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Hasan Abu Nimah Israel is orchestrating a campaign to block the Goldstone report from further movement. That is happening in concert with Washington, and probably other supporters of the Israeli position.
Apart from attacking the report as biased against Israel and hostile to it, the author himself is being personally smeared.
" Goldstone, although Jewish, was also accused of being anti-Semitic, according to a Haaretz report on September 27 " If the report is brought to the U.N. Security Council, Israel threatens it will not proceed with making peace with the Palestinians. This is not only most ridiculous, but also rather strange, coming from the side that has persistently sabotaged every effort to reach a settlement of the century-old conflict.
Richard Goldstone, the jurist who accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its war on Gaza, has challenged the U.S. to justify its claims that his findings are flawed and biased.
“I have yet to hear from the Obama administration what the flaws in the report that they have identified are,” Goldstone said, adding that he would be happy to respond to them if and when he knew what they were.
Goldstone stated that the “Obama administration joined our recommendation calling for full and good faith investigation, both in Israel and in Gaza, but said the report was flawed.”
Except for the U.S. and for those who joined Israel in condemning the report, in line with the usual trend of labeling as anti-Semitic anyone who dares criticize Israeli violations of international law or ongoing atrocities against the Palestinians, many confidently recognized the professional integrity of Judge Goldstone, as well as his unquestionable credibility and objectivity.
Goldstone, although Jewish, was also accused of being anti-Semitic, according to a Haaretz report on September 27.
As a Jew and a committed Zionist, Goldstone could not be biased against Israel, but as an honest, committed Zionist, he could clearly see that the war crimes committed in Gaza could not serve the Zionist cause. Neither would such crimes help Israel live in peace and security with its Arab neighbors. |
" If this is true, and one should not really take it for granted, it reflects very poorly on the U.N. secretary general " The threat to peace comes not from pursuing the report but from a failure to investigate all its findings and to bring the perpetrators to justice. It would indeed have made sense if the opponents of the Goldstone report had been able to provide legal argument exposing any flaws, rather than make abusive and political statements. Goldstone himself observed that most of the attacks “had become personal rather than dealing with the substance of the report” and added that he thought most of the critics hadn’t even read it. Press reports last Friday spoke of an aggressive Israeli campaign to prevent the Goldstone report from being considered either in the Security Council or the U.N. General Assembly, threatening to abandon even the notion of peace talks if such a thing happens. Reference was made to a meeting between Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on October 23. Shalom is reported to have demanded in that meeting that the Goldstone report be “buried.”
According to the Israeli website YnetNews.com the response of the secretary general was neither firm nor compatible with his responsibilities as defined in the U.N. Charter. It was rather, sadly, apologetic and timid.
“I told him that I request the report not to reach the Security Council,” Shalom said, adding that, “[t]he secretary general responded saying, ‘you know it can reach the assembly (via a third party country).”
At this point Shalom responded “saying there is a difference between him taking it forward to the General Assembly and a country like Libya doing so.”
If this is true, and one should not really take it for granted, it reflects very poorly on the U.N. secretary general. Given these claims from an Israeli government minister, Ban should come out publicly and declare his full support for advancing the report, and pledge his all-out efforts in that regard. |
" Lieberman advocated that the world needs to consider ways to “correct the situation so that a stable and balanced” international system can be created " Ban was subjected to additional pressure late last week from Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who phoned the secretary general to tell him that the Goldstone report had created a “distorted reality” where international forums afford an automatic majority to countries where concern for human rights is a very low priority, citing Cuba, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as countries making the international arena “hypocritical and prejudiced”, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Lieberman advocated that the world needs to consider ways to “correct the situation so that a stable and balanced” international system can be created. Lieberman, who recently accused anyone who would expect a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians of being “delusional”, also threatened that carrying the Goldstone report forward would hurt the chances of a peace deal.
It is not improbable that the Israeli efforts to block the Goldstone report may succeed. If a third party would manage to move the report to the Security Council, the last resort measure is an American veto. There are reports that neither China nor Russia is very enthusiastic about a debate in the council, although the two countries voted for the resolution, endorsing it at the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Although the United States is publicly opposing the report, it may still prefer to avoid the embarrassment of casting a veto against a credible U.N. investigation into war crimes and flagrant human rights abuses by its client. This would substantially weaken superpower calls for accountability of similar abuses elsewhere. This is another explicit case of double standards.
Obstructing international justice is a crime and a threat to world peace. It is also the measure that will prevent any possibility of progress towards settling the Middle East conflict. Precisely because there are allegations that the Goldstone report is flawed, biased or incorrect, it should be rushed to the appropriate U.N. bodies to be legally and factually challenged and proven wrong.
Obviously Israel cannot do that. It refused to cooperate with the Goldstone mission in the first place because it knows full well that the report’s findings and recommendations are accurate and fair. That is why it is fighting it politically with abuse and threats, and not with a legal defense.
The simple truth is that Israel doesn’t have one.
*Published in Jordan's THE JORDAN TIMES on October 28, 2009. |
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