By and large, I resist conspiratorial explanation of events. Most often, coincidence governs; things that seem related have arrived together from different sources, and their togetherness is curious rather than significant.
Now, however, I admit to alarm. We are witness to an escalating series of events that begin to feel cumulative, moving faster and faster to subvert Israel’s democracy and transform its political and social life into a kind of Absurdistan.
As so often happens, the first steps in this new and perilous direction were barely noticed. A nip at freedom of expression here, a tuck at dissent there, another permit refused, another home demolished, another protest quashed. No big deal, except to those directly involved. The police put down a demonstration the courts have permitted, and still more people show up the following week. An opaque organization called NGO Monitor whines tediously on about the lack of transparency in Israeli NGOs, and the earth still spins safely in its orbit.
But suddenly in recent days, the dots have begun to seem connected. The precipitating event was the publication, in Israel, of a document of 69 pages (plus 43 pages of appendices) alleging that save for the support of organizations funded (in part) by the New Israel Fund, there’d have been no Goldstone Report. This utterly preposterous allegation is quite explicit. It appears, among other places, in a full-page ad by the document’s publisher, an organization called Im Tirtzu (“if you will it …”): “Fact,” the ad asserts in large letters: “Without the New Israel Fund, there could be no Goldstone Report, and Israel would not be facing international accusations of war crimes.”
The Im Tirtzu report was immediately picked up by the Israeli press — most provocatively by Ben Caspit in Maariv, and insult was added to insult when Im Tirtzu took a full-page ad in The Jerusalem Post that featured a crude caricature of the NIF’s president, Naomi Chazan.
There is for me an odd sense of familiarity as I make my way through the Im Tirtzu report and various of the documents it has precipitated. Wait, is this not a replay of the Goldstone Report? As in: The more carefully you read and review these lengthy documents, the less persuasive they become. In particular, even if we ignore the shabbiness of Im Tirtzu’s effort to present its “findings” as serious research, we are left with the following problem: In almost none of its more than 50 references to the Israeli organization B’Tselem does the Im Tirtzu report allege that B’Tselem’s criticisms of Israel’s behavior in last year’s Gaza war were mistaken. Indeed, the report’s own summary of B’Tselem’s “main activity against IDF” accuses B’Tselem of “Promoting the delegitimization of IDF operations by sullying the IDF’s and the State of Israel’s image in Israel and abroad via documentation and publicity.” And so it is with almost all the other organizations that Im Tirtzu accuses of seeking to undermine Israel’s legitimacy; B’Tselem is just one example.
There is a serious question here. If what B’Tselem and the others have said is true — I write here not of the conclusions some of them reach but of the facts they allege — then who is it that “sullies” the IDF’s and the State of Israel’s image in Israel and abroad? Is it the human rights organizations that seek to hold Israel to high standards of performance, or is it the IDF when it falls short of those standards? Is it the messenger, or is it the message?
Clarity: Saying “no” to Im Tirtzu does not mean saying “yes” to Goldstone. Reading Goldstone, you are invited to conclude that for all practical purposes the IDF treated Gaza as a free-fire zone. Thus, Goldstone: “The instructions given to the Israeli armed forces moving into Gaza provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population.” (p. 228) Or: “[I]n none of the cases reviewed were there any grounds which could have reasonably induced the Israeli armed forces to assume that the civilians attacked were in fact taking a direct part in the hostilities and had thus lost their immunity against direct attacks.” (p. 231)
The problem with taking such statements seriously is that the number of civilian deaths, even if every single one was part of a “disproportionate” response, does not begin to approach numbers that would have been expected in a “free-fire” setting. After a three-week-long battle against an essentially absent foe, in congested urban spaces, from sky, sea and ground, the highest estimate of the deaths of innocent civilians comes to about a thousand. The alleged “low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population” cannot have been all that low.
In this as in other ways, Goldstone is off the mark. (Which is one reason the Israeli government should conduct the independent investigation of Operation Cast Lead that so many have called for.) At the same time, to say “no” to Im Tirtzu is not necessarily to say “yes” to all the activities of the 16 NIF-supported organizations it assaults. There are some I find disturbing. And yes, it is true that Israel is regularly singled out for behavior that elsewhere often goes unremarked. But I am among those who believe that it is the job of human rights organizations, in Israel as elsewhere, to be responsibly vociferous — not to be shy, not to be infallible, but to be ever on watch.
As to the New Israel Fund itself, an organization I have been proud to be identified with since very nearly its inception, both for years as a board member and now as a member of its International Advisory Board, the idea that it seeks anything more than or different from an Israel that behaves in all respects in accordance with the highest ideals of the Jewish people is a calumny. I have long believed and often remarked that the strength of Israel’s civil society is largely a gift to the Jewish state by NIF and its supporters.
Oh yes: Those dots that connect the effort to discredit and marginalize NIF (and others), expressions in the main of a Jewish right wing that disguises itself behind an ill-fitting centrist mask? More to come.
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Kudos to NIF to exposing the apartheid zionist entity to world scrutiny. FOr 6 decades we have selfishly insisted on an earthly israel, based upon territory. Safe to say, it hasnt worked and we have rightfully earned the worlds approbrium. Kudos to NIF for constructing a new Israel, based upon universal social and economic justice, as a REPLACEMENT for our selfish dream. I am proud of NIF for exposing the fraud of zionism, and I am hopeful for NIF and Goldstone sharing a Nobel Peace Prize in the near future
Many NGO's supported by NIF are promoting a non-Jewish state. Whether you like or not. It is not about a better Israel. Is about destroying what 97% of Jewish People that live in Israel believe. It is nice to sit in the Golah and to talk about your dream of Israel. So please, come to Israel. Stop telling what to do. NIF is doing terrible thing. You are completely disconnected from reality.
After living in Israel, serving Israel,having your children and your grand children serving the IDF; then you can start talking.
Richard Goldstone’s infamous role as the token head of the UNHRC report accusing the IDF of war crimes is only one example of prominent Jews who exploit their origins as a way to defame their people. In fact, until recently, Goldstone was considered a respectable Jew, even a Zionist. He was blinded by hubris and ego, and allowed himself to be seduced by the bitterest enemies of his people into providing legitimization for a blood libel against the Jewish state.
Unlike Goldstone, most Jewish renegades were driven by desperation to unburden themselves from what they regarded as their repressive ethnic and cultural roots. Historian Jacob Talmon described such deviant behavior as “a Jewish neurosis” in response to centuries of oppression and pariah status.
The purported commitment of these Jews to universal and humanitarian values was usually belied by extreme attacks on their own people and association with sponsors who were outright anti-Semites.
Streams of such Jews emerged during the 19th century in the wake of emancipation. A classic example was Karl Marx, whose anti-Semitic diatribes were reflected in outbursts like “money is the jealous god of Israel, by the side of which no other god may exist... The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”
In czarist Russia, some Jewish social revolutionaries even endorsed pogroms against their own kinsmen, hoping that by venting their frustrations on Jews, the masses would ultimately turn on the czar.
Their successors, the Yevsektsiya, the notorious Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party, became the most vicious persecutors of their own people, frenziedly suppressing all manifestations of Jewish cultural and religious life. Ultimately they too were liquidated in Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaigns.
Many Jews outside the Soviet Union joined the Communist Party out of a mistaken conviction that it represented the most effective way to combat Nazism. But once in the party, they became brainwashed, and applauded as the evil Soviet regime executed their kinsmen and institutionalized state-sponsored anti-Semitism.
AFTER THE Holocaust and the struggle to create the State of Israel, most Jewish anti-Semites hibernated. As the plight of Soviet Jewry became a rallying call uniting Jews throughout the world, the few remaining Jewish communists were marginalized.
Modern Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, a genuine social democrat, appreciated the dangers posed by left-wing nihilists. He strove strenuously to neutralize the extremists and post-Zionists, who only became influential after his retirement and the end of Mapai-Labor Party hegemony.
Today, despite representing a small fringe, the disproportionate influence of anti-Zionist Jewish extremists in global campaigns demonizing Israel has reached an all-time high.
Ironically, the worst elements emanate from Israel.
There is the frenzied agitation by Israeli academics who abuse academic freedom by utilizing their universities as launching pads to delegitimize their own country. Neve Gordon, a political science lecturer at Ben-Gurion University and a typical Jewish defamer of Zion, published an opinion piece last year in The Los Angeles Times calling on the international community to boycott Israel. He and others like him, funded by the Israeli government and philanthropic Diaspora Zionists, exploit their academic positions to support those seeking to destroy us.
A recent study by Im Tirtzu claims that over 90% of the false allegations of Israeli war crimes originating from Israel cited in the Goldstone Report were provided by 16 NGOs who received close to $8 million from the New Israel Fund, an organization purporting to promote social integration and welfare in Israel, headed by former Meretz MK Naomi Chazan. The NIF also sponsors Arab-Israeli groups promoting a bi-national state and US lecture tours by Arab Israelis on Israel Independence Day promoting the Nakba.
Last year Haaretz highlighted reports accusing the IDF of war crimes which were subsequently proven false. These received massive global media exposure and made a major contribution toward creating the hostile anti-Israeli climate preceding the Goldstone report.
THE ROT extends to the Diaspora, where as a matter of course anti-Israeli groups now employ Jewish spokesmen to cover up their bias and double standards. In the US, the demonizers of Zion are exploiting the eroding relationship between the Obama administration and Israel. Former American Jewish Congress director Henry Siegman described Israel as “the only apartheid regime in the Western world.” Jewish students at campuses are increasingly bombarded with anti-Israel diatribes by Jewish academics such as Norman Finkelstein, who supports Iranians and terrorists, even exploiting the Holocaust suffering of his parents to delegitimize Israel.
In the UK, Jewish parliamentarian Gerald Kaufman compares Hamas to Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, disregarding the Hamas Charter which declares that the Day of Judgment will not come until all Jews are killed.
In Belgium, a Jewish playwright scripted a play in which the Philistines assume the role of Israelis and Samson emerges as a heroic Palestinian using a dynamite-loaded vest to blow up his oppressors.
Shlomo Sand, a political science lecturer at Tel Aviv University, achieved celebrity status in Europe by publishing a book titled The Invention of the Jewish People, a farrago of utter nonsense promoting the thesis that being the descendents of the Khazars from the Black Sea region who converted to Judaism in the eighth century, Jews have no historical affinity with the Land of Israel.
This was endorsed in a recent UK Financial Times article by Tony Judt, an American historian who regards the creation of Israel as a mistake and favors a binational state. Under the title “Israel must unpick its ethnic mix,” Judt expressed the hope that American Jews would detach themselves from Israel, as Irish-Americans did from Ireland.
The time has come for action – not to suppress freedom of expression, but to draw red lines between legitimate criticism of government policies and initiatives seeking to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. The first step must be to deny tenure in government-sponsored educational institutions to academics who brazenly collaborate with our enemies.
It is gratifying that opposition Kadima MKs are now calling for what will hopefully become a bipartisan investigation into the activities and sources of funding for the NIF and other NGOs.
Whenever criticized, those who call for boycotts of their own country and demonize the IDF as war criminals have the chutzpah to try to defame their critics as McCarthyites and fascists, and threaten libel proceedings. It is their behavior which is morally reprehensible, and we must not be intimidated by such hypocritical tactics.
Israelis and the global Jewish community should be under no illusions. The damage inflicted by Jews collaborating with Israel’s enemies to demonize or delegitimize their country is immense. The only way to neutralize the impact of these renegade groups is to expose and confront them
To Rabbi Jutner: Ouch. If I were asked to share the Nobel with Goldstone (absurd) I would decline. And I surely do not thing that NIF seeks to replace the territorially-based Israel, what you call "our selfish dream," with some sweet ideas. Be serious.
To JMK: Do you not grow tired of your repeated (and repetitious) harangues?
To Shmuel Cohen: Many NGOs supported by NIF are promoting a non-Jewish state? That is simply not so. Indeed, I doubt you will find in any umbrella organization more enthusiastic and more thoughtful support for a two-state solution -- which is the only formula that preserves the Jewish state. Plus: If your criterion for who is entitled to speak on these matters is that one must live in Israel, have children and grandchildren in the IDF, then you fracture the Jewish people and deny Israel the right to call itself the national home of the Jewish people. No one outside is "telling" Israel what to do. We are joining in the convsersation, as Jews and also (and not incidentgally) as Americans. Or must all Americans stay silent?
Judge Goldstone may feel he will exclude himself by washing his hands of the IDF Gaza invasion but history serves to prove this is no answer. Two years ago the Mothers for Peace movement got their wish and forced Jewish settlers out of Gaza. It would have less disasterous for all sides had they stayed. None in the media have followed-up on what the consequences the feminist-left has created here: The deaths of 1,400 Gaza Palestinians and the finger-of-guilt pointed by Judge Goldstone. The core problem is that Jewish left which must include The Forward has no affinity with an Orthodox and Zionist reality. Evidently the diaspora community seems to be playing the role of spoiler here, further exacerbating the conflict by giving aid and confort to the Intifada and leading Palestinians down-the-garden-path that their state is soon to come.
To Rabbi Jutner: Ouch. If I were asked to share the Nobel with Goldstone (absurd) I would decline.... The Nobel committee probably will not be asking you, but the leadership of NIF. My sources tell me Goldstone is on the short list for Nobel gold
And I surely do not thing that NIF seeks to replace the territorially-based Israel, what you call "our selfish dream," with some sweet ideas... you may still subscribe to the outdated 2 state solution, but NIF is a big tent. I am optimistic that NIF will sooner than later reject the selfish dream in favor of universal justice
Mr. Fein, have you read Aaron Appelfeld's novel Badenheim 1939. If you have, what did you learn, the lessons learned to whom does it apply? For example, everyone has their myths, religions are totally fictional but satisfy emotions, fears by blinding the sting of reality. Tachlis, Tehran will have soon a nuclear bomb and the whole world has done nothing that anyone knows of to stop them. They do not care about Jews again. Israel alone will be left to defend itself again. Finally, please stop this talk of democratic values you rule this roost like any dictator.
Isi Liebler is right on target. A leopard never changes its spots. Fortunately, while the anti Zionist fringe of the radical left of the Jewish community commands a disproportionate amount of media attention they are a lunatic fringe with plenty of bark but no bite. Like many political ideologues on both the far right and left they attempt to use the media for what they could never achieve at the ballot box. Even then they fall way short.
Thanks to Leonard Fein for saying the key truth here: "The more carefully you read and review these lengthy documents, the less persuasive they become."
But allow me to debunk Im Tirtzu's credibility:
- 14% of the Goldstone report's citations originated in NIF grantee publications, not the widely misinterpreted 92% (read their full report for confirmation, they admit it themselves).
- Fully half of the citations from Israeli sources are Israeli officials and newspapers like Maariv!
- Two of the "sixteen" grantees were never funded by us. Ever. Not donor-advised, not nothing: Zochrot and New Profile.
- A third, Coalition of Women for Peace, hasn't been a grantee of ours since 2006.
The Im Tirtzu report is a huge distortion. I would encourage those who are concerned to look into the details where, as Fein said, the argument falls apart. The only possible intent is to whip up public hysteria to accomplish what sane heads wouldn't otherwise do: cripple Israel's vibrant democracy by outlawing and defunding the civil rights sector.
Sorry, I couldn't quite decide on which of Col. Travers' statements are the most outrageous. The fact that this guy was one of the four principals of the report betrays once again how wicked it was from the start. Here are some highlights: New Revelations About the UN Goldstone Report that Seriously Undermine its Credibility
Col. (ret.) Desmond Travers was one of the four members of the UN Fact Finding Mission that produced what is widely called the Goldstone Report. The Mission investigated Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009. Travers joined the Irish Defense Forces in 1961 and retired after forty years. As the only former officer who belonged to Justice Richard Goldstone's team, he was the senior figure responsible for the military analysis that provided the basis for condemning Israel for war crimes.
After following his repeated public appearances with the other mission members in July 2009, and especially in light of his most recent interviews, serious flaws have now become evident in the methodology he followed, in his collection and processing of data, and in the conclusions he draws. In the past, the flaws in the Goldstone report, and especially its lack of balance, have been criticized by the London Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, but the fundamental problems of its military analysis have not been fully addressed. In the material presented here, this becomes evident in four specific ways:
1. A Fundamental Bias against the Israel Defense Forces
During the Mission's collection of testimonies from Palestinian psychologists in the Gaza Strip, Travers asked them straight out to explain how Israeli soldiers could kill Palestinian children in front of their parents. In an interview with Middle East Monitor, on February 2, 2010, he asserted that in the past Israeli soldiers had "taken out and deliberately shot" Irish peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon. Both of these statements by Travers are completely false. It should be stressed that one of the most vicious and unsubstantiated conclusions in the Goldstone Report is the suggestion that Israel deliberately killed Palestinian civilians...
...Travers comes up with a story that the IDF had unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) that could obtain a "thermal signature" on a Gaza house and detect that there were large numbers of people inside. Incredibly, he then suggests that with this information that certain houses were "packed with people," the Israeli military would then deliberately order a missile strike on these populated homes. The primary technical problem with his theory is that Israel does not have UAV's that can see though houses and pick up a thermal signature. More importantly, Israel used UAV's to monitor that Palestinian civilians left houses that had received multiple warnings, precisely because Israel sought to minimize civilian casualties, a fact that Travers could not fathom, because of his own clear biases...
There's more, but here's the predictable:
...Travers most recent interview also had a disturbing additional element. When addressing the role of British officers in defending Israel's claims, Travers suddenly adds: "Britain's foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists." Travers implies that British Jews have interests that differ from Britain's own national interests and that Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is influenced by these considerations. This statement, unless corrected, places Travers is a position in which his views are suspect of being motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices. Even without this last statement, he clearly emerges as an individual who is not qualified to take part in any serious fact-finding mission and the U.N. should not seek his services in the future...
Also see Haaretz: Goldstone co-author: Hamas fired 'something like two' rockets before Gaza war
Update: David Bernstein at Volokh: Goldstone Report Co-Author is a Nutter?
...Here's the full text of the interview [PDF] from which these quotes are derived. All the quotes check out, but the quotes recounted above don't begin to illustrate Travers's hatred of Israel, unwillingness to credit anything Israel says or question any Hamas assertions, and general nuttiness. To get the full sense of it, you have to read the whole thing. For example, did you know that there is no evidence that Hamas used human shields or intimidated the civilian population? In fact, according to Travers, any such allegations are likely an artifact of "Israeli combat troops specially trained to operate in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in civilian attire. They worked as 'franc-tireurs' (literally 'free shooters') and could have been in a position to cause confusion among the population."...
Update2 from Sophia: Who knew? And here we have been imagining that thousands of rockets have hit Israel in the past few years, dozens on Christmas Eve alone!
All that scrap metal from the sky must have been an illusion! And likewise the explosions, the sirens, the traumatized children, the dead people, the injured animals, the bomb shelters, the burning fields - all a dream! Like Tevya's imaginary vision of the graveyard in "Fiddler On the Roof!"
Oh those silly Israelis.
Or maybe, Desmond Travers, a retired Irish army colonel meant to say, 2 rockets in the last 10 minutes before the war? Or something?
...He's also claims that "Jewish lobbyists" have influenced British foreign policy and "doesn't believe" Israeli photographs showing weapons storage in Gaza mosques.
Wow. The Goldstone Report looks more objective all the time!
Is there no limit to spouting the baseless red-herring argument that "democracy in Israel is in danger" when there is an inconvenient expose of NIF bankrolling of organizations hostile to Israel. Does the expose of NIF activity threaten the democratic process or elections - no. Does the expose threaten the judicial process -no. Does the expose threaten a free press or freedom of expression - no. Does the expose of NIF threaten civil rights - no. Does the expose threaten the parliamentary process - no. So what is this non-sequiter kish-kush about a threat to democracy. So far there has yet to be a cogent justification or even explanation of why NIF is funding groups who are hostile to the Jewish State. Instead, the publication of detailed funding actions by NIF are categorically ignored [without of course denying that NIF has indeed funded the hostile-to-Israel organizations], the wild claim of a conspiracy against NIF is touted and anyone who dares say a critical word about the NIF or naomi chazan (who has accused NIF critics as suffering from insanity) is tarred as anti-democratic. At least in Israel, these tactics don't make much of an impression on the level-headed citizenry. In fact, the failure of Chazin, NIF or their advocates to confront criticism with a clear, straightforward , to-the-issue reponse have left them with little credibility among most Israelis who have learned to see through double-talk and obfuscation. It's about time that jewish americans realize that Israelis are not going to quietly mind their own business in the face of the NIF hypocracy in proclaim it has a pro-Israel agenda yet extensively bankrolling organizations that are minifestly hostile to Israel.
Kavod HaRav Toni Jutner,
Thank you for your idea to propose Justice Richard Goldstone for the Nobel Peace Price. I've met him on October 14, 2009 in Berne (Switzerland), and I'm very impressed about his personality and his metodology of the examination after the Operation Cast Lead: He is looking for all directions and wanted to cooperate with Israel. Mr Goldstone reminds me at the Parasha Shoftim (Judges).
For me the New Israel Fund NIF is an important organization to support liberal and democratic factors in the Israeli Society. Also I estimate very much its President Naomi Chazan.
The answer against the unfair attacks from Im Tirtzu now is to support the NIF more, financially and morally.
Best wishes and Shalom,
Jochi Weil-Goldstein, Zurich, Initiator of the Appeal by concerned Jews to the Israeli Government www.humanrights-in-israel.ch
Goldstone a competent jurist? Oy vey. Just do a Google on: Richard Goldston and Gruban Malic. Nobel prize? Nah, mahmoud ahmadinejad has got him beat by a mile. An Ignoble Prize is more appropriate.
Mirela Siderer's face is still scarred from injuries she sustained when a Gazan rocket hit an Ashkelon mall in May 2008, as she treated a patient in a clinic there. Since that fateful day, the gynecologist, a 53-year-old mother of two, has undergone seven operations for her wound, and she is in need of an eighth. Although the clinic reopened after three months, she has not been well enough to work. On Saturday night, she left Israel for Geneva to address the UN Human Rights Council, which on Tuesday debated the 429-page report on Operation Cast Lead compiled by a four-person investigatory team led by South African Judge Richard Goldstone. While the government chose not to cooperate with the Goldstone mission, Siderer agreed to testify for their report. On Tuesday, she told the council how upset she was to discover that her story had been reduced to one line, in which the document states that she was one of three people seriously wounded in the rocket attack. "Judge Goldstone, in a 500-page report, why did you completely ignore my story? My name appears only in passing, in brackets, in a technical context," said Siderer, who spoke on behalf of the Geneva-based UN Watch NGO. "I feel humiliated," she told the council. "Why are there only two pages about Israeli victims like me, who suffered thousands of rockets over eight years?" She later told The Jerusalem Post by telephone that back in 2008, she was examining a woman in her early 20s when the rocket struck. One moment she was standing, and the next, she was under the examining table. She immediately called her husband, Moshe. "I said, 'There was an attack. I'm injured. Save me," Siderer recalled. At the hearing on Tuesday, she said, "Judge Goldstone, I told you all of this, in detail. I testified in good faith. You sent me this letter, saying, "Your testimony is an essential part of the mission's fact-finding activities." As she spoke, Siderer held up a copy of that letter. As a doctor, she treated everyone who came into her clinic equally, including women from Gaza, Siderer said. But the Goldstone Commission did not treat her or her country with the same sense of fairness. It was misleading for the commission to examine only the 13 months from June 2008 to July 2009, she said. Palestinians in Gaza had fired rockets into Israel for eight years. Siderer asked Goldstone, who was in the room, "Why did you choose to focus on the period of my country's response, but not on that of the attacks that caused it?" Goldstone responded, "I am truly upset that she feels humiliated by the report." He added that she was referenced in the same manner as the other victims. "She was referred to in the report as one of the people that was injured in a rocket attack," he said. Goldstone said the testimony of those who spoke with the commission can be found on the Web site of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. But Siderer told the Post that during the summer, Goldstone had e-mailed her to say that her testimony was "very influential. But when I saw the report, I did not see how my testimony had influenced anything." It was difficult to address the council and so she left after her making her statement and did not hear Goldstone's response, she said. This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1254163545960&pagename=JPArticle%2FS howFull
It's Adar. So let's get happier. There is a quite instructive new video (for English speakers) on the popular new israeli satirical website, latma. It is quite relevant to Goldstone and the Innately Righteous and Omniscient who with devoted self-sacrifice strive to exorcise the demonic monster, Israel for the sake of all humanity. Be sure to look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYd3HtmrLg4
And if you are sufficiently up to date with the news and are interested in satire, you should look at last week's show (English subtitles):
www.carolineglick.com/e/2010/02/latma-researches-the-history-o.php
Enjoy.