Goldstone: ‘If This Was a Court Of Law, There Would Have Been Nothing Proven.’
By Gal Beckerman
The incident detailed in paragraphs 713 through 716 of the Goldstone Report, if accurate, was a moment of indiscriminate terror.
A hundred members of the extended al-Samouni family are gathered together in one house, ordered there by Israeli soldiers patrolling their Gaza neighborhood of Zeytoun as part of Operation Cast Lead. Five men step out of the house to collect firewood. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a missile strikes them, fired, possibly, from an Apache helicopter. Two or three more missiles follow, this time aimed directly at the house. In all, 21 family members are killed, among them many women and small children. When the surviving al-Samounis attempt to leave and make their way to Gaza City, they are told by an Israeli soldier to return to the house, to “go back to death.”
A few pages later, in paragraphs 822 through 826, there’s another scene of seemingly unprovoked violence. In a mosque on the outskirts of Jabilyah, somewhere between 200 and 300 men and women are gathered for the evening prayer. An explosion rips the front door off its hinges and flings it all the way across the room. A missile has struck the mosque’s entrance, killing 15 people, some kneeling mid-prayer. A boy sitting by the door has his leg blown off.
The details are hard to turn away from, but they have, in fact, been largely ignored. Instead, the heated conversation about the Goldstone Report, the United Nations fact-finding mission led by Richard Goldstone, an internationally respected jurist and a South African Jew, has revolved mostly around political questions — charges of imbalance, lack of context and a history of anti-Israel bias on the part of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which gave Goldstone his charge.
Goldstone’s findings themselves have, meanwhile, been left largely unexamined. The 36 specific incidents he focuses on in his report paint a disturbing picture of an Israeli army purposefully targeting unarmed civilians. But the facts of the report are built mostly on testimonies of Palestinian eyewitnesses, which have received little scrutiny or verification. Critics also call attention to parts of the commission’s work that they say was sloppily done, without sufficient cross-examination and double checking of information. Alternative interpretations of the incidents described are not considered, let alone fully explored.
Israel’s decision to refuse to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission as it was doing its work—a decision questioned even by some critics of the report—doubtless played a role in this. Tellingly, in an interview with the Forward on October 2, Goldstone himself acknowledged the tentative nature of his findings.
“Ours wasn’t an investigation, it was a fact-finding mission,” he said, sitting in his Midtown Manhattan office at Fordham University Law School, where he is currently visiting faculty. “We made that clear.”
Goldstone defended the report’s reliance on eyewitness accounts, noting his mission had cross-checked those accounts against each other and sought corroboration from photos, satellite photos, contemporaneous reports, forensic evidence and the mission’s own inspections of the sites in question.
For all that gathered information, though, he said, “We had to do the best we could with the material we had. If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”
Goldstone emphasized that his conclusion that war crimes had been committed was always intended as conditional. He still hopes that independent investigations carried out by Israel and the Palestinians will use the allegations as, he said, “a useful road map.”
He recalled his work as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal in Yugoslavia in 1994. When he began working, Goldstone was presented with a report commissioned by the U.N. Security Council based on what he said was a fact-finding mission similar to his own in Gaza.
“We couldn’t use that report as evidence at all,” Goldstone said. “But it was a useful roadmap for our investigators, for me as chief prosecutor, to decide where we should investigate. And that’s the purpose of this sort of report. If there was an independent investigation in Israel, then I think the facts and allegations referred to in our report would be a useful road map.”
Nevertheless, the report itself is replete with bold and declarative legal conclusions seemingly at odds with the cautious and conditional explanations of its author. The report repeatedly refers, without qualification, to specific violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed by Israel and other breaches of international law. Citing particular cases, the report determines unequivocally that Israel “violated the prohibition under customary international law” against targeting civilians. These violations, it declares, “constitute a grave breach” of the convention.
It is this rush to judgment based on what critics believe to be unsubstantiated allegations that has angered some who have delved into the details.
“If the accusations are true they are very serious,” said Avi Bell, a law professor at Bar-Ilan University. “But they are still just accusations. That doesn’t make them true in and of themselves. That’s where the fact-finding should begin, not where it should end.”
Goldstone said he believed Israel did have a “responsibility” to respond in some way to the incessant Hamas missiles from Gaza. It was the form this response took that, he said, “amounted to reprisals and collective punishment, and constitute war crimes.”
The report’s brief against Israel can be broken down into two broad categories. For the first, it uses satellite maps, eyewitness accounts and on-the-ground inspection to illustrate many instances in which large civilian infrastructure sites in Gaza were targeted and destroyed—food storage centers, water supply sources, agricultural land, sewage plants, as well as police stations and the legislative building in Gaza City. The only explanation for this kind of targeting, said Goldstone, is to collectively punish the population. Indeed, most legal experts agree that targeting such non-military sites is a war crime. But in its own published report on Cast Lead, issued in July, Israel openly acknowledges hitting these non-military targets, characterizing them instead as part of the “Hamas terrorist infrastructure,” and therefore legitimate objects for attack.
It is the second category of charges in the report that many Israelis condemn furiously as a kind of blood libel, contesting not only Goldstone’s legal conclusions about what happened, but also that the events in question happened at all.
Goldstone asserts that the Israeli army, in a few detailed instances, specifically targeted unarmed, non-combatants on the ground in conditions where no fighting was taking place. If true, these would be serious breaches of Israel’s own “Law of Armed Conflict.” Unlike the destruction of infrastructure, Israel has repeatedly emphasized in public that under no circumstances does it condone shooting of civilians. While not disclosing details, the Israeli army has said that it is looking into 100 complaints related to the Gaza operation and is currently conducting 13 criminal investigations.
In a section entitled, “Deliberate Attacks Against the Civilian Population,” Goldstone’s report examines 11 incidents, including the al-Samouni family deaths and the strike against the al-Maqadmah mosque in Jabaliyah. Both have also been cited repeatedly by Goldstone in his public comments as particularly egregious examples of what he termed Israel’s criminal conduct during the war.
In the al-Samouni case, the report lists its sources of information. Five members of the family were interviewed, as well as a few neighbors. The mission also interviewed Palestinian Red Crescent personnel who said they sought but were denied permission by the Israeli Army to come to the aid of those wounded. Mission members visited the site of the house that was hit in the attack. Goldstone described sitting with the family among the debris of their destroyed house. Material from other NGOS—it doesn’t distinguish which ones—were also reviewed. The mission also examined photos that appeared to verify the deaths of the 21 men, women and children the witnesses said died.
But for the most part, the actual details of the events that took place on the morning of January 5, 2009, resulting in the 21 deaths, were pieced together from eyewitness testimony.
Israel responded dismissively to initial reports of the Army’s attack on the home of Wa’el al-Samouni. On January 9, Israeli Army spokesman Jacob Dallal denied that the army gathered any large group of people into the house or that any attack had taken place on any house in the neighborhood at all. It is a statement the army has never amended.
Despite this declaration, the Goldstone report shows photos of Wa’el al-Samouni’s home, taken on January 18, when the surviving family members were finally able to return. The photos “show feet and legs sticking out from under the rubble and sand, and rescuers pulling out the bodies of women, men and children,” the report notes. The house, and most other houses in the neighborhood had been demolished, the report adds.
Some have challenged the report’s version. These critics raise questions as to whether the Samounis’ neighborhood was fully pacified when the Israeli Army shelled the house, as the report contends. Jonathan Halevi, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Israel army, submitted material to the commission citing accounts of combat by Palestinian armed groups that he argued disproved many assertions made in the report.
The Goldstone report made use of Halevi’s material, finding that they actually supported Goldstone’s own findings. But Halevi faulted Goldstone for failing to look into similar material freely available elsewhere on-line.
In the material Halevi sent to the commission about the Samouni incident, he focused exclusively on the military activity of Hamas in the area at the time in question. He found there was none and Goldstone cited this in the report as evidence that fighting had ended. But Halevi said that other information—specifically, the Web sites of other militant groups—would have made it clear that another militia, Islamic Jihad, was operating in the area on the morning in question.
“From the report you can get the impression that Israel operated in the Gaza Strip in a vacuum, which means there was almost no resistance,” said Halevi, who was an adviser to the Policy Planning Division of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is currently a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Halevi has studied the names of those killed in the incursion and matched them with lists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants listed on websites for the two groups. He contends that not only was fighting ongoing near the al-Samouni’s house, but that some of the men in the al-Samouni family were actually connected with Islamic Jihad and that the attack might not have been as unprovoked and indiscriminate as presented in the report. If the Palestinian witnesses had been cross-examined to establish their credibility, Halevi said, a more complex picture might have emerged.
Others have raised more general concerns about the reliance on eyewitness testimony.
“People don’t see what they think they see,” said Bell, the Bar Ilan law professor. “They don’t remember what they think they remember. That’s in the best of circumstances when they are trying to give you accurate information. In this case, what you have are witnesses that, for the most part, are living under a totalitarian government and subject to systematic intimidation. And also, they are living in a long time war zone where they have extreme hostility to the other side.”
Goldstone has referred to the mosque incident as a case where there is no other possible interpretation for what could have occurred other than a deliberate targeting of civilians. Besides the eyewitness accounts, the mission visited the mosque and conducted a forensic investigation. In his talk with the Forward, Goldstone emphasized what set apart this attack as a war crime.
“Assuming that weapons were stored in the mosque, it would not be a war crime to bomb it at night,” Goldstone said. “It would be a war crime to bomb it during the day when 350 people are praying.”
As with the al-Samouni house, Israel denied at the time that an attack on the mosque had taken place at all.
But critics have also questioned whether the clear cut version of the attack that appears in the report is the whole story. According to Halevi’s research, as well as the investigative work of an anonymous blogger called “Elder of Ziyon” — both of whom crosschecked websites for Islamic Jihad and Hamas — among the 15 dead were six men who they contend were members of the Al Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s paramilitary wing.
Because the blast hit just outside the mosque, Halevi posits that it was perhaps a drone attack aimed at a group of militants meeting nearby. Because the mosque had unexpectedly combined its sunset and evening prayers that day, as the report itself describes, the Israelis might have come to the false conclusion that the mosque itself was empty, he speculated.
The report does not entertain such other possibilities or address the coincidence that so many of the dead were, according to Halevi, militants, by Hamas’ own listing. At the end of the section on the mosque attack, the report arrives at its conclusion: Based on accounts “from multiple witnesses” as well as viewing the site, Israel violated international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Goldstone maintains that the burden is now on Israel to counter these findings through its own probe.
“If I was advising Israel, I would say have open investigations,” he told the Forward. “In that way, you can put an end to this. It’s in the interest of all the people of Israel that if any of our allegations are established and if they’re criminal, there should be prosecutions. And if they’re false, that should be established. And I wouldn’t consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.”
Goldstone rejected the credibility of the army’s secret investigation of itself. He noted that none of the Palestinian witnesses he had met reported having been contacted by the army to hear their account. Instead, he offered the example of the Israeli investigation into the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, commissioned by Menachem Begin, as a model to emulate.
The United States has so far blocked action against Israel in the United Nations regarding the Goldstone Report — even convincing Palestinians to drop their push in the U.N. Human Rights Council to reach a Security Council resolution. The matter has been postponed until March of next year. But lately, the United States has also been publicly urging Israel to conduct an independent and open investigation.
As a democracy, said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly on October 5, “Israel ha[s] the kind of institutions that could address these allegations. And, of course, we urged Israel to address these very serious allegations.”
Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com
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If "only tentative find- ings"...how come the the burden of proof is on Israel? He made several severe allegations - without any legal proof, and now the accused has to prove he is innocent... Well, not very impressive, to say the least.
David, the Reports provides numerous witness accounts, pictures and on-site examinations as evidence. Israel now has to counter the accusations with its own evidence. Just by shouting "blood libel!", "anti-semitism!", they're not going to convince the world of their innocence.
"Ours wasn’t an investigation, it was a fact-finding mission." Correction: "Ours wasn’t an investigation, it was an antisemitic inflation mission."
to Yisrael Medad.
Yes, and the Israelis have originated a new term as well:
anti-Semitic
- adjective
anyone (even a Jew) who ever disagrees with the actions of the Israeli government, independent of the reputation, awards, and positions held in the Jewish world, and with no regard to the propriety of said disagreement.
Origin:
Pretty much any year when Israel was criticized whether rightly or wrongly.
And then anyone is surprised that real anti-Semitic statements are disregarded... Today Israel has lost another one of its ardent supporters. (And yes, I have been an ardent supporter, but now Israel will matter to me just above France, but not by much... Oh, and another thing - don't bother to hang any "Missing" photos in NYC subway for me.
"If this were a court of law", Goldstone would have had to use terms like "appeared to have" and "alleged" or his work would have been considered prejudicial. I am not a lawyer but I believe that even when indictments are handed down, the language is not flat assertions of guilt. If it is true that Goldstone views his commission as a mere fact-finding exercise the nature of the language used in it is completely inappropriate. The question, really, is why someone who has risen to world wide prominence as a Judge would allow such a disjunction between his declared purpose and the actual product.My daughter is in her first year of law school and she would not have done this. Hell, I watched enough episodes of Perry Mason on TV when I was growing up- even I know better.
This is especially important because, where Israel is concerned, the rules of proof are so often inverted. In the Jenin, al Durah, Gaza Beach, Qana etc..., episodes the first impressions and public statements have been the ones that remained in the public's mind. Those libelous frauds have been used continuously to delegitimize Israel, despite the complete refutations that have emerged over time. In the American court system you are innocent until proven guilty; In the court of public opinion, Israel and Jews are guilty even when proven innocent. Goldstone is not an idiot, he must know this.
I can see only three alternatives: Goldstone is not competent, he is mentally impaired to the point that he is acting out in public a subconscious self-loathing or he is manipulating the situation cynically for personal gain or satisfaction.
Sooner or later Israel must do the right thing and appoint a high court justice to head an independent investigation. The longer Israel refuses, the more she looks guilty in the eyes of the world.
I do not care what individual attacks were perpetrated by Israelis on civilian targets, if there were it was to give the Gazans a taste of their own medicine. Let us remember that whatever happened in Gaza was during a battle, the attacks on innocent civilians in Ashkelon and Sderot were totally random, designed ONLY to hurt civilians and sew terror. These were, and are, attacks that can only be described as racist. How dare Goldstone take them out of context. And whatever the Israelis did pales into insignificance in comparison with the deliberate torture and murder of prisoners in Abu Ghbraib by the Americans and similar murders by the British, or by the actions of the Taliban and the Iraqis and the suicide bombs, etc. The key word is CONTEXT. And if Vitaly is so short-sighted and narrow-minded, then he is as bad as the rest -- one law for Jews another for everyone else. Let the Palestinians continue to wallow in their victimhood, like a beggar holding up a diseased limb and begging for alms. One day perhaps the world will realise who the true victims are in the Middle East conflict.
Some person shoots you, but misses the target. You fire back and kill him. Most of the judges would call it a "Self Defense". Judge Richard Goldstone claims: "Crime Against Humanity"
The headline is misleading as it tends to exculpate Israel, the article in full is much more balanced (something that cannot be said of many of the comments).
Goldstone has clearly presented a case to answer and has done so in exactly the same way as he did in Bosnia, an approach that was that time widely applauded. If the approach was the same in Bosnia and Gaza what has changed.
The main difference seems to be that as Milosovich was not Jewish it was assumed to be possible that he was a war criminal and did not have the cloak of impunity that Livni and Barak wrapped themselves in and which Netanayu uses as a flag.
There are competing descriptions of events - that we see in every contested trial, we need trials of events in Gaza to establish guilt or innocence; not abuse of the people trying to uncover evidence because the accusations are uncomfortable. I see no evidence for scurrilous insults like 'self-loathing' or 'manipulation for personal gain' in Goldstone's actions.
Oh, let's see, what is more scurrilous, "targeting civilians" and "committed war crimes" or "self-loathing" and "manipulation for personal gain"? Want a minute to think about it? While you are thinking, think about this too. I offered a the clear-cut evidence that Goldstone is trying to have it both ways by giving the tin-pot despots, totalitarian fundamentalist juntas and corrupt monarchies that make up the Arab/Islamic world the exact language of direct accusation that they are looking for to use to deligitimize Israel and then he comes back to the Jews of America (through The Forward) and squeals that "there would have been nothing proven".
Let alone a first year law student, a first year journalism student would see that you can't say that someone has done something until it is proven by evidence. HI OWN WORDS are your evidence that Goldstone is either incompetent (I don't, for a minute, believe he is), rendered powerless by some mental disorder to act competently, or has chosen to act unethically. If you can explain this in another way I would like to hear it, if not, don't you dare call me scurrilous! Save it for the people who will use this "fact finding" report to launch boycotts, slander, terror attacks and intifadas against Israel.
As a judge Goldstone is tainted.
As a Jew he is a traitor and, in my estimation, violated the ninth commandment, you know, the one that goes: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Of course, I meant "HIS OWN WORDS"
BTW, I have another suggestion for a meaning for "Goldstoned". It is what happens when you are trying to protect yourself and someone who claims to be impartial but friendly whacks you from behind and tries to pin your arms back.
An innocent party in this situation would conduct a credible, transparent investigation of the report's findings, if only in order to show they are false. Israel's refusal to do so is Goldstone's most persuasive witness.
Statement by Richard Goldstone on behalf of the Members of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict before the Human Rights Council
Human Rights Council 12th Session - 29 September 2009
"In making findings of fact, we relied primarily on our own evaluation of the people who spoke to us and from what we saw with our own eyes.
We relied on reports from others where they corroborated the views we had formed."
One can draw the conclusion from this that reports from others that did not corroborate their views were ignored. Fair and balanced this thing was not.
I can't add anything to what Richard Silverstein wrote.
You have a choice.
You can stand up to protest against the murder of innocent people, even children.
Or you can defend even the worst of Israel, like a defense lawyer defending his guilty client.
Richard Silverstein wrote: "Strangely, the title of the story is Goldstone: ‘If This Was a Court Of Law, There Would Have Been Nothing Proven.’ Yet, nowhere in the story does this quotation appear."
This reflects, I presume, a careless skim of the article. In fact, this quote is part of something very important Goldstone has to say—-something at seeming variance with the text of his report. Please see the story’s sixth through thirteenth paragraphs. The quote missed by Richard occurs in the ninth paragraph.
Amidst a long, confused and vitriolic complaint about accuracy and reliability of sources, Michael Levin writes: "Strangely, the title of the story is Goldstone: ‘If This Was a Court Of Law, There Would Have Been Nothing Proven.’ Yet, nowhere in the story does this quotation appear. As a result you have no idea what it refers to: was it something Goldstone himself said or a claim made against his work? Only Beckerman and perhaps his editor know for sure."
"Strangely" does not even begin to cover it. Here is the ninth paragraph of the article: For all that gathered information, though, he said, “We had to do the best we could with the material we had. If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”
Levin has just been at some length to discredit Avi Bell's observation “People don’t see what they think they see,” said Bell, the Bar Ilan law professor. “They don’t remember what they think they remember." - and then he proves Bell's point in the most telling, self serving and gratuitous way.
Which illustrates perfectly why Israel did not submit to the Goldstone inquiry. The prejudicial wording of its mandate of the Goldstone Commission and very public prejudice of members Goldstone's panel insured that they would be just as selective and biased as Levin was in reading this article.
This is a dialog of the deaf.
Some Jews will defend Israel no matter how brutal the crimes, no matter how strong the evidence. They're like Alan Dershowitz defending O.J. Simpson or Sheldon Siegel. There's no point debating them.
Other Jews follow Hillel's mandate: That which is hateful to you, do not do unto others.
The world stood by silently when Jews were murdered. We are desecrating the memory of our murdered ancestors if we allow others to be murdered in the same way.
As UK MP Gerald Kaufman said, "My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza."
I urge all of you who follow Hillel to speak out and organize. Here's a good place to start: http://www.democracynow.org/
The true desecration of our murdered ancestors' would be to condemn the soldiers of the IDF for preventing yet another Holocaust. By all means investigate and prosecute those who violate the IDF's code of conduct (the best and most honorable in the world). But to write that the IDF is murdering others in the same way as our ancestors were murdered is a disgusting libel and it removes any credibility from the writer. If Israel wanted she could, in fact have killed or removed all Palestinians at will at any time in the last forty years. She has not done so, not because you can quote Hillel but because Israelis can too.
Even while the express purpose of Hamas and the PA is to destroy Israel and "cleanse it of Jews, Israel has acted with utmost restraint. Where are the mass graves, where the crematoria, where, Norman, is your sense of decency?
You speak as though there are crimes that have been proven! Try as you might, you will only find accidental killings of small numbers of civillians, for which Israel always expresses sincere regret and an isolated case here and there where the outraged humanity of an Israeli who has seen too many loved one blown up at bus stops or disintegrated by a spray of ball bearings from a qassam rocket gives way to the madness of revenge- revenge for which Israel always punishes the individual.
You are no true follower of Hillel. Hillel never meant that in order to avoid doing what is hateful to others that you should allow them to do what is hateful to you. And you have even taken it a step further, you do to your fellow Jews what is hateful to them before our enemies have a chance to do it. Hillel also uttered the balanced equation, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?" When will you be for Israel and Jews?
As for MP Kaufman's supine toadying to the anti-Semitic atmosphere in England, his grandmother died precisely because Israel and the IDF did not then exist to protect her and, this you are right about, the world stood by silently. Continue to condemn and hamstring the IDF and Jews will once again turn their eyes skyward and wait for help that does not come.
What South African Jews think of Richard Goldstone http://tinyurl.com/ydzymoy
What South African Jews think of Richard Goldstone http://tinyurl.com/ydzymoy
on October 7, 2009 at 3:58 am | Reply Janice
Thank you Judge Goldstone for your courage. Thank you for taking on what for you was probably a difficult task. Thank you for risking the hatred of many in the Jewish community who attack those who expose the crimes of Israel, crimes that they would prefer to sweep under the rug.
Thank you for giving hope to those of us in the Jewish community who have long been appalled at Israel’s brutal occupation of the the West Bank and Gaza, who stand firmly opposed to the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian lands, who believe that targeted assassinations by Israel are illegal and immoral, who believe that Israel has no interest in a just peace until it controls as much land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible on that land.
Judge Goldstone, you are a mensch and deserve to go down in history as a man of courage. Thank you.
Let´s assume for a moment the Goldstone report was not about Gaza.
I wonder, what would be an outcome, if UN HR Council was sending same Goldstone's "fact finding" mission to Afghanistan, to those areas controlled by the Taliban. With no doubt such a mission would find a huge amount of "evidences" for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Coalition forces. But UN Security Council keeps prolonging a mandate for those forces in Afghanistan. There are no double standards at all!
Israel counter terrorism Cast Lead operation paid off : Israel South residents can go back to work , to school , to outdoor activities without concerns to Gazans rockets , missiles .
We know that the pre-fabricated U.N report is false , even say "Goldstone: ‘If This Was a Court Of Law, There Would Have Been Nothing Proven.’" .
So what was the report all about ?
Because Quote "Goldstone rejected the credibility of the army’s secret investigation of itself. " Then Israel should not conduct an independent and open investigation so as its conclusions would not be dicredited , Israel's justice system not be undermined , not delegitimised , not boycotted , and military operations , intelligence and gazans cooperatives not be disclosed.
However as time passes by , Israel from time to time could , thru third party , release one by one , and not all at once, relevant pieces of info (for political gains) against the 37 U.N. prefabricated prejudicial out of context false allegations .
That should provide the 'dogs' with bones and discredit the senders of the twisted U.N. commission .
Joseph.E - Givatayim - Israel.
If a man is a witness, whether he has seen or otherwise knows of a thing, if he does not testify he shall bear his iniquity." Lev.5
Is self defence now a crime? The next time that Israel is attacked must it not defend its citizens because Jews in other countries will say that we are automatically guilty?
Richard Goldstone did not take into account the evidence of Col. Richard Kemp, an expert in his field, who said that no army had ever done more than the IDF to protect the citizens of a country it attacked.
Goldstone's fault might not weigh heavily on him, but it will hurt every man woman and child in Israel, Jew or gentile.
Fear, is in your words, we are powerless, in our selves, but through G-D we can do all things. We need more than ever to unite and call on G-D, He is not a fairytale.....remember what He has done. He will do it again. It is G-D behind all this, due to the sins that have come on Israel.
Jew and gentile are all under One G-D. G-D is about to take back His people and his world, the creation of his hands. Fear, only G-D.
Lamentations 3....I call on Your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit.
The pit, is in darkness....to the plands of G-D. If there is sin in it G-D will pluck it out....
This fact finding mission is a joke! How about the testimonies of Israeli wounded, like Dr. Mirela from Ashkelon. She is a civilian who came to her clinic, like every other day, to help pregnant women, but that day the "innocent" Hamas activists fired a missile attack on Ashkelon and hit a shopping mall where was Dr. Mirela's clinic located. This woman went through several surgeries and will have some more in the future. She testified in front of Mr. Goldstone however you can imagine her surprise when she read the report findings!
the unhrc condemnation of Israel, solely, is the inevitable and completely predictable result of goldstone's work. goldstone is not only a fool, a complete fool, but an enemy of Israel; he eagerly armed Israel's enemies.
We are told: "Justice, justice, you shall pursue" Deuteronomy 16..
Why is the word justice said twice? Because, according to our tradition, one is to purse a just cause by just means. In defending ourselves, we must always hold on to the prophetic vision of decency and humanity.
Col Kemp is right. The Hamas media machine works permanently, everywhere and, what is most important, not only hiding the truth but plainly lying. What has to be done is work, work and work, with a similar machine, everywhere there is a Jewish community, spreading the truth and nothing but the truth, in local language, to locals, for the world to know. Nothing can be changed if we talk to each other, among us, and the media are left meanwhile to Hamas and Hezballah.
Samuel Bara Arieh
Hamas and Hezbalah, do you think you will trick and you had not enough of Islamic insanity yet. The party of G-D.....has G-D been consulted? Or do you take the name of G-D in vain?
For it is written.....Leviticus 33...Do not profane My Holy Name.
The Truth of G-D is....It is He who wars on mankind.....For it is written.....Isaiah 1 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes form you; enen though you make many prayers, I will not listen; you hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, recue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
The theme or rebellion....G-D will win over mankind.
Miriam, I heard these words from Igal Amir...
Samuel Bara Arieh my friend, The words I put down we all should of heard before....for there words from our G-D given to Isaiah, for us all.
Igal Amir...and I have read the same words, but nevertheless, they did not go into his mind and heart, in truth and wisdom. The way you stated your words, my friend, it's like your saying he and I are the same. We are not.
And if you read scripture, you would see, G-D is not happy with all of mankind. You tell me, a nation that walks with G-D. You show me G-D working mightly in a country. Read Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Obadiah, all of them...their telling us we are walking in error. No not us, we are a nation chosen. Have we done, the service that G-D set down on us to do? No! We did more to make war, than to stop peace, we cannot let go of the passed. The art of loving is forgiving and forgetting. I see no place, in the word of G-D when he forgives that he keeps bring it up. We are all about us, the biggest lie we do, is that self talk, we are good, we are the children of G-D. We are the seeds, of G-D, that have been planted, many have been seeded on dry land. These are seeds that we watered with the lie and deceit of mankind. We hold mankinds thinking higher than G-D's thinking.
In Isaiah 1...This extended verses, a characteristic "lawsuit" speech where by G-D indicts and then sentences Israel's true and pitful situation. read verses5-9, s refusal to heed Israel in time of need--read verses 10-15, and a summons to reformation verses.16-17.
Look at the vocabulary for sin.... The people is said to be "sinful" "with iniquity." These two terms together with "rebel" in verse 2. They are followed in the third and fourth lines of the verse with two other general terms, "do evil" and "deal corruptly", after which come two very strong, active verbs, "forsake" and "despise."
I hate, to read these verses, the words asserts that Israel is fully turned against G-D, against the relationship that promises life.
I hate it! I love people, all the nations, all people, I grew up in U.S. and love my country, that has all nations, I love the nation under G-D. These words read, and my heart feels to sad, here Israel is now alone made so by its own stubbornness.
In the words...G-D gave Isaiah for Israel, is put on notice, as a resyktm uts kufe ub tge wirkd us deeokt at rusk.
And G-D will pay back the nations, that came against Israel, mankind does not see, it is G-D that is at war.
In verse 4 the term for "foreigners" here is the same as "estranged" in verse 4. Things have gone terrible wrong. The land is disrupted by war and alien presence, when what is intended was a peaceable land shared only by the people of Israel and G-D. The military occupation is not only physically dangerous; it is abhorrent to those who imagined a peacebble vision. Indeed "daughter Zion" in verse 8, or Jerusalem stands alone and exposed with all the land leveled around it.
In verse 9...the words make a remarkable move. Judah, faces "the LORD of host" a verse perhaps better translated here as "the G-D of the troops." The Holy One of Israel is, in G-D'S own person, a dangerous military power. The warring G-D has left "a few survivors" else Jerusalem would be as devastated as Sodom and Gomorrah. Isaiah, slludes to Genesis story of cities left without a survivor, totally destroyed by G-D what nation, do you think Judah is, I have my thought on it.
I will not hate, the work of G-D'S hands. I pray, for this generation to turn, and make war on sin, the lie and deceit that brings mankind death, and moves G-D away.
You my friend, make time and read the word of G-D, put down the news and then you will see it better.
sorry, my typing made a line unreadable, forgive me my spelling and my words some times get ahead of me.
The line....In the words...G-D gave Isaiah....Israel, is put on notice, as a result, its life in the world is deeply at risk. Our beloved nation Israel, were our G-D once dwelled...engages in self-desttruction..
Froy, except Israel DID publish a report pointing out errors. As for an investigation, what for? If it comes out clean, you going to accept it? Of course not, so it is a complete waste of time and money.
Mike, except he didn't do it this way in Bosnia and in one instance alone 7,000 unarmed men were taken away and murdered - with the aid of the UN - and even then Milosevic wasn't convicted. This is why this case will never reach the Hague because in a trial all these lies against Israel would be exposed. Far far far better to have no trials and claim it is true
Goldstone: ‘If This Was a Court Of Law, There Would Have Been Nothing Proven.’
Goldstone statement is to be understood as follow .
‘If This Was a Court Of Law, There Would Have Been Nothing Proven "against hamas".’
because Goldstone's mandate is biased and misleading against Israel .
Check the mandate @ http://www.goldstonereport.org/
it say to investigate ...by Israel ...against the pals...throughout the ... territorry .
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