Not more than a day after the Goldstone report — technically, the “Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” — was published, on September 15, the chorus of criticism began. Israel’s immediate and vehement denunciation of the report was quickly taken up by most American Jewish organizations. The most common accusation was that the report paid inadequate attention to the provocations that led Israel to launch its war in Gaza. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that few of the critics had actually read the 575 pages of the report. Instead, they either relied on the Israeli critique or on the official U.N. Human Rights Council press release summarizing the report’s conclusions, a 1,400-word document describing a 219,000 word report. In the fervent view of the rush-to-judgment critics, the report is profoundly biased, fatally flawed.
The Goldstone report is, indeed, incendiary. But whether it is so because it is false or because it is true remains an open question. Having read all 575 pages, as well as the 164 pages of Israel’s own investigation — “The Operation in Gaza, 27 December 2008-18 January 2009: Factual and Legal Aspects,” a report that is closely, even meticulously argued and was published a month before Goldstone’s findings were released — I believe the responsible conclusion is that some of the differences between the two reports are matters of judgment, on which reasonable people may well disagree, while many (but not all) others hinge on the issue of intentionality. Israel systematically denies that any civilians were intentionally targeted; Goldstone insists that there is no other persuasive explanation for the same specific events. And much of the back and forth is a function of the relevance of the findings as a matter of law.
Judgment: Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza began on December 27. Within minutes, 24 police stations were hit, among them a compound where 48 policemen were killed. (In all, about one-sixth of all the casualties during the three weeks of the conflict were police personnel.) According to Israel, policemen in Gaza were intimately connected to the Hamas military wing, hence not exempt from attack. According to the Goldstone mission, however, the links between the police and the Hamas military wing were episodic, rendering the police a prohibited target.
Or: According to Goldstone, Israel remains, even after its withdrawal from its settlements in Gaza, an occupying power, this because of its near-total control of Gaza’s borders. Goldstone brings legal precedent to the argument, even though the word “occupation” normally suggests physical presence. Israel rejects the Goldstone interpretation.
As to the question of intentionality, the Goldstone accusation is horrific: Given Israel’s military proficiency, Goldstone says, it is simply inconceivable that the large number of civilian casualties was unintended. “From the facts gathered, the Mission found that the following grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention were committed by Israeli forces in Gaza: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.” And then: “Taking into account the ability to plan, the means to execute plans with the most developed technology available, and statements by the Israeli military that almost no errors occurred, the Mission finds that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions.” Goldstone buttresses its accusation of intentionality with quotations from senior Israeli military and political personnel who are on record as rejecting “hunt and peck” tactics focused on finding and destroying rocket launchers, preferring instead a doctrine known as “Dahiya,” which, the report alleges, involves “the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations.”
All this is based on detailed examination of specific incidents during the course of the conflict — that is to say, on findings, followed in each case by legal analysis of those findings. Some of the findings are specifically discussed and denied in Israel’s own report, while others are more generally dismissed. Israel acknowledges that many specific instances are still being investigated, and that there were, inevitably, some errors in its execution of its assault. But it is emphatic in its insistence that the specific rules of engagement were in complete accord with all the requirements of international law and that the deviations from those rules were rare and unintentional. The Israeli report cannot be casually dismissed — any more than can the Goldstone report.
It is necessary to point out that both reports devote many pages to the background of the conflict — that is, to the rocket attacks on Israel in the years and months leading up to the Israeli assault. One understands the impulse to “explain” the context, but it should be kept in mind that the context is entirely irrelevant to the laws of war (formally, “International Humanitarian Law”). Those laws do not ask whether a war is justified; they ask only how a war is conducted. The antecedent provocation, however grave, does not justify violations of the laws of war. Accordingly, the plaintive question of some of Israel’s defenders — “What was Israel supposed to do in the face of the incessant rockets?” — is, however heartfelt, legally irrelevant.
Israel refused to cooperate with the U.N. investigation, holding that its mandate prejudged its outcome, a reasonable assertion given the virulently anti-Israel track record of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Whether because of its contempt for the process or because it fears the results, Israel is not likely now to accept the Goldstone recommendation (which is supported by the United States) that an independent Israeli commission of inquiry conduct a thorough investigation. What, then, to do? For rest assured, the Goldstone report will not soon go away. It will, studied or left unread, become a point of reference and departure not only for all who wish Israel ill but also for the international human rights community. Israel’s own report, sober as it is, will have no more status than, say, the American “investigations” of the events at Abu Ghraib or of CIA renditions, all, as in Israel, conducted by government agencies.
A modest suggestion, for the time being: The American Jewish community does not lack for legal scholars and experienced analysts. Let a panel of genuinely independent — and fearless — people come together and assess the two existing reports, comparing them far more thoroughly than I am here able to do. Let them then put tough questions to both Israel and the U.N. commission. And let us see what comes of that.
And please: This is not a bandwagon to be fueled by uninformed indignation. Let those who have not read the reports withhold judgment. These are matters of life and death.
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Goldstone is a pillar of the Jewish Ethic despite the inconvenience of his report. But besides the cold logic and strict truth telling he imposed upon it there is a fear that Israel may well be the sugar cube dissolving in the hot Arab lands in which in floats. Many in Israel today are in this New Year acquiring ever more second passports, just in case. If so many Israelis are going from ISRAELI to JEW, then HAMAS has won and Israel is, as numerous analysts have argued, a dissolving nation. What a tragedy that would be for a generation of Arabs who really want nothing more than Islamic nations modern EXACTLY like Israel, not to speak of the Israelis who devoted their entire lives to make it so-- will their graves be abandoned by those who so benefited from their sacrifice?
Israel is a key that opens the minds of Jews and their old tormenters in admiration and respect. Those goyim who so malign Jews deeply admire Israel-- that is a fact. I recall many gatherings at my parents' estate in the Catskills where my dad's classmates from the Diaspora and from Israel would gather with their Romanian goyim tormentors of their youth to celebrate their common Romanian roots and memories, whatever that may be. All seemed forgiven as classmates from the Bucharest Medical School danced the Hora, ate home made lamb and beef dishes cooked in unison and played blades of grass as if reed instruments while reminiscing. And most amazing is the one thing all had in common-- Jew, goy and anti-Semite-- an admiration for Israel as proof that all the stereotypes were crap. Finally the heritage that bound them all together overcame the heritages that had made them in their youth weary of each other. Israel is a living breathing functioning materialization of the Jewish Ethic, despite the horror show one can always see on TV, film of terror and counter-terror. But on those Memorial Day weekends every year at my dad's "Mosia" in the Catskills, no one looked down at anyone as all were the Bucharest Med school class of 39 that made good, did good and celebrated the best of the roots that bonded them together. Many an apology was issued and many tears of forgiveness flowed. Israel was the vehicle of admiration and pride that made this healing of old wounds and stereotypes possible.
Some 80% of Jews do not live in Israel and the other 20% are dwindling as they carry their other passport just in case. I can attest to that that item of pride I first saw so prevalent in my earlier visits to Tel Aviv when entering shops with the sign in the window: "aic vorbim romaneste." Suddenly, never having met me before and totally uninterested whether I was circumcised or not, I was welcomed as a young "lanzman" to be feted and to query about life in the USA.
That is the Jewish Israel I then knew. And the Arab Israel I knew was full of hope that their children would be like the Jewish ones, scholars, scientists and full members of the modern world. In their words of hope there was no betrayed sense of occupation. Indeed, the notion of Israel's Founding Fathers, "to be a light onto the [Arab] nations" was ever a hope after they, as Palestinians, acquire the same self-confidence that Israel gave Jews now that they have their own country. Like most Jews, most Palestinians are Diasporics and will stay that way just like most Jews. But those who stayed, I'm sure know that they are in a violent family feud that viciously constricts the family into opposing huddles through intended and unintended massacre. Life is so much more bitter when cousin kills cousin. This is what I got from reading the Goldstone Report-- not blame but a call to end the bloodshed. It was not a whitewash but a telling of the truth, the Jewish way, the Jewish Ethic way. Alas, today, Israel fears the national determination of its own more than it fears the determination of attack of the Arabs. There is indeed anxiety that more and more Jews are voting with their feet instead of their ballots. A young man shaving in the morning knows not if when finished he will put on his Reservist uniform or a business suit. This uncertainty destroys a nation and no American cash generosity can alter that. We all face a war of the kind that went on in the first millennium of the Israeli calendar, now going into the sixth. Revenge is a rage denying either side choice or hope. Gaza was an act of fear and will be followed by many. But as the helpless victims grow in hate and are consumed by a desire for revenge, HAMAS will be there to commit them to a mis-translation of Jihad so they become shahids seeking remembrance as suicide heroes instead of failed students who could never acquire careers that repay the pain their families went through putting them through university.
Netanyahu, a shmecker to be sure, is not dumb and he realized that an economic future for Palestinian youth immunizes them against the shahid route. And so he is trying, in the midst of so much rage and fear on both sides, to bond as one the larger Semitic family economically. This should not be considered eclipsed by the Goldstone report on Gaza. Rather, Jewish fear should turn into Jewish kindness to this youth whose roots are from common ancestors. The Goldstone Report, to me, is more a list of things to do, to repair and to create hope. It is not a blanket condemnation. It is a devotion to truth and the Jewish Ethic. To attack him for his plan now in fear is to lower yourselves to the lowest common denominator in the Jewish Community-- the NEOCONS-- rather than to atone for sins and rise to the full glory of Jewish power that Israel sought to be. Israel cannot be a spine for Diaspora Jews if Israeli olims are called to war so often that, so in despair, they acquire foreign passports. Israel has the ability, skill and accomplishment to indeed be a light onto the Arab nations, guiding them to modernity as family instead of being misread as a standing for Western imperialism.
DE Teodoru - You don't seem to be up to date about the demographic realities of the Jewish people. About half of the Jews in the world live in Israel. Moreover, your claim that the number of Israelis is dwindling is really total nonsense. There is just one Jewish "community" in the world that has increasing numbers - Israel. (I place the word "community" in quotation marks, because one can't really compare Israel to a Jewish community in any country in the world. The Israelis are a national entity, not a volunteer organization). It seems obvious that in the very near future most Jews in the world will be living in Israel. It is beyond me why anyone would "make believe" that Israel is not the very center of the Jewish world today. What a peculiar way of expressing animosity!
Ben Levi, that's interesting because there are about 6 million Jews in Israel and 6 million Jews in the US--- so what do you consider the millions in the rest of the world?
And then I would ring the fire bell over all the Israelis trying to have it both ways so that as soon as things get hot they've got a home where they are well appreciated and well paid. See wehat Likudnik AZURE has to say on that issue:
http://www.azure.org.il/include/print.php?id=4
Israel needs peace and it needs integration with the Middle East. It was rejected for NATO and EU so it would do well to lead the Arabs to modernization, out of their one crop (oil) banana republic economies. It alone can do it. But in pretending that it is the point of the spear of Western imperialsim in the Middle East it invites shahids in and Jews out.
Ben Levi, you wrote:
It seems obvious that in the very near future most Jews in the world will be living in Israel. It is beyond me why anyone would "make believe" that Israel is not the very center of the Jewish world today. What a peculiar way of expressing animosity!
Could you elaborate on what makes you think that this Nazi dream from the 1930s will come true?
DE Teodoru -
The number of Jews in the US is very hard to know; the number of committed Jews, i.e. those for whom being Jewish impacts in some significant way on their daily life, is much smaller.
And see a 2006 article here in the Forward about the numbers http://www.forward.com/articles/9695/
The number of Jews in Israel is growing. Over the past decade the birthrate among the non-haredi Israeli Jews has inched up consistently. The birthrate among the haredi Jews is, of course, stratospheric.
No-one knows how many Israeli Jews have double citizenships, but your statement that the lines before the embassies go round the block seems, how to say it, unconvincing. In any case, the number probably doesn't mean what you think it means. Everyone in my family has double citizenship, yet not one of us would ever leave Israel premanently. Double citizenship makes doing international business much easier, for tax reasons, for example.
DE Teodoru - Israel never sought acceptance to NATO nor to the EU; hence, she was never rejected for acceptance. Your opinions are based on invented events. One could only wonder what imagined Nazi dream you have in mind. And "pretending that it is the point of the spear of Western imperialsm" - only shows how you have everything twisted and distorted. "Western imperialism" is the claim of Arab propaganda which maintains that Israel was founded to serve the interests of the western powers. Obviously, this nonsensical point of view is totally foreign to us. In modern terms of political science, Israel was founded as the expression of the right to self-determination of the Jewish people. In ancient or in traditional terms of the Jewish narrative, it is called "the redemption of Israel".
I should add to Mr Lozowick's comment that many Israelis seek an additional citizenship because it provides an opportunity to study in Europe where academic studies are free in a number of countries. Your interpreting the phenomenon as abandonment is another indication that you don't know anything about our society. People are quite pleased with life in Israel. The Jewish population here is growing at a very high rate (whereas the Jewish population is shrinking in the rest of the world). It's really hard to understand how anyone could see this plain reality in any other way.
Dear Mr. Yaacov Lozowick, Those are not my words about the passports. I first expressed outrage at the announcement of multipassportism on the part of old farts who would send the young sabras to fight. But then I realized what some Israeli analysts were saying: people have lost confidence in the ability of the IDF to defend them and then they lost confidence in Israel's abilities. That is why you don't hear all the pluralisms you used to hear after 1967. I could truck out all the evidence that Israel is losing confidence and that its numbers are dwindling relative to its Palestinians, whom according to some demographers are almost equal in number to Jews. But then we would be in endless debate over sources. My concern is that for Israelis the loss of confidence on the future immediately plugs into the Holocaust and that leads to a fear that none can understand unless you are a survivor of horror and still wrestling with why you, of all people, survived. The worst thing is that the incredible unity of diverse people that had been Israel is no more. It is now trying to hold on to birds, land animals and fish, each insisting that Israel is air, land and water exclusively. I don't think that their Palestinian enemies understand that yet. I don't think that many Jews themselves understand how "being a Jew" has changed from a religion, to a culture, to a nation and now to a race. Sure, there were times when each of these views dominated, but now they are separate cults that demand extreme internal homogeneity and severe ostracization of each other. Into how many pieces you can rip a piece of paper that is one foot square depends on how strong you are but into how many pieces you can tear a paper one inch square is a total different issue. Israel is small and its internal divisions do not make for viable pieces. Israelis who care for the whole are seeing the fragments come apart, like implied in your statement: “The number of Jews in the US is very hard to know; the number of committed Jews, i.e. those for whom being Jewish impacts in some significant way on their daily life, is much smaller." What is that supposed to mean? I was raised with the idea that if you lock six Jews in a room you get interminable debate of seven opinions as the survival power of Jews. I took this into anti-Semitic circles and put before them: how can six people debating interminably seven opinions ever be a conspiracy? They eventually agreed-- though they still didn't like Jews-- and that, OK, maybe there is no international Jewish Conspiracy because of that. I recommended they focus their efforts on looking for UFOs from the INTERPLANETARY Jewish Conspiracy coming form Jewpiter!
Well, now, each group claims to speak for the whole; like Frank dennouncing Mr. Fein as "a self-hating Jews." What the hell is that supposed to mean?
So I conclude, sir, that a people who can no longer engage in discourse but find themselves ripped into mutulally repeling fragments are doomed. HOWEVER, IT NEED NOT BE THAT WAY. Israel has so much to offer to its Arab cousins, many of whome are blood-line Jews who converted in the time of Mohammad and after, that through Semitic unity there is streght. I favor two states-- Palestinian and Jewish-- but really it would be lucky if they could economically survive as one; so that's why I propose two states, one economy. Israel and Palestine have lived without borders since the 40s. So long as they integrate their skills, they could come up with one hell of an economy-- the current Jerusalem U college for Palestinans is a perfect example of how to start the modernization of Arabs. This demands focusing on the similarities and tolerating the differences. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT NETANYAHU IS TRYING TO DO!
But people who are loose mouths about slandering terms like "self-hating Jew" and "anti-Semite" prove to be people who do it for profession, for motive or to fool people into thinking their mensch-hood is a lot more than it seems to be from their girth. Those people scare easily because they are bravados. But those who are sure of their way do not feel threatened by others with different ways. There is always common interest in such a miserable piece of sand that God given human ingenuity can change into a garden. The opportunities for Israel are many-- whether you are right that its population is growing or I that it is shrinking. It can lead the whole Mideast region into wonders as those I always found in the Jerusalem U cafeteria talking to Israeli and Palestinian students and academics. There's no reason for either to leave, for together they can make the desert bloom. However, if a people is fragmented, feeling impotent and scared of each other because thy neighbor might not be "orthodox" (I mean that in the generic sense), then it will be destroyed. Since 1900 Jews have been fighting Sunni Muslims over the Holy Land. Now Israel took a beating from Hezbollah and is scared of HAMAS, both beholding to Iran, a Shia Muslim country. What happened to the great Jew vs. Sunni War? Why is Saudi Arabia no longer scared of the Jewish H-bomb but scared to death of the Shia Muslim A-bomb? Does this not present Israel with an opportunity to fully integrate itself into its Sunni neighborhood? Does this not forebode career opportunities that will bring all the people mentioned in the AZURE editorial as "losing our minds," back home to do even better than in LA, teaching Arabs how to escape their banana republic one crop (oil) economies? The answer is no, if, as even you do, one focuses on differences as if a giant wall (like Sartre's self prisons of the mind). But a focus on points in common multiplies the number of Jews by the number of Arabs.
One last point. You say the number of "Jews" in Israel is increasing but you also say that the number of "those for whom being Jewish impacts in some significant way on their daily life, is much smaller." Is that to say that once an Israeli one is a proper Jew but not all Diaspora Jews are proper Jews? Well, Jewish leaders told me that the reason they want to tear President Carter apart is not because he associated Israel with apartheid-- indeed, they even admit that it is practiced there and that Sharon had gone to South Africa to study it-- but because he presented Israelis as secularists and in this way was telling Evangelical Americans that Israelis are NOT deserving to be considered "God's chosen people" because they are not observant. Haredi can say all they want, but it is these “secular” Heathen sabras that protect the Haredi in their settlements. I recall in about 2002, Israelis were warning that the settlements issue would rip Israel apart. THERE'S NO REASON FOR THAT as for neither Jews nor Palestinians is life all about a piece of sandy or rocky real estate. The real issue is how many pieces are you going to rip a piece of paper one square inch into and still recognize it as what it once was. You speak of HAMAS separation from Fattah. But the Jewish separation is far more fundamentally fragmentary, for one side of the Jewish population calls the other an abomination. How do you glue that back together to build a future, together? Perhaps by uniting with the Palestinians and the Jews into two states, one economy you might find an answer as to how to unite the Jews.
The real winner of the Goldstone report is beyond any doubt Hamas.They are definitely going to win the next palestinian elections specially after the betrayal of the palestinian authority of its electorate by dropping the demand of its discussion in the UN.If Hamas were smart enough to appoint an independent palestinian and international inquiry (as the Goldstone report demanded),its finding may lay some blame on Hamas but most certainly will reinvigorate the findings of the Goldstone repot regarding the culpability of Israel.Furthermore if Hamas were smarter they will comply with Israel and the international community demand of accepting Israel right to exist ,renouncing terrorism and accepting previous agreements,but only for a specified period of time(such as the same time Israel freezes settelment activities in the west bank).If hamas were to do this ,it will attain the legitimacy it so desires,will win a landslide election ,and Israel will have a negotiating partner that speaks the same language of violence and warcrimes.And guess what,come next march no superpower will be able to twist Hamas arm in postponing discussion of the Goldstone report.
DE Teodoru - "The fact is YOU ARE HERE, not in Israel and that says it all". I live in Israel, and only in Israel.
That does not answer any of the issues. My being here and not in Israel does not matrially change the fact that for MOST Jews Israel is a noice place to visit and not to live and secondly that when Israel most needs all the friends it can get the Jewish Community inside and outside of Israel is fragmenting on issues totally unrelated to the Common Jewish ground. Please, let that be the topic, not your quip. You don't even know what my input from Israel is. Lastly, if you are in Israel you do see all this so please address it for it is the real issue relative to survival.
As for Frank, this is his best shot dung flinging!
I stopped reading at this sentence: "According to the Goldstone mission, however, the links between the police and the Hamas military wing were episodic, rendering the police a prohibited target." What is this supposed to mean? Somehow episodic is translated as "not all the time" and therefore the police are only to blame some of the time? How does that render them off limits? The reason for the uproar is that Israel is always branded as militaristic and demonic no matter what it does.
An article about what South African Jews think of Richard Goldstone http://tinyurl.com/ydzymoy
DE Teodoru offers sound logic. I do not think the ostrich approach is going to work.
I hope the person who made the comments about Bibi and economic opportunity for young Arabs is correct. If so, that gives everyone something to work with. We just need some quiet so positive developments can take place on the ground.
Ante Frank - The Hamas will not accept Israel's right to exist. It also has no intention of negotiating a settlement of the conflict with Israel. Based on what logic have you formulated your views on the Middle East? The Hamas wishes to defeat Israel, not to live with her. Obviously, the ultimate victory over Israel is far in the future, in another generation or in another century. Meanwhile, in order to reach that day, the conflict must be kept alive at some minimum level. This means hostile anti-Israel propaganda, occasional acts of violence, etc. An acceptance of Israel's legitimacy would end the conflict, and Israel's existence would be understood to be permanent. That's not an option from the Hamas point of view (or from the Fatah point of view). In order to understand the conflict, one must study the Arabic language. Language gives you a view into the world of its speakers. I know that this makes me sound like a snob - but it's still a very true statement. Anyone who speaks of a Hamas recognition of Israel and an ultimate willingness to live with Israel simply is not viewing the reality of life in the Middle East.
Lee Diamont - Economic opportunity for young Arabs? The Arab world is insisting on maintaining refugee status from generation to generation. It is part of the struggle against Israel. There is no intention of ending the dependency of Palestinians on UNRWA aid or of ending refugee status. The UN aids millions of refugees in helping them to end their plight - but in the case of the Palestinians, it is the exact opposite policy. Keeping this refugee status is policy. The only "solution" is understood to be the undoing of events - never accepting the new reality (the birth of Israel and her legitimacy).
To finance, recruit, train, house, feed, transport, kidnap and murder innocent Jews is a collective Palestinian Arab effort that demands a collectively responsible response from the international community.
Israel is often portrayed in the media, by Western leaders, human rights activists and the many different organs of the United Nations, as inflicting disproportionate and collective punishment on many Palestinian Arabs for the deeds of a few terrorists (the Goldstone Report refers to Hamas as a "Palestinian armed group", for example).
It is a denial of reality to assume that only a small "armed group" of terrorists could be involved in thousands of documented acts of terror in the past 12 years by Palestinian Arabs from all walks of life. It would be reckless to assume that these acts of terror are isolated, undertaken independently, without the direct involvement of the Palestinian Arab populace and the leadership they opt to elect. In fact, poll after poll shows widespread collective support among the majority of the Palestinian Arab population for the destruction of Israel. In a poll released in July 2006 the majority of Palestinian Arabs responding - 77.2% - expressed support for the abduction of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and 60.4% supported the continuation of indiscriminate firing of deadly Kassam rockets into Israeli towns.
Ironically, Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with prohibition of imposing collective punishment on a civilian population under occupation, should have been applied by the Goldstone Mission to protect over 1,000,000 innocent men, women and children in the Israeli towns of Sderot, Ashkelon and hundreds of smaller communities. They are collectively punished day-in and day-out for offences they never personally committed.
Interestingly, the British in 1929 thought that collective punishment was a perfectly legitimate measure when inhabitants of Arab villages attacked the Jews. This collective punishment was not merely a single necessary step, but actually an existing ordinance of the British Mandate, supported by the League of Nations, in dealing with Palestinian Arabs:
"The Collective Punishments Ordinances were applied to the Arab towns and villages whose inhabitants were guilty of participation in the concerted attacks on Jews at Hebron, Safad, Motza, Artuf, Beer-Tuvia, and heavy fines were inflicted."
Throughout history, Jews have been law-abiding, peaceful people defending themselves against Arab aggression. In a 1946 Report, the Anglo-American Committee described its observation regarding Jews living in the land of Palestine:
"The Jew had to train himself for self-defence, and to accustom himself to the life of a pioneer in an armed stockade. Throughout the Arab rising, the Jews in the National Home, despite every provocation, obeyed the orders of their leaders and exercised a remarkable self-discipline. They shot, but only in self-defence; they rarely took reprisals on the Arab."
Israel's reaction to Arab aggression is nothing more than a measured, fair response designed to effectively terminate the attacks by a conglomerate of Palestinian Arab terrorists, supported by Iran, in order to prevent its recurrence.
Palestinian Arabs, by their first use of armed force against Israeli civilians and non-combatant Jews in contravention of the United Nations Charter, constituted prima facie evidence of an act of aggression.
The rule of proportionality in this case of continuous Hamas aggression needs to be met by Israeli acts that will 'induce' the wrongdoing aggressors to comply with its international obligations. A countermeasure need not be theexact equivalent of the breaching act. Judge Schwebel, the former president of the International Court of Justice is quoted as saying:
"In the case of action taken for the specific purpose of halting and repelling an armed attack, this does not mean that the action should be more or less commensurate with the attack."
The perception among Palestinian Arabs that politically motivated violence is legitimate and effective is nothing new. From a broader perspective, if the Palestinians are rewarded with political gains following their acts of aggression, then it can be expected that other radical groups will also make use of the rockets and suicide bomber model. Israel will no longer be the main target of such tactics. No one will be immune.
This is a must-watch video by Eye on the UN’s Anne Bayefsky of responses to the Goldstone Report by Human Rights Council members Iran, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela, and Sudan. Do not miss her j’accuse moment at the end, nor the disgusting pusillanimity of the Council’s president, Alex Van Meeuwen. http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/2009/10/un-blood-libel.html#links
Well, Frank, you certainly can't complain that you've been censored by the Forward again.
We shall see.
Funny that all my comments were deleted, save the last one!
CAMERA.org has prepared an excellent review of this outrageous libel of the Jewish State of Israel:
Entitled: "The Goldstone Report: A Study in Duplicity", it includes an in-depth "Falsehood List", a "Double Standards List", "Falsehood Details", "Double Standard Detail". And even now, it is still not complete, as they work diligently to document the extent of its intentional libels.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1736
A "rebuke" is a mildest description of what Fein and his fellow-travelers at J Street - vile enemies of the Israel - deserve from the Jewish people for their calumny.
Do readers of this latest attack on Israel by Leonard Fein realize that there is an organized group of "Jews" (self-hating and antisemitic are too mild a description) whose very purpose is to attack Israel, attempt to undermine American Jews' support of Israel, lobby the American government against supporting Israel and to act against Israel, and to elect virulently anti-Israel candidates? It is called "J Street". Funded by George Soros and arabs, it is now allied with Obama and his anti-Israel advisors. It is an evil an organization anti-Israel "Jews" as can be imagined. And it is supported and promoted by the "Jewish" Forward.
And Leonard Fein is on its "Advisory Council".
Israel's amazing self-restraint and extraordinary attempts to minimize "non-combatant" arab casualties, at its own people's expense, should inspire wonder. The so-called "palestinians" are every bit as evil as the Nazis (having raised three generations of virulent Jew-hating murderers), and legitimately should have been treated in the way that the allies dealt with the Nazis. Those "Jews" who attack Israel for defending itself are Kapos.
J Street, Fein and Forward are part of an anti-Israel faux-"Jewish" cabal which purpose is to attack Israel, and actively undermine American and American Jews' support for Israel. They are Quislings - enemies of the Jewish people. They should be shunned and decried by the Jewish people as the worst kind of anti-Semites.
....
An article from the J Post (mildly) describes their evil misconduct. (J Street Could Hurt Israel's Interests)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1255204765166&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull "J Street has taken several positions at odds with the Israeli government in recent months, including arguing against the immediate imposition of additional sanctions on Iran even as Israel pushes for greater action, and backing US President Barack Obama's call for a complete settlement freeze in the face of Israeli opposition.
The organization has also been criticized in certain Israeli and American Jewish circles for attacking other Jewish groups in ways that some feel breed division."
Soros and arab funded J Street has been utilized by Obama to attack Israel and American Jewish organization. If the "progressive" anti-Semitic "Jews" of J Street have their way, Hamas would win, Iran would have its nukes, and Israel will be betrayed and abandoned by the U.S. Imagine, there are "Jews" who make it their purpose to destroy the Jewish State of Israel!!! You are reading a J Street web site!
Read this excellent article:
Obama's plans to leverage Goldstone
http://israelinsider.ning.com/forum/topics/anne-bayefsky-obamas-plans-to
....
At its core, the report repeats the ancient blood libel against the Jewish people. Or as Goldstone casts this abomination for a modern audience, Israel "deliberately…terrorize[d] a civilian population;" Israeli "violence against civilians w[as] part of a deliberate policy."
....
Unfortunately, it appears that the president may have a different agenda. Speaking at the Council in the presence of Goldstone, the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner said that the United States was ready "to engage in discussion of this report," and the US takes Goldstone's allegations against Israel "seriously."
Posner was well aware that the report found that violence against Palestinian civilians was part of a deliberate Israeli policy, and yet could only manage to respond: "The report makes negative inferences about the intentions of Israeli officials… on the basis of a limited factual record." The only problem with referring the allegations to the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court, according to Posner, was that "then the role of the Human Rights Council would be dramatically different."
American Jews should be deluging Congress and the White House with letters, emails and calls, demanding that the U.S. live up to its obligations to bomb Iran, and stand fast with Israel. There must be a political price to pay for any representatives who have any truck with the scum of J Street! This article points out how American Jews failed to stand up for the Jews of Auschwitz while Poles raised hell and got results. http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/40645
Where are America's Jews today?
What a surprise! The Forward's resident extremist hard-left Israel-basher, Leonard Fein, now urges American Jews to "study" the U.N. libel.
How many "columns", "stories", and "editorials" on this new U.N. version of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" does the anti-Israel "Jewish" Forward intend to publish? (I think they are already up to six.)
NGO Watch eviscerates any pretext of Goldstone not having a strong anti-Israel bias:
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/the_goldstone_gaza_fact_finding_committee_and_the_lund_london_guidelines_
Why not be done with it, and have Israel "investigated" by Joseph Goebbles, and "judged" by the Volksgerichtshof? (Or Fein and Carter?)
Where are the stories about Netanyahu, with American Jewish support, successfully "pushing back" on Obama's repeated attacks on Israel? Or about his amazing and inspiring speech at the U.N. on behalf of the world's Jews?
Where are the stories about the most important danger facing the Jewish people today: Iran's being on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and the second Holocaust which will follow? Where are the stories rallying Jewish support for America to bomb Iran's nukes?
Fein and Forward, in league with vile anti-Israel propagandist, George Soros and arab funded J Street, are despicable.
Blood LIBELS:
Goldstone Commissioner Suggests Israelis Conditioned to Kill Children:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1733
Read NGO Monitor's critique: "Goldstone Report: 575 pages of NGO “cut and paste”.
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/goldstone_report_pages_of_ngo_cut_and_paste_
God forbid that a Jew step out of line! Listen Frank, stepping out of line is a JEWISH GENETIC TRAIT. It may leave you vulnerable at any particular point, but that's why Jews pick up prizes and are enshrined in all the Western World as its Socrates and other great philosophers and intellectuals. It is historically as easy to argue that Jews undergo catastrophe when they become self-imposed homogenous with severe sanctions to dissent as to say that they die when confronted by totalitarianism from outside. Israel can't and won't protect the Jews if an American Krystalnacht, God forbid, falls upon America. Israel is all talk and no future because it demoralizes its young. I recall an Israeli poem about a father of a fallen IDF hero who spends every day on a bench by his son's grave weeping in grief. The son answers from the grave: Father do not cry for yourself but cry for me as I lie under the cold damp and dark ground, all my hopes and plans for the future gone, because I died as victim of all your ideologies. No real human has a right to think of himself now instead of his children's tomorrow. The measure of a "fit" society is the length of its outlook. A psychotic "the Holocaust is upon us now" attitude may force a lot of money from Jews and friends, but it does nothing to perpetuate Israel's greatness, nor the survival of the Jewish people, MOST OF WHOM WILL *FOREVER* LIVE IN DIASPORA because they want to instead of in Israel. The Arabs are not by definition Israel's enemy but DIRECT RELATIVES of the Jews with a claim to Israel; but they are just as hysteric about Israel's as Western imperialism's hand maiden as Israel is about them wanting to kill all Jews. Yet ask any Jew who was an ambassador in the Middle East or did business there if he/she ever faced anti-Semitism. You are-- whether you like it or not-- branches from the same trunk, feeding off of the same roots. It is too small a sandbox to fragment it into warring city states as if Renaissance Italy.
P.S. You guys may not love me but I lover you, first of all, because a Jewish carpenter urged me to love you all some 2000 years ago and I have come to lok to you for light in my darkest days as an adult and old man ecause you offered me the only light I ever saw as a child. So there you do Frank. I'm sorry, but I love ya!
Here's something to think about before assuming that all is well
Last update - 06:38 14/10/2009
Plea bargain
By Aluf Benn
Listening to the speeches by our country's leaders in the Knesset on Sunday, I found myself increasingly worried. Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni all spoke like leaders of a defeated country, not of the Middle East's strongest power. Instead of offering the public a vision, optimism and hope, they expressed profound anxiety over Israel's survival.
Netanyahu is perturbed by the Goldstone report, which he fears set out to weaken Israel and prevent it from defending itself. He is so anxious he even gave the names of three people liable to find themselves accused of war crimes - Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni - and made clear he would not extradite them for trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as if they were Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic. But Netanyahu is wrong if he thinks Goldstone is out to get only the previous government's senior members at the helm during Operation Cast Lead. The report harshly condemns the siege of Gaza, which Netanyahu is continuing, so he too is a suspected offender against international law.
Peres and Livni are worried about the demographic threat that will turn Israel into a binational state and bring about the end of Zionism. The president called for a "peace of no alternative" and the opposition leader wants accelerated negotiations on a two-state solution. Both are very critical of Netanyahu, whom they believe is sitting on the fence and avoiding decisions, but like him, Goldstone worries them.
The British military theoretician B.H. Liddell Hart wrote that battles are "usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men." Discussing Germany's defeat in World War I after its generals lost their composure, he observed that the psychological aspect was decisive. He believed that the key to winning lay in the "indirect approach," in the concentration of forces to undermine the enemy's confidence and throw him off balance, not in storming fortified positions.
But today, Israel's leaders are conveying confusion and distress. Goldstone and his threats to have Israelis tried as war criminals have frightened them much more than special U.S. envoy George Mitchell and his abortive attempt to freeze the settlements, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's centrifuges, Hezbollah's rockets and Hamas' Qassams.
The true cause for anxiety in Jerusalem, however, is not Goldstone, but U.S. President Barack Obama, who has taken an indirect diplomatic approach against Netanyahu. Instead of coming out publicly against the prime minister with a demand that he end the occupation and get out of the territories, and wasting political energy on a quarrel with Israel's friends in Congress, Obama has simply made Netanyahu understand that American support is not axiomatic, that if Netanyahu looks over his shoulder he may not see Obama there covering him.
That has been enough to shake the prime minister's confidence. In his Knesset speech, Netanyahu quoted Obama's promise to block the Iranian nuclear bomb, and asked the international community to stand together against Iran. He was speaking like someone unsure that his allies would come to his aid in the hour of need, someone trying to tie them down in advance.
Netanyahu was signaling for a plea bargain: Amnesty for Goldstone's suspects and action against Iran's bomb in exchange for ... for what then? Another withdrawal from the West Bank? A Palestinian state? Partition of Jerusalem? Netanyahu did not speak of the right of Jews to live anywhere in the Land of Israel, or about expanding the settlements. He never even mentioned the Land of Israel or Judea and Samaria, just the right to self-defense and his demand for Palestinian recognition and disarmament.
Obama, who is already turning out to be quite indecisive, won't be in a hurry to respond to Netanyahu. He'll wait for the prime minister to feel pressured, soften up and agree to pay more for American backing in The Hague and in Natanz. That's the way the Soviet Union folded - when it lost the Cold War after the United States launched a successful diplomatic flanking movement. Netanyahu may turn out to be an Israeli Gorbachev who came to save the empire but in the end dismantled it. Either way, that's better than being a Bar Kochba, whom Netanyahu cited in his speech on Sunday as a model to be emulated.
UN ENDORSEMENT OF ANTI-ISRAEL REPORT ON GAZA BURIES PEACE PROCESS
DEBKAfile Special Analysis
October 16, 2009
Binyamin Netanyahu - personal defeat The UN Human Right Council's endorsement Friday, Oct. 16, sent the anti-Israel Goldstone war crimes report to the UN Security Council. It was approved by a majority of 25 of the 47 HRC members with 6 voting against, including the US, Israel, Holland and Italy, with 11 abstentions and France and the UK among the 5 nations who did not vote. Ultimately, this step could expose Israeli leaders to prosecution for war crimes.
The UN body administered one of the most damaging blows Israel diplomacy has suffered in recent years, condemning Israel for alleged war crimes in its 22-day Gaza operation last January - but also for work in East Jerusalem such as archeological excavations.
The damage was compounded by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's personal involvement in spearheading the campaign to have the report buried. Its endorsement has instead buried the stalled peace process between Israel and Palestinian Authority.
In any case, Mahmoud Abbas refused to come to the negotiating table when challenged for the umpteenth time by President Barack Obama's special envoy George Mitchell in Ramallah last week, bringing the US president's entire Middle East peace venture tumbling down.
Netanyahu failed even to persuade French president Nicolas Sarkozy - described by President Shimon Peres as "a great friend of Israel," and the British prime minister George Brown, with whom he had a heated telephone conversation Thursday night - to vote against the HRC motion.
That neither was prepared to oppose Israel's condemnation for war crimes means that Jerusalem cannot count on their support for curbing Iran's drive for a nuclear weapon.
While Abbas and his close circle celebrated their victory, Israel spokesmen tried to soften the blow by maintaining that the Goldstone report is not home and dry yet and it will not be permitted to be used against the US-led NATO war on terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, no NATO nation has ever been hauled before a UN commission of inquiry or faulted by the world body for killing civilians. Israel's operation to protect its population against terrorists embedded in civilian locations was.
Israel cannot be expected to sit down and talk to Abbas in this situation, even if the Palestinian leader were willing, which he is not. In any case he has lost the right to speak for his people.
DEBKAfile's Middle East sources note that the Palestinians have reached a point of no return, to which Washington and Jerusalem are turning a blind eye: Hamas has finally rejected any unity deal with Abbas' Fatah and thus blocked the formation of an agreed delegation for peace talks. The West Bank and Gaza Strip have parted for good: they are distinct Palestinian entities and Abbas' authority is recognized by less than half of his people in those territories.
The hammer-blow from Geneva came at a bad time for Israel: Turkey has turned on the Jewish state tooth and claw. Israel finds itself up against the entire Arab world, even Egypt and Jordan, with whom it has signed peace treaties. It now finds itself abandoned by presumed friends Britain and France as well.
And the arabs, Nazis, Iran, European and other anti-Semites, "progressives", J Street, and the Forward rejoice.