Richard Goldstone’s Legacy of Shame Continues
Judge Richard Goldstone, like some latter day Shylock, is now willing to return his pound of flesh, by recanting his farcical 2009 UN report on Israel’s invasion of Gaza. But the blood libel spilled in its creation cannot be expunged. Blood libels are like that. They take on a life and persistence of their own.
The infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion continues to flourish long after it was shown to be a forgery created by the Czarist secret police. The shooting of Mohammed al-Dura, a visual fabrication worthy of Photoshop, lives on in the Arab street as an Israeli atrocity, just as does the blood libel claiming that Jews stayed away from the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. So too will Goldstone’s fabrication of Israeli war crimes against Gaza’s civilians.
Just months ago, Goldstone was in Berkeley accepting an award from the area’s most controversial rabbi, Michael Lerner, whose incessant and unrepentant leftist ideology has permitted him to find areas of common agreement with those who would undermine the existence of the Jewish state. Alan Dershowitz has called Lerner’s Tikkun magazine the most vicious anti-Israel screed published under Jewish auspices, and Dershowitz has taken Lerner to task for asserting without a shred of evidence that Israel not only committed war crimes in Gaza, but also that those crimes were approved at the highest levels of government. On the stage with Goldstone was Muslim scholar Sheik Hamza Yusuf, whose radical views prior to 9/11 included support for the 1993 attempted bombing of the World Trade Center and anti-Semitism. Since 9/11, Yusuf has been busily reinventing himself as a moderate.
Are we to believe that Goldstone is just a naïve waif manipulated by scoundrels — that he had no idea what symbolic statement he was making by appearing with the likes of Lerner and Yusuf? Just as, now, he wants us to believe that he had no idea that Hamas uses civilians as shields, hides military equipment in hospitals and schools, and for years rained rockets on Israel’s southern cities?
Goldstone took Hamas at its word. He was deceived. How could he have possibly known otherwise? Goldstone would have us believe he does not live among us, never reads a newspaper or watches a news program. He only knows about Hamas from what Hamas tells him. And, similarly, all he knows about Israel is what a bunch of self-proclaimed “human rights” advocates tell him — people with a history of embracing any unproven accusation that demonizes the Jewish state, people from Human Rights Watch, whose very founder now denounces its obsession with undermining the Jewish state.
But even now, Goldstone’s apology seems to be an attempt at self-exoneration. Yes, he got it wrong. But it was those damn Israelis who made him do it by not cooperating with the UN Commission on Human Rights — a group made up of the world’s most shameless anti-Semites, one that was about to bestow a human rights award on Libya before Gaddafi started shooting demonstrators in the streets.
Excellent piece Mr. Miller. Said it all. And I agree entirely with your contention on Goldstone’s motivations on obtaining a seat on the International Court of Justice.
Obviously Goldstone was and is willing to stab his own people in the back to climb up the greasy pole of UN Commissions and international court judgeships. Think out of control godless secular ego who shames his forefathers. His recent recantation is only an attempt to alleviate the shunning from the Jewish community he and his wife have received. Most like done to mollify his wife since he has proven he is a godless itinerant.
No one can sell a Jew down the river like a fellow Jew.
Goldstone is a kapo of the postmodern era.
True, so many Jews vote for candidates on the left! I really think there are a large bunch of JINOs out there who would push Israelis into the sea simply because Israel is a democracy and not a Maxist state.
Well, there sure is a lesson to be learned by anyone who feels they were wrong, that they have criticized Israel unfairly.
Don’t recant. Don’t say you were wrong. Don’t be like Goldstone. Just keep your mouth shut. Or you will be trashed.
Goldstone was just one member of the panel that published the report in his name.
The rest of the panel and Goldstone , this week, all made it crystal clear for everyone–yet again.
They are not going to retract, modify or withdraw their report
–they all stand behind it 100%.
It is what it is.
It is going forward to the next stage.
Of course they won’t back down now Victor
This is as transparent as it gets.
Wondering what the next stage might be. Are we not there right now? Poised at the edge of all out conflict.
You want this I think. I do not. Now you think you have advantage. You do not.
Warning has been given. Bibi has said it all week.
You know what the next stage is. Reserves called up. Divisions to south and north deployed. Pleas again to stop before we descend again to madness. Too late. Why on earth do you want this? Is this fun for you? You feel like a man now?
This can stop right now. Israel wants nothing else from Hamas and the rest of the merry pranksters but to be left alone.
Too far this time. Rest of your nominal supporters are busy.
There are plenty of Goldstones in this world. Pharoahs, emperors, presidents, and corporate CEO’s buy them. In the end, their defense is all the same. Sombody else deceived me or Somebody else ordered me to do it.
Abe,
You are truly an amazing person. Please continue with the wonderful support of the State of Israel and our people.
Thank you,
Mat
Once again, the third rail of ‘Amerikun Polyticks:’ never question Israel. Funny, I grew up in a place called the land of the free where we are supposed to be able to tell the truth now and then. Oh, and the sainted Dershowitz has taken him to task! The apostasy! Careful thumpin’ those bibles boyos: you make break your hands. Cast Lead was such a noble cause indeed. Death lovers all. Don’t complain when the drones and buzzbombs start flying over your homes. Oh, and good use of the new declension for ‘blood libel.’ Gotta trumpet that propaganda.
Jey Jake – How about the 5,000 rockets Hamas intentionally lobbed at civilians from Gaza before Cast Lead? Oh, I guess you were unaware of that. Oh, and didn’t you remember that Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza to buy peace? Pesky little things facts are.
Here are some real facts, Jake. Perhaps the following will make you reflect on your position: Since the launching of rocket and mortars from Gaza began, between 2000-2008, nineteen people were killed by rockets and eighteen by mortar shells. Since then, one Thai farmworker has been killed and one teenager, recently hit while sitting in a school bus, was critically injured. Between 2000-2008, 5,700 rockets were launched and 4,000 mortars (statistics from the Shin Bet). In 2008, 2,000 rockets and 1,600 mortar shells were launched. During the six-months “ceasefire” ending in December 2008 before Operation Cast Lead began, 361 rockets and 303 mortar shells were launched. I hope these facts are sufficient in reply to your comments.
Jake, how savage do the Arabs have to be to convince you that they are savages?
Goldstone is recanting his lies against Israel – yet he’s still keeping company with the other liars. That’s not a good idea. Someone should warn him that you must never stay in the same cage as the tiger once you pull its tail.
Really strange, as I’m an elderly lady and read several newspapers a day, watch news programs, and surf the Internet. I didn’t need to talk to Hamas or anyone else to understand what was happening during Cast Lead, and why. What I am surprised is that Israel didn’t smash Gaza flat so they would never pull this garbage again. However, she didn’t, so Gaza is, and this next time hopefully the world will have learned to mind its own business and let Israel destroy Hamas and his organization. And since Hamas dresses his army in civilian clothing and hides his cowards in schools and hospitals among civilians, expect another report of lies that Israel targets innocents. All Israeli laws for “bearing false witness” should punish Goldstone and his group accordingly. He should certainly be banned from ever stepping foot in Israel again.
Superb analysis, Mr. Miller. Let me add that Judge Goldstone was full of hubris and has been taken down in the classical pattern modeled after the Greek playrights. He is despised in the country of Israel, in the Jewish communities of South Africa where he hailed, by the anti-Israeli Muslims worldwide and by the leftists whom he tried to flatter. A weak man, given the diagnosis of the Stockholm Syndrome, he thought non-Jews would accept and admire him. Like the Kapos of old, just as the Nazis ended up sending them into the ovens after they had no further use for them, the international community no longer has any use for Goldstone. I might have had some admiration for him had he delivered a full Mea Culpa but no, he’s still hanging on to some illusion that the international world will promote him into a lofty position and, if not, some Ivy League type university will employ his services and his “good” name. I don’t think this will occur, however. And, like most Readers, I have no pity for him whatsoever. He has caused Israel and the Jewish communities worldwide so much damage. He is an excellent reflection of what the United Nations has become, unfortunately.
You make it sound as if he’s been exiled to live among monkeys.
Superficial wit is not your best characteristic, James. You normally do better, much better, than that.
“No, Goldstone is what he always was, a judge who served the Apartheid regime of South Africa and who sent black men to prison and death knowing they never had anything resembling due process, let alone a jury of their peers.”
There are no juries in South African courts (Roman-Dutch law?). The judge alone makes the decision.
Although now – after 1993 – the decisions in the Appeals and Constitutional Courts are decided by three or more justices. I think it is called “full-bench” decisions. Usually when decisions are made regarding important cases.
Um, yeah. That was kinda the point. No juries.
Mr. Miller — excellent piece. I have already expressed my low opinion of Goldstone in other place on PJM, so I’ll let it go here.
thank you Mr. Miller
There’s J Street members, Ha’aretz readers, a good many rabbis, most Hillel branches, and Jewish university professors galore, both in Israel and in America, who are Goldstone clones. The largest single group of such clones, however, is the 78 per cent of all Jewish voters who cast their ballots for Barack Hussein Obama in 2008.
Spot-on!!
Ole Abe my take on the whole matter is this, many shall find it odd, of course, I am odd also, but it goes like this: <Let the Jews take back the world and raise the Third Temple on Temple Mount!
thanks #8 Jake, for reminding us what we’re fighting against.
what Goldstone did was hardly “saying something bad about Israel.” he presided over a deliberate attempt to demonize Israel. he painted Israel as the only injured party in the Gaza “war.” he and his cohorts made up the nastiest lies about a democratic government trying to protect its citizens. the barbaric Hamas, which just shot up an Israeli schoolbus last week, was given a pass.
you are either really stupid, or really anti-Semitic. I’m going with #2.
Richard Goldstone’s Gaza Epiphany
Richard Goldstone isn’t exactly a familiar household name in America. However, in Israel, Goldstone was very well known until very recently as a Jewish apostate, a label he tried to shuck when he issued a retraction of his previous allegations of Israeli atrocities commited during the Gaza war of 2008-2009.
Briefly, Goldstone, an eminent Jewish South African judge, saw his name affixed to a United Nations’ report on that 3-week war. As a result of the Goldstone Report, commisioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council, he was reviled in Israel and elsewhere by Israel supporters as a wayward jurist suffering from a “moral inversion” who “preserved his judicial reputation while perpetrating a blood libel against Israel” and with worse epithets because he had dared to expose Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
The Goldstone Report charged Israel’s IDF with a systematic, official policy to inflict punishment on civilians in Gaza. Titled, “Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” the English language pdf version may be read here in its entirety: http://bit.ly/1BjEXr
The final version issued by the anti-Semitic U.N. HRC deleted most references to Hamas atrocities and focused on the disproportionality of Israel’s retaliation. Fourteen Israeli settlers had been killed in unprovoked Hamas missile attacks; some 700 enemy combatants were killed by the IDF as well as 714 Gaza civilians including at least 412 children. (Hamas claimed 1200 dead children.)
The Goldstone Report concluded that Israel, which touts itself as having “the most moral army in the world,” committed the most heinous crimes imaginable against defenseless Gazan non-combatatants.
There was no question that the IDF was battling a grossly amoral enemy which had secreted weaponry in mosques, hospitals, and schools and had launched missile atttacks from private homes, and Israel contends it gave advance warnings, none of which mitigates Israeli war crimes.
On April 1, 2011, coincidentally April Fools Day, Goldstone issued a retraction of the Goldstone Report. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4151)