At Brandeis, Goldstone defends UN war crimes report
Justice Richard Goldstone, at a Brandeis University forum, defended the UN report on war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas in the Gaza war. It was the first time he has publicly discussed the report with a high-level Israeli official.
By Amy Bracken | Correspondent 11.06.09
WALTHAM, MASS. – Justice Richard Goldstone, in his first public discussion with a high-level Israeli official regarding his controversial UN report on war crimes during Israel’s invasion of Gaza last year, hardly came out reeling.
He began the forum at Brandeis University by confessing a concern about anti-Israel bias in the UN Human Rights Council, and even said the original mandate of his fact-finding mission was unbalanced (until he refocused it to include a look at Hamas attacks), and he repeatedly asserted his belief that Israel should be able to defend itself.
“I’ve publicly stated on many occasions,” he said, “that Israel has the right under international law not only to protect its citizens from rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, but it has a clear duty to do so.”
Since a UN fact-finding mission issued the report more than a month ago accusing both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes in the Gaza invasion last winter – in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed – the media have been abuzz with both vitriol and praise for the document.
Israeli officials have called the report biased, insulting, and even an legitimization of terrorism. On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on President Barack Obama to “oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration” of the document.
But two days later, the UN General Assembly voted to endorse it.
The Brandeis forum, in which Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN, presented Israel’s opposition to the report and Goldstone defended it, drew a crowd of several hundred. With police scattered throughout the premises, a moderator called for calm and civility in the audience, and the crowd complied. There were only some silent demonstrators.
The question for the UN fact-finding mission, Goldstone said, was whether the manner in which Israel defended itself was in accord with humanitarian law. “Let me turn now to the substance,” he said in a soft voice, and described the “Dahiya doctrine.” That principle was established after Israeli forces destroyed a Beirut neighborhood in 2006; a military chief suggested the same be done with every village that fires upon Israel – that is, that Israel respond to attacks with “disproportionate force.”
“Our investigation, in fact, shows that that doctrine was applied in Operation Cast Lead,” Goldstone said, using the code name for last winter’s attack on Gaza. (According to international law, he said, disproportionate force constitutes a war crime.) Goldstone quoted the Israeli deputy prime minister’s proposal to “destroy Gaza,” and he listed some instances where attacks on civilians and infrastructure seemed to go beyond attempts to target Hamas. Among them was an attack on a mosque during prayer, one on a UN compound, another on the American International School – a bastion of anti-Hamas sentiment – using white phosphorus shells, and others on sources of food and industry. “If that isn’t collective punishment, what is?” he asked.
Mr. Gold asserted that the attack on the mosque was not carried out by Israelis, and that Hamas is to blame for the high civilian toll, because they provoked Israel with rocket attacks and then established themselves in civilian areas. “I think one of the central elements of our disagreement is how to treat the Hamas regime,” he said. “Do you relate and recognize it as the legitimate authority in the Gaza Strip, or do you say, ‘Wait a minute, this organization is an international terrorist organization?’ ”
Though Gold said much of the world also recognizes Hamas as terrorists, he concluded his remarks by describing Israel as a persecuted minority in the UN. “It’s no secret that that UN Human Rights Council and that other bodies of the United Nations mistreat the nation of Israel systematically,” he said. Adding that the UN does not defend Israel, he concluded, to applause, “That is good enough reason for Israel to not cooperate with an investigation of this sort.”
During Goldstone’s fact-finding mission, Israel refused to comply. It declined interview requests and denied access to Israel and the West Bank. Gold insisted that Israel’s own military and civilian justice systems are adequate to investigate any reported wrong-doing, but Goldstone said that option lacks transparency.
Goldstone concluded his comments Thursday night by saying, “I still hope, against all the odds, and against the strong objections … that there will be an open investigation, and not, in darkness, the military investigating itself.”
Closing out the event after more than two hours, moderator and Jewish studies professor Ilan Troen told the student audience: “The event is not over; we hope that this event has not resolved everything for you.”
As audience members filed out of the building, many professed strengthened love or hate for the Goldstone report, but also a desire to continue the conversation.
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2. John Wilcox | 11.06.09
Unified and aggressive outside intervention is the only hope. For sixty years Israel’s American enabled brutalization of the Palestinians has resisted all manner of lesser approaches. Israel must be given no option but to abandon its lebensraum, apartheid, ghettoization, pogrom, and chosen people policies. Goldstone’s report is a meaningful beginning toward convincing Israel to become an acceptable citizen among nations.
3. Jud Wiliams | 11.06.09
The problem we face in the Near East is, that we should not be involved at all. The war is, and was, a direct result of the Neocon Republicans, who in fact, are for the most part, politically and ethnically allied with the Israelis. The only solution is, for our efforts to progress toward peace making solutions, rather than ones based on the notion held by the Neocons and the Israelites, that force is the only way peace may be achieved. The use of military force is a warped concept, that to achieve harmony in the region is to beat someone into submission. The people whose land the Israelis have taken by force while committing the worst kind of atrocities must be returned to those people and the Israelis must cease their aggressive behavior.
4. John F. | 11.07.09
The Goldstone report is invalid on its face, even without reading it. Coming from a U.N. body its legitimacy can be no greater than the institution that paid for it, the same one that spends 60% of its censuring motions against the Jewish state, and essentially turns a blind eye toward the countless internal & external conflicts in dozens of much larger countries each day. Imagine the difference if instead of Saudi Arabia sending jets into Yemen it was Israel sending them into Lebanon. And Saudi Arabia did not have its soldiers kidnapped or missiles fired into its cities. And simply look at the membership of its Human Rights commission.
Most of the same countries that voted for the report are the same ones that will think nothing of boycotting Israel’s products while having no qualms about trading military weapons with Iran or Syria, two countries that violate law consistently by promoting race-based warfare. The way the U.N. handles clear violations that go against its apparent philosophy is to ignore them knowing they will blow over as a “news” item. A recent example is the capturing of a weapons-loaded ship of Iranian origin. What has the U.N. said or done so far about this blatant war crime? Nothing! My guess is they’re waiting for a statement from someone to speculate that the weapons, and maybe the ship itself, is part of an alien invasion. This would be another valuable status-enhancing assignment for Goldstone to work on.
The main benefit of U.N. votes is that it produces a solid historical time-stamped record of who is for justice and who is against it. Who supports democracies and who supports dictatorships; who supports peaceful international relations and who supports conflict. Besides becoming a food distribution center, those are its only visible effects. It is UN-helpful to peaceful civilization. By even volunteering to work on this “war crime” investigation to the exclusion of all else has tarnished Goldstone along with the U.N.
5. Sherry Blair | 11.07.09
Justice Richard Goldstone should be commended for his leadership of the fact finding mission and production of the Goldstone report. I am ashamed of my country’s actions not supporting this report in the Human Rights Council and of the House of Representatives resolution against the report.
It is time we Americans seek, report and support the truth rather than acting in such a disheartening way when the truth is presented. The truth should not be subjected to such political game playing. We should have respected and thanked Justice Goldstone.
6. rlandes | 11.08.09
these two comments above (JW and JW) are astounding. they reflect a deeply mistaken notion that only “we” westerners — really just the neo-cons and their Israelite allies — believe in the use of force. such a reading literally inverts the picture. the west is the only place (certainly in the Middle Eastern scene) where not resorting (soon) to force (esp when you think you can win), is actually an option. there’s no arab nation where the elites embrace the idea that “war is not the answer” (except where they think they can’t win). this is the norm over millennia of human history, and we in the west have only recently (in the last centuries and really decades) reached this exceptionally generous attitude towards the “other.”
to think that it’s Israel that’s too aggressive and not factor in the hostility to which they have had to respond from birth, is not just grossly unfair to Israel, it’s suicidal for the West to imagine such a cockamamy world, where “we” are bad, bad, bad, and “they” are innocent victims.
you end up thinking that it’s our fault that devout muslims, inspired by jihadi theology, want to kill us.
above all, it represents a dramatic lack of “acknowledging the good” on the part of these posters. rather than appreciate the West for what it offers — the chance to articulate such radical ideas without being the object of repression — which is part of the unprecedented tolerance for the other that the West has introduced into international relations, they vilify its products as war-mongering evil and pretend that the “other side” is more advanced than we.
any sane and balanced comparison of political cultures would have to place israel, with its democracy and independent judiciary and highly developed social work, and raucous press, to the far left of the progressive side of the political scale, and the arabs, with the pervasive resort to repression on a daily basis of every Arab regime operating today, with its impoverishing results (see UN Devt Report on Arab world), and the ready, even eager, resort of both secular and religious groups to use terror both with fellow Arabs/Muslims and outsiders/enemies, would have us put them on the far right wing of the political scale.
and yet, i get the sense, these two commenters fancy themselves on the left. alas.
7. Sara | 11.08.09
It is shameful that the US which no doubt took Justice Goldstone’s word on the atrocities of Rwanda and Yugoslavia, and now doubt him on something he had even more vested interest, as a Jew, in getting right.
It’s time for the US to stop being the permissive parent to Israel. It’s time to put our foot down to both Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, and Israel..and say, if you pull this stuff again, you will be prosecuted for war crimes. Period. You’re being prosecuted now.
Let’s set our foot down. Israel, every time you build anything in disputed territory–you forfit $100,000 in our Aid to you. Period. Yes, East Jerusalem counts. For every Palestinian child or civilian you kill, you forfeit 10 km of land from 1967 borders. No matter what. Palestinians–every time you attack Israel, either with rockets or suicide bombers, you forfit 10 km of land. The border is pushed back 10 km. No matter what.
Do we really think that if the world enforced this, we’d face another Lebanon, another Gaza?
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1. John WV | 11.06.09
Unified and aggressive outside intervention is essential. For sixty years Israel’s American enabled brutalization of the Palestinians has resisted all manner of lesser approaches. Israel must be given no option but to abandon its lebensraum, apartheid, ghettoization, pogrom, and chosen people policies. Goldstone’s report is a meaningful beginning toward Israel becoming an acceptable citizen among nations.