularly given Israel’s steadfast non-cooperation at the time of the investigation, but let’s assume Goldstone means this in a substantive way. He did publish this piece under a headline of “reconsidering the Goldstone report” after all.
What else is there in this op-ed that suggests a change from the original Goldstone report? The op-ed focuses on a very select group of three themes. The first point relates to the ongoing investigations into allegations of war crimes. Goldstone refers to the UN committee of independent experts’ report to support this argument, and he quotes that report to the effect that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.” The second key claim in Goldstone’s op-ed is confusing, but suggests that the ongoing investigations have proven that Israel did not attack civilians as a matter of intentional policy. How these conclusions have been reached before the investigations, which the Goldstone report called for as its primary recommendation, have been concluded is unclear. The third theme is that Hamas has not done any of the good things Israel has done: Hamas did deliberately target civilians, Hamas didn’t investigate anything, Hamas continues to be guilty of war crimes by firing rockets into civilian areas, and Goldstone admits he was maybe “unrealistic” and “mistaken” to believe Hamas would investigate itself.
I want to first highlight several general observations about what this op-ed does and doesn’t say. Then I will address these three themes in detail.
What the Goldstone Op-Ed Doesn’t Say
Limited to one of seven categories of possible war crimes
The Goldstone commission’s findings on deliberate attacks on civilians is one of at least seven broad findings (which comprise hundreds of specific incidents) that raise issues about Israel’s conduct. These other key findings include: (1) Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza, which constitutes a form of collective punishment and so violates the Fourth Geneva Conventions; (2) The political institutions and buildings of Gaza cannot be lawfully considered part of the “Hamas terrorist infrastructure” and so Israel’s attacks on them are unlawful; (3) Israel taking insufficient measures to protect the Palestinian civilian population; (4) “indiscriminate” attacks (as distinct from “deliberate” attacks) killed many civilians without any credible military rationale for those actions; (5) Israeli use of weapons, such as white phosphorous and flechette missiles, which, although not banned under current international law, were used in ways that do violate the laws of war; and (6) Israel’s deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, including industrial plants, food production facilities, sewage treatment plants, and water installations; this destruction has no military justification (for example, Israel’s “wanton destruction” of Mr. Sameh Sawafeary’s chicken coops, killing all 31,000 chickens inside despite there being no military activity in the area) and could constitute a crime against humanity.
Goldstone’s op-ed pointedly excludes discussion of all of these very serious charges of possible war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, so it’s odd that FM Lieberman and his hasbara “excreta” (his word, not mine) think Israel is somehow absolved of all responsibility. One cannot avoid the impression that Israel’s unconditional supporters stillhaven’t actually read the report.
Overlooks key impacts of the report
One of the strangest omissions in the op-ed was the recognition that, assuming Israel is conducting investigations in good faith (again, more on that terrible assumption below), it was the Goldstone report that caused Israel to conduct these investigations. The best evidence this is the case was Israel’s absolute refusal to investigate anything except the credit card theft case, until, that is, it got worried that Israeli leaders might end up in the International Criminal Court. More evidence to support this argument can be found in Israel’s response to a conflict without a Goldstone kick in the rear: the 2006 Lebanon war. In that case, Israel constituted the whitewashing Winograd Commission, which didn’t even pretend to investigate the “the government policies and military strategies that failed to discriminate between the Lebanese civilian population and Hizbullah combatants and between civilian property and infrastructure and military targets”, as Amnesty International and other human rights organizations observed. Thus, without the Goldstone report, there is absolutely no reason to believe Israel would be conducting the investigations for which Goldstone is largely praising now.
Another important impact, which was a direct result of the report’s recommendations, was the policy changes, such as “new Israel Defense Forces procedures for protecting civilians in cases of urban warfare and limiting the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas.” I have argued elsewhere that these policy changes acknowledge implicitly that Israel had not been minimizing civilian casualties, as it argues so vociferously, or else there wouldn’t be any possible policy changes that could further minimize civilian harm. Either civilian casualties were being minimized before, in which case the policy changes are meaningless, or are minimized now (hypothetically, of course), in which case Israel wasn’t doing its utmost to protect civilians from harm before. It certainly can’t be both. Either way, these policy changes are directly related to the report, a point Goldstone’s op-ed also makes.
Validity of Specific Claims Made in Goldstone’s Op-Ed
The credibility of Israel’s investigations
Goldstone’s op-ed gives the strong impression that, despite the length of Israel’s military investigations being “frustrating”, Israel has “appropriate processes” in place. It is difficult to understand where this belief comes from, because it certainly does not appear in this form in McGowan Davis report he cites (McGowan Davis chairs the UN committee of independent experts monitoring implementation of the Goldstone report recommendations). That report paints are far less appealing picture of Israeli’s military investigations, noting, for example, that:
- “That Israel’s military justice system provides for mechanisms to ensure its independence”, but “the Committee further noted that notwithstanding the built-in structural guarantees to ensure the MAG’s [Military Advocate General's] independence, his dual responsibilities as legal advisor to the Chief of Staff and other military authorities, and his role as supervisor of criminal investigations within the military, raise concerns in the present context given allegations in the FFM report that those who designed, planned, ordered, and oversaw the operation in Gaza were complicit in international humanitarian law and international human rights law violations.”
- “The Committee does not have sufficient information to establish the current status of the on-going criminal investigations into the killings of Ateya and Ahmad Samouni, the attack on the Wa’el al-Samouni house and the shooting of Iyad Samouni.. . . As of 24 October 2010, according to media reports, no decision had been made as to whether or not the officer would stand trial.” This case is of course cited directly by Goldstone, yet his arguments are incompatible with the actual McGowan Davis report.
- “The Committee has discovered no information relating to four incidents referred to in the FFM [Goldstone] report: incident AD/02, incident AD/06, the attack on the Al-Quds hospital, and the attack on the Al-Wafa hospital. Nor has the Committee uncovered updated information concerning the status of the criminal investigations into the death of Mohammed Hajji and the shooting of Shahd Hajji and Ola Masood Arafat, and the shooting of Ibrahim Juha. Accordingly, the Committee remains unable to determine whether any investigation has been carried out in relation to those incidents.”
- “It is notable that the MAG himself, in his testimony to the Turkel Commission, pointed out that the military investigations system he heads is not a viable mechanism to investigate and assess high-level policy decisions. When questioned by commission members about his “dual hat” and whether his position at the apex of legal advisory and prosecutorial power can present a conflict of interest under certain circumstances, he stated that “the mechanism is calibrated for the inspection of individual incidents, complaints of war crimes in individual incidents (…). This is not a mechanism for policy. True, it is not suitable for this.” “
- “The Committee expressed strong reservations as to whether Israel’s investigations into allegations of misconduct were sufficiently prompt. In particular, the Committee expressed concern about the fact that unnecessary delays in carrying out such investigations may have resulted in evidence being lost or compromised, or have led to the type of conflicting testimony that characterizes the investigations into the killings of Majda and Raayya Hajaj, and the inconclusive findings reported with respect to the tragic deaths of Souad and Amal Abd Rabbo and the grave wounding of Samar Abd Rabbo and their grandmother Souad.”
- “The promptness of an investigation is closely linked to the notion of effectiveness. An effective investigation is one in which all the relevant evidence is identified and collected, is analyzed, and leads to conclusions establishing the cause of the alleged violation and identifying those responsible. In that respect, the Committee is concerned about the fact that the duration of the ongoing investigations into the allegations contained in the FFM report – over two years since the end of the Gaza operation – may seriously impair their effectiveness and, therefore, the prospects of achieving accountability and justice.”
These conclusions of the McGowan Davis report give a very different impression of mechanisms for accountability in Israel’s military justice system than one would understand from a casual reading of Goldstone’s latest op-ed. For additional, excellent analysis of these points, Adam Horowitz’s piece at Mondoweiss is a must-read.
Was it a deliberate policy of targeting Palestinian civilians?
If this op-ed “vindicates” anything, it seems to be about Israel deliberately targeting civilians as a matter of policy. The Goldstone report investigated 11 specific cases, which were concerning because civilians were killed “under circumstances in which the Israeli forces were in control of the area and had previously entered into contact with or at least observed the persons they subsequently attacked, so that they must have been aware of their civilian status.” After reviewing the details of these cases, which included not only the attack on the Samouni family (discussed in the op-ed) but also attacks on a mosque at prayer time and the shootings of civilians waving white flags, the report concludes:
“From the facts ascertained in the above cases, the Mission finds that the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of willful killings and willfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility.” (Goldstone report, pp. 16)
This finding, of course, is precisely why the report recommends that Israel launch credible investigations into possible wrongdoing, which Goldstone claims Israel is now doing (more on this later). In that sense, Israel’s investigations confirm many of the key findings of the Goldstone report, a point I’ve raised previously.
The conclusion above, which is easily the strongest charge in the entire Goldstone report, has very little to do with Goldstone’s latest statement that “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” The Goldstone commission and other human rights investigations have never said the IDF maintains a policy of deliberately targeting civilians. This is a red-herring; nobody seriously believes there is a high-level policy to murder civilians. The actual issue is that “these incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli forces moving into Gaza provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population” (Goldstone report, pp. 16). This low threshold was an intentional policy, as has been confirmed by dozens of soldiers’ and officers’ statements. For example, many people have commented before about how the IDF “rewrote the rules of war for Gaza”, in particular by getting rid of “the longstanding principle of military conduct known as ‘means and intentions’—whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon—as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter.” The intentional, deliberate policy was one of “literally zero risk to the soldiers”, an order that is inescapably related to the high civilian casualties among the Palestinians. For these reasons the main argument in Goldstone’s latest op-ed, which FM Lieberman erroneously believes “vindicates” Israel, is entirely besides the point.
Condemning Hamas
Hamas certainly, and unlawfully, does deliberately target civilians. This is not only grotesque but illegal, and Hamas military leaders should be referred to the International Criminal Court for this since Hamas’ political leadership has refused to investigate the matter themselves and hold those responsible for war crimes to account. But, of course, this was already well known by anybody who read the Goldstone report, which wrote:
“The Mission has further determined that these [8000 rocket] attacks [since 2001] constitute indiscriminate attacks upon the civilian population of southern Israel and that where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into a civilian population, they constitute a deliberate attack against a civilian population. These acts would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.”
One could have also reached the same level of awareness by reading any of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or other human rights organizations‘ press releases and reports. In this sense, there is absolutely nothing new about Hamas in Goldstone’s latest op-ed, yet some Israelis and Jewish groups seem surprised (see, e.g., AIPAC’s one of many tweets on the matter).
A Sad, Integrity-Damaging Turn
The first time I saw Judge Goldstone speak in person he was striking in his equanimity and unshakeable commitment to international law. Even in the face of hate-filled attacks by Jews in the audience, who compared his report to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he handled himself with a level of firm principle that I imagined to be unmovable. The second time I saw him speak in public a year later, he seemed tired and worn down by the relentless attacks against him by those who chose to attack the messenger instead of deal with the message. It was nothing concrete that he said, but there was a withered tone in his voice and a sort of quiet resignation that his best intentions had been so vehemently manipulated—and misunderstood.
Goldstone’s latest op-ed is something else altogether. It does not challenge a single concrete finding in the entire report, and he has not conceded absolutely anything to his critics in that way. In fact, his findings under severe constraints have held up remarkably well with time. But the tone and timing of this current piece suggest that somehow the report should be “reconsidered”, that it was somehow wrong. Moreover, his comments seem to intentionally mislead about the content of the UN independent committee’s findings on due process in Israel. This is nothing more than a bone to Israel’s apologists, which is deeply misleading for all the reasons discussed here. I am afraid this is a sad, integrity-damaging turn for a man who had singlehandedly done so much to protect people from war crimes in Israel, Palestine, and elsewhere.
And he should have known better, that is, he should have known that this craven gesture to Israel would not allow his enemies to forgive him and welcome him back to the broader Jewish community. Already the enemies, sensing weakness, attack for the final kill attempt. Jeffrey Goldberg, with the tone of the intellectual gatekeeper he fashions for himself, makes it clear this doesn’t change the “blood libel.” The editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz, tells Goldstone “an apology is not good enough“. We can expect much, much more of such attacks.
Goldstone has done neither international law and accountability for war crimes—nor himself—any favors with this latest, depressing op-ed.
This post originally appeard on Yaniv Reich's blog Hybrid States.
Goldstone was a good Jew; now he’s a bad Jew. Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky… the last of the good Jews. See Walt and Polish communists circa March 1968 for precise definition of good and bad Jews.
Goldstone was always a Zionists. And now he’s sold out to child murderers.
It seems to me the pressure finally got to him. He is, and we all are, human after all. They even went after his family. When they go after your family, it’s personal. Shows the lobby can often become a mafia.
Nevertheless, it’s interesting to note the date and the publication. WaPo is solidly Neocon by now, even rabidly at times, and we’re in a post-Itamar, pre-September area.
Israel attacked Gaza in 2008 because Hamas was getting too strong because of the relative peace. Do they plan something similar? Better to trot out the broken man, devoid of any spirit or defiance, and make him crawl on the ground for you. Just in case a CL 2 operation is needed.
I don’t know what the Mossad equivalent of a horse’s head in the bed is, but whatever it is, I’m pretty sure that’s what they did.
“pretty sure”? These boards are usually full of statements and facts and resolutions, but today all we are getting is “pretty sure”.
I’m going to suggest you keep that kind of “feeling” to yourself until you’ve got something to back it up.
‘today all we are getting is “pretty sure”’
I make a guess based on my dark suspicions, and I present it as a guess an nothing more.
Why should I keep my guesses to myself, as long as I make it clear they are guesses?
And this is not new behavior
I must say that Israel’s response to an editorial posted in an American newspaper was rather quick, especially given the fact that it’s the Sabath in Israel. Did Lieberman convene an emergency press conference, or did he have a pre-written statement as early as last week?
Is there precedent to such a quick reaction? Does anyone know?
Agreed. In trying to appease his blood-thirsty critics with his say-nothing op-ed, he ended up infuriating everyone. Sad.
BTW, I think the headline was created by Washington Post — I don’t think he ever used the word “reconsider” in the op-ed.
“Hamas certainly, and unlawfully, does deliberately target civilians. This is not only grotesque but illegal, and Hamas military leaders should be referred to the International Criminal Court for this since Hamas’ political leadership has refused to investigate the matter themselves and hold those responsible for war crimes to account.”
Hamas? War crimes? Say it ain’t so, Yaniv.
Where you and Yaniv are mistaken is in the notion that Hamas and Israel are somehow different because Hamas deliberately fire rockets toward Israeli towns, whereas Israel claims it had been targeting “militants” or that it had made a “mistake”. But, somehow, miraculously for Israel, such targeted attacks on “militants” result in the slaughter of several children.
So, all Hamas has to do to avoid being accused of war crimes is to claim that it was targeting Israeli military installations or that it was in error.
That’s where Yaniv rears his deeply ingrained Israeli leftist face — I’ll condemn Hamas in no unequivocal terms, just so that I can gain some credibility and legitimacy in criticizing Israel, goes the rationale. It’s no different than Goldstone’s appeasing Israel. Now they Lieberman and yahoo will lynch him.
P.S. — Try not to be so childishly gleeful. It’s pathetic.
>>So, all Hamas has to do to avoid being accused of war crimes is to claim that it was targeting Israeli military installations or that it was in error.
it did! “Hamas Insists Rockets Were Not Aimed at Civilians” link to query.nytimes.com
should we take their denials seriously too? or should we assume that if they shot inaccurate weapons again and again into civilian areas, with full knowledge that civilians were being harmed, they can’t possibly claim that this was a mistake? the same logic applies to the IDF.
The same logic applies to a military with the most precise targeting systems that American tax money can buy? Yeah, no.
Computer programmers used to joke that an unexpected outcome of running a program was a “bug” the first time, but after a while could be called a “feature” (meaning, I suppose, that the developer decided not to “fix” the “bug”) and, after a longer time, could be regarded as a “philosophy”.
Same in war. Israel and Hamas and USA are all fighting unconventional wars these days, lopsided, unequal, the weak against the strong, and the strong (and also the weak) have developed philosophies of collective punishment as a way to encourage the society of its enemies to prevent its enemies from “acting out” against it. The USA and Israel have even said that the laws of war should be re-written to allow them greater flexibility in fighting this sort of war. Practically an admission that they have already been engaging in collective punishment, isn’t it? This is the excuse/explanation/admission: “Yes, we broke the laws of war, but we had to, there was no other way (if we didn’t want our soldiers to get killed, which we surely didn’t), and so we killed their civilians instead.” And, it goes without sating, since the USA and Israel have so far been able to wrap themselves in clothes of immunity (and thus acquired effective impunity), that they’ll go right on doing what they’ve been doing. Why stop now? (Anyone got some bug-spray to keep away these pesky UN (Goldstone) Reports?)
not part of their stated policy….that is what it sounds like Goldstone is letting Israel off the accountable hook…not part of their stated policy
meshaal addressed this back on 09 also. haaretz.
So, say Hamas gets its hands on some UAVs and starts to directly target the IDF, you’d be OK with that?
That would, at least, not be categorized as a war crime. Unlike the current tactics of Hamas militants which are to fire rockets indiscriminately into civilian populations which is unequivocally a war crime.
How convenient! The cop knows he can kill because the courts will exonerate him.
I think he has done the world great favors, in clarifying that there is relative progress on the part of the Israeli military to improve accountability, for all of the issues that are within its control.
It is depressing that Netanyahu and Lieberman are feeling entirely vindicated/enabled, rather than just partially vindicated.
Partial vindication itself is critical. It diminishes the construction of demonization, of giving up on Israel.
And, that is another great gift of the op-ed, that it returns the responsibility of dissent to reform and electoral advocacy rather than to fantasies of single state or of polemic forms of BDS.
“Partial vindication itself is critical. It diminishes the construction of demonization, of giving up on Israel.
And, that is another great gift of the op-ed, that it returns the responsibility of dissent to reform and electoral advocacy rather than to fantasies of single state or of polemic forms of BDS.”
The problem here, Richard, is that you’re not interested in whether the op ed is true. You’re just happy it fits into your worldview and you just assume it’s true–that’s why, when three people write posts outlining what is wrong with Goldstone’s op ed you focus on the fact that people are also critical of Goldstone for writing it when most of us used to think highly of him. The facts of what Israel did to Gaza never did interest you in any noticeable way–if you took an interest you would soon be forced to admit the silliness of the “bad apple” theory.
That’s also true of the other liberal Zionists who’ve commented on these Goldstone threads (Jerry Slater is the exception, as he often is.) You’ve all just assumed that Goldstone gave a fair account of what has been happening in Israel’s investigations and that we can conclude that Israel didn’t intend to hurt civilians as a matter of policy, that it was just a few bad apples. But nothing has changed. It defies logic to think that all the death and destruction inflicted on Gaza were just mistakes or the actions of low-ranking people going well beyond what their orders were. You might just as well assume that when Hamas fires rockets they really don’t want to hit any civilians (and in fact you’ll find a handful of people who occasionally try to make that argument).
You place a lot of importance on the fact that the PA renounces violence against Israelis and you’re right on that point–I wish the PA would also renounce the torture it inflicts on its own dissenters (something I’ve never seen you acknowledge), but it is good that they renounce terrorism. It seems to me that the very least the Palestinians could expect from the Israelis is an admission of their own brutality and if that isn’t going to come from the government (and clearly it isn’t) then at the very least the “liberal Zionists” could demonstrate their desire for peace by denouncing the violence of the Israeli government. But you don’t. Instead you leap at every opportunity to whitewash what the Israeli government has done. Goldstone’s backpedaling was a gift to all the apologists for Israeli crimes against Palestinians and if you accept that gift it demonstrates where your priorities lie.
Donald: You are right, as usual. Richard’s true motivations are completely transparent — he wants to protect his view of “Israel,” a place he barely knows, and hasn’t bothered to visit since 1986. In his own words, he doesn’t want to “give up on Israel.”
But once again I contend that Richard is at war with his own anguished conscience. Why else would he come back here, year after year, post after post? Unless there are large numbers of Mondoweiss visitors who are keeping quiet, he has not convinced anyone here.
Today, Richard is happy. He doesn’t have to hide, like he did after the Mavi Marmara.
I think that’s basically right– what he writes here is as much to convince himself as it is to convince others.
I’d be interested in knowing how many American liberal Zionists would go as far as Jerry Slater in admitting Israeli crimes. We don’t see too many at Mondoweiss. Possibly we chase away the ones who are honest about the crimes but still have an attachment to the Zionist ideal. If so, I think it’d be better if we didn’t do that–I think there can be an alliance between people like Slater and anti-Zionists on pressuring Israel to negotiate fairly with Palestinians, though in the end it depends on what solution the Palestinians themselves decide they want to achieve. At other blogs among the Israel supporters I’ve seen both honest people and also the pseudo-liberals, who get hostile or go into denial if anyone dares to compare Israeli crimes to those of Hamas (nevermind saying that Israel’s are worse.)
That was a confusing transition between my first line (talking about RW) and my second paragraph. I’ve been doing that a lot lately.
The issue is linked (in my mind) though because in looking for political allies I wonder how many of the self-described liberal Zionists are like RW (in denial about Gaza and other Israeli crimes) and how many are like Slater (not in denial), or how many fall in-between somewhere.
The definition of war crime is not so simplistic as to be determined solely by observation. ‘There was enormous damage in civilian areas, therefore war crimes must have been committed.”
What any prosecution must prove includes the intention relative to the on the ground and communicated context of the situation.
for goodness’ sake, you have all the links to the reports. How much more context do you need? just read them, seriously.
“for goodness’ sake, you have all the links to the reports. How much more context do you need? just read them, seriously.”
People have been telling Richard to do this for years. Whether he has ever done so, he never refers to the facts. He prefers to stay on a level of woolly-minded abstraction where he doesn’t have to make admissions that would make his political position impossible to maintain.
Or to be blunt, with Richard it is a matter of faith that mainstream liberal Zionists can’t possibly be as savage as an Arab. So why bother with the details?
Quite a few of my responses here have not been accepted for some reason.
I expect that I will be accused of “disappearing”.
Tom,
Again, the observation of destruction during war, is NOT the same as observation of “war crime”.
Goldstone’s opinion is an opinion. Its just that his reputation and identify have been used to support the assertion that Israel committed “war crimes” and beyond incidents.
So, we now have a qualification of the original opinion, implying that the Israeli violence may have been within the guidelines of a reasonable military approach.
It still leaves the question of policy relative to Palestinians and to Gazans in particular unanswered.
It is a good thing that the subject of discussion must now therefore return to questions of policy and reforms, rather than questions of “obvious” criminality, or delegitimization of Israel as Israel.
1.
It is a violation of the rules of war to use White Phosphorus in civilian areas.
With 1.5 million Gazans crammed into a small strip of land, it doesn’t require a brain surgeon to realize that White Phosphorus will certainly injure civilians.
For Israel to claim that it wasn’t “targeting” civilians is ludicrous for that very reason.
2. Israeli munitions were not limited to W.P.
As early as 2005, Israeli forces have been using flechette-packed bombs on Gaza. Again, by the very nature of the weapons, the claim of a “targeted” attack is ludicrous.
3. Then there were DIME:
The Op-Ed in the WaPo certainly glosses over these details, as though they never existed.
As a result, it is entirely understandable that professor Chomsky characterized the Goldstone investigation as mild and watered-down.
Wow, Mondoweiss is filled to the brim with hacks today.
biorabbi, GultyFeat, Krauss, witty, longliveisrael, maximalistnarrative, …did I forget anyone?
———–
Phil, Adam,
It’s becoming difficult to wade through the swamp. Drain it, will you?
Are you calling for me to be banned because I don’t agree with you? Charming.
Avi, we know how you feel about Israeli war crimes and the prosecution of Israel’s leaders for said war crimes. I’m inclined to agree with you on that.
But how do you feel about Hamas war crimes and the prosecution of Hamas leaders for their war crimes? Don’t hold back.
He’s calling for you to be banned because you’re TRYING TO COVER UP CHILD MURDER AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
This coming from the same putz who only yesterday wrote claiming that there is no discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, especially when it comes to housing?
How pathetic.
Israel’s ardent defenders seem to have the memory of a chipmunk.
Avi – you’re getting pretty intolerant and insulting lately. Gratuitously so.
It’s not gratuitous to be pissed at people who want to make it easier for Israel to slaughter children and bomb hospitals.
Intolerant?
You seem to be content with having all these little Mark Regevs running around, lying, spinning and obfuscating.
What’s there to tolerate with such scum?
i’m sick of them myself, they are out in full force.
When David Corn first put up a site about 8 years ago I believe and we would be discussing this issue the site was attacked so viciously it was shut down. Folks have far more advanced ways of dealing now.
Either avoid or respond to reasonable comments that is my strategy
“Avi – you’re getting pretty intolerant and insulting lately. Gratuitously so.”
Call me intolerant too, Potsherd, but I, too, am sick and tired of seeing the same vapid apologetics time and time again! And turning the gun at a fellow poster for showing irritation is not an elegant way to make a point either.
Krauss, doesn’t completely seem to fit into your list. Am I missing something?
***************************************************************
Netanyahu has gone so far as to demand the Goldstone report be retracted from the UN.
Barak Ravid, as we should expect. Has Netanyahu told him to stop writing open letters and do his job: convey his master’s message to the world.
Yes. You are missing something. Krauss posted a long manifesto yesterday, claiming that Israel belongs to Jews because it’s the Jewish homeland that dates back 4000 years. He also lied by claiming that historical evidence is indispensable in this case.
And, for the icing on the cake, he claimed that anyone who compared the ideology of Zionism with Nazism was an anti-Semite.
Avi,
If what you post here is so righteous, why are you afraid of contrary opinions? Are you saying that your opinions are only valid if you are preaching to the choir?
Oh you’re so innocent, polite and reasonable. It’s amazing. I bet you are warm and cuddly, too. Like a little puppy.
So smug. Did you think readers had a one-hour memory? All one has to to do is scroll down a few articles to read your Hasbara screeds.
There is a misconception among those with a room temperature IQ and 4th grade education, that opinions must be tolerated no matter how erroneous, untruthful and malicious they are.
Worse yet, coming from the same people who support Israel’s attacks on Palestinian non-violent resistance, it’s quite hypocritical.
“There is a misconception among those with a room temperature IQ and 4th grade education, that opinions must be tolerated no matter how erroneous, untruthful and malicious they are.”
It’s a little thing we like to call “freedom of speech”. It’s part of this other thing Hamas supporters don’t know much about called “democracy”.
You might have heard about these things in your 4th grade civics class, or did you flunk out of that one too?
Actually, “freedom of speech” has nothing to do with Democracy as the Israeli Knesset so aptly demonstrated last week in voting to get rid of it. If you can vote on it, you don’t have it. Back to “4th grade civics class” for you.
מהשל א יעשה הש כל יע שהה זמן
Apparently, what they didn’t teach you in civics class is that with freedom comes responsibility.
How would you like it if I called you a pedophile? Hey, I’ve got a right to free speech and to voice my opinion.
So, it’s OK to tell lies?
Yaniv Reich. A moral giant.
One of his key observations, among many, is:
“One of the strangest omissions in the op-ed was the recognition that, assuming Israel is conducting investigations in good faith (again, more on that terrible assumption below), it was the Goldstone report that caused Israel to conduct these investigations.”
Does anyone think that Israel would have taken even the investigative measures it says it has so far if Goldstone’s report had not given it such a black eye?
I appreciate Yaniv’s post, but like Avi I wasn’t crazy about that claim that Israel doesn’t “target” civilians. Yaniv goes on to explain what he means –Israel basically allowed the IDF to shoot at anything to avoid casualties among its soldiers. But I think that’s an awfully fine distinction and anyway, I think the operation was meant to “punish” the civilian population and in practice that is going to include civilian deaths.
Westerners have evolved interesting ways of rationalizing our own forms of terrorism since it went out of fashion to openly target civilians. The US targeted Iraqi civilians with the sanctions, but our government and its apologists almost never admitted this (except in rare unguarded moments). Israel targeted civilians–they wanted them to suffer and that meant they would use so much force that hundreds would die. You don’t have to write a memo that says “We’re going to kill civilians”. You just authorize policies that ensure it will happen in numbers that can’t be justified in any moral way and then pretend you didn’t mean for any to die.
James,
Yaniv is giving Israel too much credit here. Sham investigations are still sham investigations. And scapegoating one or two hapless saps for a military-wide policy is a nice way of squelching criticism and burying the case. It’s the old A Few Bad Apples defense.
Who gave the order to destroy all those food processing factories in Gaza? Who gave the order to bomb flour storage depots? Who gave the order to kill thousands upon thousands of chickens? Who gave the order to use DIME on civilians? White Phosphorus?
I’m sorry, James. But, “moral giant” is a little over the top in this case.
Goldstone just sold his soul to the devil.
i’m with avi on this, the attempted analysis of ‘intent’ being more of the semantic variety than legal. even if no written policy exists, intent can be inferred from results, and under the law grossly negligent conduct may be just as actionable as intentional conduct. having said that, this is all so much hair splitting. my contemporaneous memory of events regarding israel’s conduct began with lebanon ’06. that is my template. swaths of territory seeded with unexploded cluster bombs. intentional targetting of civilian infrastructure outside of the control of hizbollah. . . . and on and on. there is a consistent history of israel targetting non-combatants, civilian infrastructure. i mean, for f#cks sake, the israeli high court concluded that the IDF had/has a policy of using human shields, a policy it dishonestly attributed to palestinians as evidence of their inhumanity. frankly i don’t give a sh@t what was going on in the minds of those who formulated the orders and later carried out the orders. the results speak for themselves.
RE: “He did publish this piece under a headline of ‘reconsidering the Goldstone report’ after all.” – Yaniv Reich
MY QUESTIONS: Yes, but does the author of an op-ed submitted to the NYT have any ‘say so’ as to the headline used by the NYT? Do they even inform the author prior to publication of the headline they anticipate using?
RE: “Yes, but does the author of an op-ed submitted to the NYT have any ‘say so’ as to the headline used by the NYT?” – me (the dummy), above
SHOULD HAVE READ: Yes, but does the author of an op-ed submitted to the Washington Post have any ‘say so’ as to the headline used by the Post?”
P.S. I’m having a ‘bad brain’ day!
RE: “One cannot avoid the impression that Israel’s unconditional supporters still haven’t actually read the report.” – Yaniv Reich
MY COMMENT: And they dare not read the report. They intuitively know better than to do so. Independent knowledge is a hasbaraist’s worst enemy!
In any case, why would they read it when their “Dear Leaders” have already told them it is just a pack of lies?
FROM WIKIPEDIA [Cult]:
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to en.wikipedia.org
Ooh, the police are investigating themselves! Excuuuuuse me while I genuflect!
From a post above:
“It is a violation of the rules of war to use White Phosphorus in civilian areas….”
Man, this is Orwellian. So it’s codified? How about winning? If you don’t use White Phosphorus you’re moral? I don’t believe Pol Pot or Libya used White Phosphorus. Is it a violation of war to knife a child throat apart? Is it a violation of war to defend yourself? Ever? in any capacity.
If your fall back position, Avi, is Israel herself is original sin, so any counter sin against an Israeli is nullified because of ethnic cleansing and occupation, then ‘any’ sort of response to any sort of knifing, bombing, attack is unjustified.
Last I checked, in war people die. Innocents sometimes die by intent or accident. I doubt it matters much if your dying and you say to yourself, “well, at least my opponents were ethical(or not by violating the rules of war).” I also doubt it much matters to the victims’ family if they were killed by White Phosphorus, an errent shell, an intentional kill, or friendly fire.”
Isn’t the entire issue of war itself a violation of decency and ethics? Does it really matter that if one wraps themselves up in faux progressive idiocy and bomb the hell out of Tripoli, killing kids and the elderly by accident–not design? or uses White Phosphorus or knifes a child’s throat to shreds? In all three instances, the use of force is giving a piece of information to their opponent: we’re going to dominate you, you can’t hide, and will kill you if we can.
Finally, Avi, is there really an external enemy? I’m sure a crazed settler from one of the five boroughs believes so, and I’m sure a lovely, bearded, Salafist Jihadist in Gaza believes with every once of his fiber that there is an external enemy, and their individual gods and devils sanction and rule their lives, but isn’t it just a lot of ego mischief in the end. Isn’t the devil himself just a creation of the always energetic ego?
Three hundred and fifty children were slaughtered, you monster.
You’re sputtering, biorabbi.
If you are really interested in the law on the use of white phosphorus, I suggest you read the Human Rights Watch report here:
link to hrw.org
From the section on Legal Standards:
…….
The rest of your post sounds like a long riff on number 4, “everybody sucks”.
biorabbi,
Israel fired into an area the size of Vegas with three times the population and claimed it wasn’t aiming at civilians?
Keep smoking what you’re smoking.
“Man, this is Orwellian. So it’s codified? How about winning? If you don’t use White Phosphorus you’re moral? I don’t believe Pol Pot or Libya used White Phosphorus. ”
You seem to be assuming that if action A is a war crime, then all war criminals must be guilty of using action A.
So I guess by your reasoning the Nazis weren’t war criminals, since there are some actions we consider war crimes that they didn’t use.
How the quick response in Israel? Avi, are you asking with a straight face?
David Horovitz, editor at JPost, had a long condemnation (in English) of Goldstone on the web almost immediately. JPost and Haaretz both had their news articles out about the WaPo op-ed within hours, complete with analysis and statements by Netanyahu and FM Liebermann.
Obviously, Fred Hiatt of WaPo gave all his friends in Israel plenty of advance notice of what he was delivering.
Actions speak louder than words. Israel’s actions since the Goldstone Report have proved its essential truthfulness.
For instance, in late 2010 Israel implemented its first-ever training course for a new military post aimed at helping Israel minimize harm to civilians. During the course, the officers were taught how to assist battalion and brigade commanders in planning operations while taking into consideration the effect these operations will have on the civilian population.
The officer in charge explained, among other things, that “If a field commander needs to conquer a city or a neighborhood, our officer will be there to explain what the sensitive targets are in the area of operations and what to look out for. We are adding the humanitarian side, like which road needs to be kept open so civilians can evacuate if needed.” I.e., the fact that escape routes for civilians needed to be provided was taken into consideration for the first time in 2010, meaning that all the leaflet-dropping and text messaging warning civilians to evacuate the areas under attack were useless, since they had nowhere to go to as the roads were closed.
The Israelis candidly commented that this course was given “as the key to preventing another Goldstone Report.” Now that Goldstone has published his bizarre retreat, the Israelis will be able to resume their careless bombings and ascribe the massacres to mistakes interpreting aereal photos.
the fact that escape routes for civilians needed to be provided was taken into consideration for the first time in 2010, meaning that all the leaflet-dropping and text messaging warning civilians to evacuate the areas under attack were useless, since they had nowhere to go to as the roads were closed.
HB, read Lawfare in Gaza: legislative attack
the leaflet dropping was not technically ‘useless’. their purpose was not to prevent civilian death, there purpose was to redefine civilians who remained in their homes as legitimate targets, or ‘combatants’. scroll to The technologies of warning and listen to the words of the officer at the international-law division.
this is part of a strategy, a doctrine of turning civilian neighborhoods into military bases for the purpose of shirking international law.