13 sept 2010
Young woman accused of stealing more than 2,000 classified IDF documents during her army service will not be charged
According to negotiated deal, young woman accused of stealing more than 2,000 classified IDF documents during her army service will not be charged with trying to harm state security.
State Prosecutor's Office officials and attorneys representing Anat Kam, who was accused of stealing classified military material, are in the midst of advanced negotiations ahead of a possible plea bargain, Ynet learned Monday evening.
Drafts of the proposed plea bargain are expected to be exchanged by the end of the week.
The initial report on the negotiations was aired on Channel 2.
About six months ago Kam was accused of stealing over 2,000 classified military documents while serving in the IDF's Central Command in 2007 and then transferring them to "Haaretz" newspaper reporter Uri Blau.
According to the proposed plea bargain, the amended indictment will still charge Kam with serious espionage, but without intent to harm state security.
She will also be charged with gathering and possessing classified materials without intent to harm state security.
Kam said she was not aware of any plea bargain. Her attorney, Avigdor Feldman, refused to comment.
The indictment against Kam was filed in January. The prosecution claimed she had admitted to the allegations.
http://bit.ly/9asgNX
Young woman accused of stealing more than 2,000 classified IDF documents during her army service will not be charged
According to negotiated deal, young woman accused of stealing more than 2,000 classified IDF documents during her army service will not be charged with trying to harm state security.
State Prosecutor's Office officials and attorneys representing Anat Kam, who was accused of stealing classified military material, are in the midst of advanced negotiations ahead of a possible plea bargain, Ynet learned Monday evening.
Drafts of the proposed plea bargain are expected to be exchanged by the end of the week.
The initial report on the negotiations was aired on Channel 2.
About six months ago Kam was accused of stealing over 2,000 classified military documents while serving in the IDF's Central Command in 2007 and then transferring them to "Haaretz" newspaper reporter Uri Blau.
According to the proposed plea bargain, the amended indictment will still charge Kam with serious espionage, but without intent to harm state security.
She will also be charged with gathering and possessing classified materials without intent to harm state security.
Kam said she was not aware of any plea bargain. Her attorney, Avigdor Feldman, refused to comment.
The indictment against Kam was filed in January. The prosecution claimed she had admitted to the allegations.
http://bit.ly/9asgNX
25 aug 2011
Dameer association asks Ocampo to act against Israel's war criminals
Al-Dameer association for human rights demanded Luis Ocampo, the prosecutor of the international criminal court, to act against Israel's war criminal and stop his double standard policy.
Director of the association Khalil Abu Shamala urged Ocampo in a letter to stop using the double standard policy in his position and reminded him of the fact that international law cannot be applied to certain countries and people and not others.
"All the documentation done by Palestinian and international human rights organizations, including the inquiry commission mandated by the human rights council, clearly indicated the involvement of the Israeli occupation forces in crimes against humanity and violations against international law," Abu Shamala stated in his letter.
He also pointed out to dozens of complaints that were filed with international courts by different organizations and groups against Israel's war criminals like Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, Binyamin Ben Eliezer and other Israeli leaders who committed crimes against unarmed civilians in Gaza.
"As we sympathize with all victims everywhere and declare our solidarity with all those that are exposed to injustice and persecution, we feel angry at the policy of negligence and indifference to the blood of thousands of Palestinians that has been shed by the Israeli occupation forces as well as to the crime of the blockade imposed on more than one and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip," the human rights activist underscored.
http://fwd4.me/09t8
Dameer association asks Ocampo to act against Israel's war criminals
Al-Dameer association for human rights demanded Luis Ocampo, the prosecutor of the international criminal court, to act against Israel's war criminal and stop his double standard policy.
Director of the association Khalil Abu Shamala urged Ocampo in a letter to stop using the double standard policy in his position and reminded him of the fact that international law cannot be applied to certain countries and people and not others.
"All the documentation done by Palestinian and international human rights organizations, including the inquiry commission mandated by the human rights council, clearly indicated the involvement of the Israeli occupation forces in crimes against humanity and violations against international law," Abu Shamala stated in his letter.
He also pointed out to dozens of complaints that were filed with international courts by different organizations and groups against Israel's war criminals like Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, Binyamin Ben Eliezer and other Israeli leaders who committed crimes against unarmed civilians in Gaza.
"As we sympathize with all victims everywhere and declare our solidarity with all those that are exposed to injustice and persecution, we feel angry at the policy of negligence and indifference to the blood of thousands of Palestinians that has been shed by the Israeli occupation forces as well as to the crime of the blockade imposed on more than one and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip," the human rights activist underscored.
http://fwd4.me/09t8
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22 june 2011
Ghoul receives French delegation working to prosecute Israeli war criminals
Gaza Minister of Justice Mohammed Faraj al-Ghoul welcomed to his office on Tuesday French legal experts interested in prosecuting Israeli leaders before the International Criminal Court over war crimes committed in the 2008-9 aggression against the Gaza Strip.
“From the perspective that we are oppressed by Israel through massacres, murder, and genocide, we hope that you as international lawyers will defend those oppressed in the world,” Ghoul said, showing gratitude to the delegation.
He expressed hope that the Palestinian government with the help of the free world would one day bring Israeli leaders to justice before the ICC.
One of the attorneys Jill Deverz said he had been working on a draft for the last two years to prosecute economic organizations that support Israel. But he said that prosecuting Israel was a complex process, because the Israeli courts often violate international law in matters like settlement construction.
The delegation also met with the ministry’s Osama Saad, who was tasked with heading the committee for documenting the war crimes, and other Gaza legal advisers. The committee gave the delegation a copy of documents supporting that Israel committed 1,500 war crimes during the 22-day aggression.
The documentation committee called for continued talks and expressed readiness to provide all necessary steps to help prosecute Israeli war criminals. The committee added that its documents also included operations that killed Gaza children in Israel’s most recent aggression just a few months back.
http://fwd4.me/04X9
Ghoul receives French delegation working to prosecute Israeli war criminals
Gaza Minister of Justice Mohammed Faraj al-Ghoul welcomed to his office on Tuesday French legal experts interested in prosecuting Israeli leaders before the International Criminal Court over war crimes committed in the 2008-9 aggression against the Gaza Strip.
“From the perspective that we are oppressed by Israel through massacres, murder, and genocide, we hope that you as international lawyers will defend those oppressed in the world,” Ghoul said, showing gratitude to the delegation.
He expressed hope that the Palestinian government with the help of the free world would one day bring Israeli leaders to justice before the ICC.
One of the attorneys Jill Deverz said he had been working on a draft for the last two years to prosecute economic organizations that support Israel. But he said that prosecuting Israel was a complex process, because the Israeli courts often violate international law in matters like settlement construction.
The delegation also met with the ministry’s Osama Saad, who was tasked with heading the committee for documenting the war crimes, and other Gaza legal advisers. The committee gave the delegation a copy of documents supporting that Israel committed 1,500 war crimes during the 22-day aggression.
The documentation committee called for continued talks and expressed readiness to provide all necessary steps to help prosecute Israeli war criminals. The committee added that its documents also included operations that killed Gaza children in Israel’s most recent aggression just a few months back.
http://fwd4.me/04X9
1 may 2011
Israel court dismisses petition for Gaza war victims
Israel's High Court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed on behalf of 1,046 victims of Israel's Operation Cast Lead offensive on the Gaza Strip, a human rights group said.
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights filed a petition in December to challenge the two-year statute of limitation imposed on compensation claims. The organization said the two-year limit should not accrue until Israel's illegal closure of the Gaza Strip was lifted and residents of Gaza could access courts.
Due to Israel's siege, Gaza residents could not submit cases within two years.
According to Israeli law, PCHR should have had a right to reply to the State, however, the court dismissed the petition before hearing PCHR's reply, which is set to be heard on Tuesday.
The High Court's dismissal of the petition was a serious setback for victims' legitimate quest for accountability, the organization said.
PCHR outlined several ways in which the Israeli judiciary was complicit in the perpetuation of "a climate of pervasive impunity," which shielded soldiers who violated international law from justice.
Financial obstacles to justice
Israeli courts often require claimants to pay court insurance fees before a case can begin. In practice, this fee is always applied to Palestinians and is often set at thousands of dollars, PCHR said.
"In a recent case brought by PCHR, the claimants were required to pay an insurance fee of NIS 20,000 (US $5,600) for each of the five wrongful deaths claimed," PCHR said in a statement, noting that the fees were "an insurmountable obstacle to justice."
"Simply put, claimants from Gaza crippled by the economic devastation wrought by the occupation and the illegal closure cannot afford this fee and their cases are being dismissed and closed," the statement said.
Israel army denies victims access to court
Under Israeli law, the victim or witness must be present in court, but since June 2007, Israeli military authorities have not allowed a single individual to leave Gaza to appear in court despite having letters from the court requesting their presence, PCHR said.
"As a result, their cases are dismissed and closed," the organization said.
Meanwhile, PCHR's lawyers cannot enter Israel, so Israeli lawyers must be hired. However, clients cannot enter Israel to meet their lawyers, while Israeli lawyers cannot enter Gaza to meet their clients or visit the crime scene.
An accountability-free zone
The statute of limitations, imposed monetary barriers and the illegal blockade of Gaza combine to establish an 'accountability-free zone" in the Gaza Strip "wherein Israeli forces are free to violate international law without consequence," PCHR said.
The organization noted that the UN fact-finding mission on the December 2008 offensive on Gaza concluded that the series of acts which limited Palestinians' access to justice "could amount to persecution, a crime against humanity."
PCHR's petition was filed on behalf of some of the most infamous cases of the 22-day offensive, including the Samouni family which lost 29 members in one airstrike. Prior to the strike, soldiers had ordered the family to stay in the home.
More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the offensive, most of whom were civilians.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=383470
Israel court dismisses petition for Gaza war victims
Israel's High Court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed on behalf of 1,046 victims of Israel's Operation Cast Lead offensive on the Gaza Strip, a human rights group said.
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights filed a petition in December to challenge the two-year statute of limitation imposed on compensation claims. The organization said the two-year limit should not accrue until Israel's illegal closure of the Gaza Strip was lifted and residents of Gaza could access courts.
Due to Israel's siege, Gaza residents could not submit cases within two years.
According to Israeli law, PCHR should have had a right to reply to the State, however, the court dismissed the petition before hearing PCHR's reply, which is set to be heard on Tuesday.
The High Court's dismissal of the petition was a serious setback for victims' legitimate quest for accountability, the organization said.
PCHR outlined several ways in which the Israeli judiciary was complicit in the perpetuation of "a climate of pervasive impunity," which shielded soldiers who violated international law from justice.
Financial obstacles to justice
Israeli courts often require claimants to pay court insurance fees before a case can begin. In practice, this fee is always applied to Palestinians and is often set at thousands of dollars, PCHR said.
"In a recent case brought by PCHR, the claimants were required to pay an insurance fee of NIS 20,000 (US $5,600) for each of the five wrongful deaths claimed," PCHR said in a statement, noting that the fees were "an insurmountable obstacle to justice."
"Simply put, claimants from Gaza crippled by the economic devastation wrought by the occupation and the illegal closure cannot afford this fee and their cases are being dismissed and closed," the statement said.
Israel army denies victims access to court
Under Israeli law, the victim or witness must be present in court, but since June 2007, Israeli military authorities have not allowed a single individual to leave Gaza to appear in court despite having letters from the court requesting their presence, PCHR said.
"As a result, their cases are dismissed and closed," the organization said.
Meanwhile, PCHR's lawyers cannot enter Israel, so Israeli lawyers must be hired. However, clients cannot enter Israel to meet their lawyers, while Israeli lawyers cannot enter Gaza to meet their clients or visit the crime scene.
An accountability-free zone
The statute of limitations, imposed monetary barriers and the illegal blockade of Gaza combine to establish an 'accountability-free zone" in the Gaza Strip "wherein Israeli forces are free to violate international law without consequence," PCHR said.
The organization noted that the UN fact-finding mission on the December 2008 offensive on Gaza concluded that the series of acts which limited Palestinians' access to justice "could amount to persecution, a crime against humanity."
PCHR's petition was filed on behalf of some of the most infamous cases of the 22-day offensive, including the Samouni family which lost 29 members in one airstrike. Prior to the strike, soldiers had ordered the family to stay in the home.
More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the offensive, most of whom were civilians.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=383470
20 apr 2011
'Goldstone was extremely hurt by reaction to report'
New York Times interviews South African judge's acquaintances who try to explain reasons behind Washington Post op-ed. 'He was dreaming of day when he would be able to sleep again at night,' says friend.
WASHINTON Many raised their brows when Judge Richard Goldstone retracted his tough stance against Israel in the controversial Goldstone Report, which accused the Jewish State of committing war crimes during Operation Cast Lead.
A New York Times article published on Wednesday tries to trace the reasons behind Goldstone's sudden change of heart.
According to the article, Goldstone's successful involvement in the resolution of the long-lasting conflict between the minority white government and the majority black population in his home country of South Africa may hold a clue.
Goldstone, described in the article as a Zionist and long-time Israel supporter who believes in international law as a way to achieve reconciliation, truly hoped that the UN-sponsored fact-finding mission into the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas will help pacify the region.
However, the Goldstone Report did no such thing, instead stirring a storm in Israel and throughout the Jewish community after accusing both sides of targeting civilians.
'Extremely hurt'
In trying to dig deeper into the reasons that led the South African judge to taking such a sharp turn, New York Times reporters interviewed two dozen people who are acquainted with Goldstone.
The interviewees suggested a combination of factors leading to the shift in attitude, including "hostility from his community, disappointment about Hamas's continuing attacks on civilians, and new understanding of Israel's conduct in a few of the most deadly incidents of the war."
I know he was extremely hurt by the reaction to the report, Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Foundations and a close acquaintance of Goldstone told the New York Times.
I think he was extremely uncomfortable in providing some fodder to people who were looking for anything they could use against Israel, he said in an attempt to rationalize Goldstone's Washington Post essay, published on April 1, in which he softened his tough position against Israel.
In the essay, which was rejected by the other members of the fact-finding mission, Goldstone noted that "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document.
'Slow, gradual shift'
In the year and a half that has elapsed since the report was published, Goldstone received accolades from the Arab world and anti-Israeli left wing elements, but was harshly denounced by those he identified with.
One of his daughters, who lived in Israel and currently resides in Canada, was furious with him for a long time, and he unable to attend his other daughter's son's Bar-Mitzvah, due to the Jewish community's intention to hold a protest during the event.
He told me last year that he was dreaming of the day when he would be able to sleep again at night, a friend who asked to remain anonymous told the NYT.
Another friend, Maurice Ostroff, was quoted as saying that Goldstone's retraction was a result of a "slow, gradual rethinking, adding that the south African Jew was upset by the misuse of those who accused Israel of being an apartheid state, but mostly, as new information came out, he shifted his thinking."
An additional factor that led to Goldstone's gradual shift was the gap between Israel and Hamas' versions vis-à-vis the number of casualties.
"Israel has maintained that about 700 of the dead, which it put at 1,166, were combatants. Palestinian estimates put the total at more like 1,400 and the number of combatants at only a few hundred," the article stated.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4058720,00.html
Goldstone breathes new life into Gaza report
The Goldstone Report fails to justly present the facts about Israel's war crimes in Gaza.
Ever since it first struck the raw nerve of Israeli political consciousness, I thought it misleading to associate the Goldstone Report so exclusively with its chair, Judge Richard Goldstone. After all, despite his deserved prominence as an international jurist, he was the least substantively qualified of the four members of the mission.
Part of the intensely hostile Israeli reaction undoubtedly had to do with the sense that Goldstone - a devoted Zionist - had been guilty of betrayal. Perhaps even the betrayal of 'a blood libel,' because he seemed to be elevating his fidelity to the 'law' above tribal loyalties; he should never have been mixed up with such a suspect entity as the UN Human Rights Council in the first place.
What should be observed - and what stands out over time - is the degree of importance that even the extremist Israeli leadership attaches to avoiding stains on its reputation as a law-abiding political actor. This seems true even when the assessing organisation is the UN Human Rights Council, which Israel, as well as the US government, never misses a chance to denounce and defame.
Implicit in their fury is a silent acknowledgement that the UN is a major site of struggle in the ongoing war of legitimacy being fought against Palestinian claims of self-determination.
This assessment was embarrassingly confirmed by the US senate's reaction to the Goldstone retreat. The senate unanimously passed a resolution on April 14 calling on the UN "to reflect the author's repudiation of the Goldstone report's central findings, rescind the report, and reconsider further council actions with respect to its findings." It also called on the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, "to do all in his power to redress the damage to Israel's reputation."
This ill-informed and inflammatory wording is quite extraordinary, starting with the reference to Goldstone as 'the author' of the report, thereby overlooking the reality that it was a joint effort. His input was probably the smallest, and the other authors have reaffirmed their support for the entire report.
What is revealed by this senate initiative is the degree of partisanship now present in official Washington, which should - at the very least - lead the Palestinian Authority to seek venues for future negotiations with Israel other than those provided by the US government.
It is probably true that, if Goldstone had not been so vilified for his association with the report, it would have experienced the same fate as thousands of other well-documented UN reports on controversial issues. By lending his name to the fact-finding mission and its outcome, Goldstone became the lightning rod - and the target of vicious attacks.
But he was also heralded at the time by fair-minded persons around the world for his integrity in the face of such hostile fire. In this regard, Goldstone became the sacrificial scarecrow; he failed in his appointed role of keeping the birds of prey at a safe distance.
Studies and Israel's premeditation
There is a double irony present: Goldstone was partly selected to head this sensitive undertaking because, as a known supporter of Israel, he would make it harder for Israel to complain about bias. Yet - precisely because of the difficulty Goldstone's credibility posed for Israel's propaganda machine - the level of attack on him reached hysterical heights, and exerted such intense pressure that he eventually retreated.
Two other aspects of the situation are often neglected or misstated. First of all, several other respected international studies had already confirmed most of the conclusions reached before the Goldstone Report was released in September 2009. Other prior reports highlighting the international law issues were published by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B'Tselem, Al Haq, and especially the comprehensive report of an earlier detailed and authoritative fact-finding team. The team was composed of internationally respected international law experts under the leadership of John Dugard, a leading South African jurist and former UN special rapporteur for Occupied Palestine; its work was carried out on behalf of the Arab League.
Against such a background, in a substantive sense, the Goldstone Report did not say anything that had not already been established by a community of NGOs, journalists, UN humanitarian workers and civilians who were on the scene during the attacks. Such an overwhelming and informed consensus is what makes mockery of the effort by the US state department and the senate to repudiate the report.
The second element that should be kept in mind, but is rarely ever acknowledged even by those who stand 100 per cent behind the report, is that it was not - as the media claimed - unduly critical of Israel. On the contrary, in my view, the report was one-sided - but to the benefit of Israel.
Let me mention several evidences of leaning toward Israel: the report proceeds on the basis of Israel's right to self-defense. It does not bother to decide whether, in a situation of continuing occupation, a claim of self-defense is available under international humanitarian law. Furthermore, the report did not examine whether the factual conditions prior to the attacks supported even modest Israeli security claims - considering that a truce had been working until Israel provocatively broke it on November 4, 2008 by conducting a lethal attack within Gaza.
Beyond this, the claimed security justification seemed artificially fashioned to serve as a rationalisation for an aggressive and unlawful all-out military assault against Gaza. The assault sought to destroy Hamas; induce the return of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit; and punish Gazans for voting for Hamas back in 2006.
In addition, there was evidence that the Israeli army had been planning Operation Cast Lead for six months prior to launching the attack on December 27, 2008. There were a variety of justifications aside from securing southern Israel: striking at Gaza before Obama took office; influencing - in Kadima's favor - the Israeli domestic elections that were about to take place; restoring confidence in the army after its failures in the Lebanon war of 2006; and sending a message to Iran that Israel would not hesitate to use overwhelming force whenever its interests dictated.
Mortalities and scars of war
The Goldstone Report did appropriately emphasise the severe Israeli departures from the law of war by attacking with disproportionate and indiscriminate force against a crowded, mainly urbanised society. But it failed to emphasise a distinctive feature of the attacks: that Israel denied the civilian population of Gaza the option to leave the war zone and become refugees, at least temporarily.
To keep civilians - especially children, the elderly, and the disabled - so confined leaves permanent psychic wounds, as has been reported by many post-attack studies and residents of Gaza. Aside from the psychiatric casualty, the casualty figures that count the dead and the wounded must also be considered: part of the public horror of Operation Cast Lead resulted from the 100:1 ratio of war dead, a measure which further casts light on the defenseless of the Gazan population. At the same time, it dramatically understated the real losses to the Palestinians.
If the psychologically damaged are added to the Palestinian total and the friendly-fire victims are subtracted from the Israeli side, reducing their total deaths from thirteen to six or seven, the ratio becomes more grotesquely one-sided.
In view of this one-sidedness, together with Israel's initiation of the attacks and its role as the occupying power, the report gave excessive emphasis to Hamas violations of international humanitarian law, which should have been noted, but not treated (as was the case) as virtually symmetrical with those of Israel.
As has been pointed out in the media, including by Goldstone, his retraction was limited to the admittedly important issue of whether Israel intentionally targeted civilians as a matter of policy. Even this limited retraction is unconvincing because it rests so heavily on Israel's self-investigations, which the post-Goldstone UN fact-finding mission jointly headed by an American judge, Mary McGowan Davis and the Swedish judge, Lennart Aspergen, found in their recent report failed to meet international standards. As mentioned previously, the retraction by Goldstone was also seriously undermined by the joint statement of the three other members of the Goldstone mission who publically reaffirmed the report in its totality.
Only half satirically, I would think that the Goldstone Report might be better rechristened now as the Chinkin Report or blandly become known as the 'Report on Israeli and Hamas War Crimes during Operation Cast Lead.'
Whatever the name, the main allegations have been confirmed over and over again, and it is now up to the governments making up the UN General Assembly and Security Council to show the world whether international criminal accountability and the International Criminal Court is exclusively reserved for sub-Saharan African wrongdoing!
Goldstone defined
Many have asked whether the Goldstone retraction will doom the future of the report. In my view, rather than performing a funeral rite, Goldstone miscalculated; he has given the report a second life. It may still languish in the UN system, thanks to the geopolitical leverage being exerted by the United States to ensure that Israeli impunity is safeguarded once more. But this new controversy surrounding the report has provided civil society with renewed energy to push harder on the legitimacy agenda which is animating the growing Palestinian solidarity movement.
Never before has the Goldstone Report received such affirming attention even from American mainstream sources. Astonishingly, even the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen chided Goldstone for trying belatedly to distance himself from the report, going so far as to suggest that he is responsible for a new verb: 'to Goldstone'.
"Its meaning: to make a finding, and then partially retract it for uncertain motive." Cohen's formal definition - "to 'Goldstone': (Colloq.) To sow confusion, hide a secret, create havoc."
History has funny ways of reversing expectations. Just as most of the world was ready to forget the allegations against Israel from the ghastly 2008-09 attacks on Gaza and move on, Richard Goldstone inadvertently wakes us all up to a remembrance of those morbid events, and in the process, does irreparable damage to his own reputation.
It is up to persons of conscience to seize this opportunity, and press hard for a more even handed approach to the application of the rule of law in world politics. There is much righteous talk these days at the UN and elsewhere about the 'responsibility to protect,' contending that the Qaddafi threats directed at Libyan civilians justified a No Fly Zone and a full-fledged military intervention from the air undertaken with UN blessings and NATO bombs and missiles. But, not even a whisper of support was provided for the still beleaguered people of Gaza with a No Fly Zone, despite a debilitating unlawful blockade that has lasted almost four years - a severe form of collective punishment that directly violates Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
This blockade continues to block the entry of building materials needed in Gaza to recover from the devastation caused more than two years ago.
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).
He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
http://fwd4.me/zzW
'Goldstone was extremely hurt by reaction to report'
New York Times interviews South African judge's acquaintances who try to explain reasons behind Washington Post op-ed. 'He was dreaming of day when he would be able to sleep again at night,' says friend.
WASHINTON Many raised their brows when Judge Richard Goldstone retracted his tough stance against Israel in the controversial Goldstone Report, which accused the Jewish State of committing war crimes during Operation Cast Lead.
A New York Times article published on Wednesday tries to trace the reasons behind Goldstone's sudden change of heart.
According to the article, Goldstone's successful involvement in the resolution of the long-lasting conflict between the minority white government and the majority black population in his home country of South Africa may hold a clue.
Goldstone, described in the article as a Zionist and long-time Israel supporter who believes in international law as a way to achieve reconciliation, truly hoped that the UN-sponsored fact-finding mission into the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas will help pacify the region.
However, the Goldstone Report did no such thing, instead stirring a storm in Israel and throughout the Jewish community after accusing both sides of targeting civilians.
'Extremely hurt'
In trying to dig deeper into the reasons that led the South African judge to taking such a sharp turn, New York Times reporters interviewed two dozen people who are acquainted with Goldstone.
The interviewees suggested a combination of factors leading to the shift in attitude, including "hostility from his community, disappointment about Hamas's continuing attacks on civilians, and new understanding of Israel's conduct in a few of the most deadly incidents of the war."
I know he was extremely hurt by the reaction to the report, Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Foundations and a close acquaintance of Goldstone told the New York Times.
I think he was extremely uncomfortable in providing some fodder to people who were looking for anything they could use against Israel, he said in an attempt to rationalize Goldstone's Washington Post essay, published on April 1, in which he softened his tough position against Israel.
In the essay, which was rejected by the other members of the fact-finding mission, Goldstone noted that "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document.
'Slow, gradual shift'
In the year and a half that has elapsed since the report was published, Goldstone received accolades from the Arab world and anti-Israeli left wing elements, but was harshly denounced by those he identified with.
One of his daughters, who lived in Israel and currently resides in Canada, was furious with him for a long time, and he unable to attend his other daughter's son's Bar-Mitzvah, due to the Jewish community's intention to hold a protest during the event.
He told me last year that he was dreaming of the day when he would be able to sleep again at night, a friend who asked to remain anonymous told the NYT.
Another friend, Maurice Ostroff, was quoted as saying that Goldstone's retraction was a result of a "slow, gradual rethinking, adding that the south African Jew was upset by the misuse of those who accused Israel of being an apartheid state, but mostly, as new information came out, he shifted his thinking."
An additional factor that led to Goldstone's gradual shift was the gap between Israel and Hamas' versions vis-à-vis the number of casualties.
"Israel has maintained that about 700 of the dead, which it put at 1,166, were combatants. Palestinian estimates put the total at more like 1,400 and the number of combatants at only a few hundred," the article stated.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4058720,00.html
Goldstone breathes new life into Gaza report
The Goldstone Report fails to justly present the facts about Israel's war crimes in Gaza.
Ever since it first struck the raw nerve of Israeli political consciousness, I thought it misleading to associate the Goldstone Report so exclusively with its chair, Judge Richard Goldstone. After all, despite his deserved prominence as an international jurist, he was the least substantively qualified of the four members of the mission.
Part of the intensely hostile Israeli reaction undoubtedly had to do with the sense that Goldstone - a devoted Zionist - had been guilty of betrayal. Perhaps even the betrayal of 'a blood libel,' because he seemed to be elevating his fidelity to the 'law' above tribal loyalties; he should never have been mixed up with such a suspect entity as the UN Human Rights Council in the first place.
What should be observed - and what stands out over time - is the degree of importance that even the extremist Israeli leadership attaches to avoiding stains on its reputation as a law-abiding political actor. This seems true even when the assessing organisation is the UN Human Rights Council, which Israel, as well as the US government, never misses a chance to denounce and defame.
Implicit in their fury is a silent acknowledgement that the UN is a major site of struggle in the ongoing war of legitimacy being fought against Palestinian claims of self-determination.
This assessment was embarrassingly confirmed by the US senate's reaction to the Goldstone retreat. The senate unanimously passed a resolution on April 14 calling on the UN "to reflect the author's repudiation of the Goldstone report's central findings, rescind the report, and reconsider further council actions with respect to its findings." It also called on the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, "to do all in his power to redress the damage to Israel's reputation."
This ill-informed and inflammatory wording is quite extraordinary, starting with the reference to Goldstone as 'the author' of the report, thereby overlooking the reality that it was a joint effort. His input was probably the smallest, and the other authors have reaffirmed their support for the entire report.
What is revealed by this senate initiative is the degree of partisanship now present in official Washington, which should - at the very least - lead the Palestinian Authority to seek venues for future negotiations with Israel other than those provided by the US government.
It is probably true that, if Goldstone had not been so vilified for his association with the report, it would have experienced the same fate as thousands of other well-documented UN reports on controversial issues. By lending his name to the fact-finding mission and its outcome, Goldstone became the lightning rod - and the target of vicious attacks.
But he was also heralded at the time by fair-minded persons around the world for his integrity in the face of such hostile fire. In this regard, Goldstone became the sacrificial scarecrow; he failed in his appointed role of keeping the birds of prey at a safe distance.
Studies and Israel's premeditation
There is a double irony present: Goldstone was partly selected to head this sensitive undertaking because, as a known supporter of Israel, he would make it harder for Israel to complain about bias. Yet - precisely because of the difficulty Goldstone's credibility posed for Israel's propaganda machine - the level of attack on him reached hysterical heights, and exerted such intense pressure that he eventually retreated.
Two other aspects of the situation are often neglected or misstated. First of all, several other respected international studies had already confirmed most of the conclusions reached before the Goldstone Report was released in September 2009. Other prior reports highlighting the international law issues were published by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B'Tselem, Al Haq, and especially the comprehensive report of an earlier detailed and authoritative fact-finding team. The team was composed of internationally respected international law experts under the leadership of John Dugard, a leading South African jurist and former UN special rapporteur for Occupied Palestine; its work was carried out on behalf of the Arab League.
Against such a background, in a substantive sense, the Goldstone Report did not say anything that had not already been established by a community of NGOs, journalists, UN humanitarian workers and civilians who were on the scene during the attacks. Such an overwhelming and informed consensus is what makes mockery of the effort by the US state department and the senate to repudiate the report.
The second element that should be kept in mind, but is rarely ever acknowledged even by those who stand 100 per cent behind the report, is that it was not - as the media claimed - unduly critical of Israel. On the contrary, in my view, the report was one-sided - but to the benefit of Israel.
Let me mention several evidences of leaning toward Israel: the report proceeds on the basis of Israel's right to self-defense. It does not bother to decide whether, in a situation of continuing occupation, a claim of self-defense is available under international humanitarian law. Furthermore, the report did not examine whether the factual conditions prior to the attacks supported even modest Israeli security claims - considering that a truce had been working until Israel provocatively broke it on November 4, 2008 by conducting a lethal attack within Gaza.
Beyond this, the claimed security justification seemed artificially fashioned to serve as a rationalisation for an aggressive and unlawful all-out military assault against Gaza. The assault sought to destroy Hamas; induce the return of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit; and punish Gazans for voting for Hamas back in 2006.
In addition, there was evidence that the Israeli army had been planning Operation Cast Lead for six months prior to launching the attack on December 27, 2008. There were a variety of justifications aside from securing southern Israel: striking at Gaza before Obama took office; influencing - in Kadima's favor - the Israeli domestic elections that were about to take place; restoring confidence in the army after its failures in the Lebanon war of 2006; and sending a message to Iran that Israel would not hesitate to use overwhelming force whenever its interests dictated.
Mortalities and scars of war
The Goldstone Report did appropriately emphasise the severe Israeli departures from the law of war by attacking with disproportionate and indiscriminate force against a crowded, mainly urbanised society. But it failed to emphasise a distinctive feature of the attacks: that Israel denied the civilian population of Gaza the option to leave the war zone and become refugees, at least temporarily.
To keep civilians - especially children, the elderly, and the disabled - so confined leaves permanent psychic wounds, as has been reported by many post-attack studies and residents of Gaza. Aside from the psychiatric casualty, the casualty figures that count the dead and the wounded must also be considered: part of the public horror of Operation Cast Lead resulted from the 100:1 ratio of war dead, a measure which further casts light on the defenseless of the Gazan population. At the same time, it dramatically understated the real losses to the Palestinians.
If the psychologically damaged are added to the Palestinian total and the friendly-fire victims are subtracted from the Israeli side, reducing their total deaths from thirteen to six or seven, the ratio becomes more grotesquely one-sided.
In view of this one-sidedness, together with Israel's initiation of the attacks and its role as the occupying power, the report gave excessive emphasis to Hamas violations of international humanitarian law, which should have been noted, but not treated (as was the case) as virtually symmetrical with those of Israel.
As has been pointed out in the media, including by Goldstone, his retraction was limited to the admittedly important issue of whether Israel intentionally targeted civilians as a matter of policy. Even this limited retraction is unconvincing because it rests so heavily on Israel's self-investigations, which the post-Goldstone UN fact-finding mission jointly headed by an American judge, Mary McGowan Davis and the Swedish judge, Lennart Aspergen, found in their recent report failed to meet international standards. As mentioned previously, the retraction by Goldstone was also seriously undermined by the joint statement of the three other members of the Goldstone mission who publically reaffirmed the report in its totality.
Only half satirically, I would think that the Goldstone Report might be better rechristened now as the Chinkin Report or blandly become known as the 'Report on Israeli and Hamas War Crimes during Operation Cast Lead.'
Whatever the name, the main allegations have been confirmed over and over again, and it is now up to the governments making up the UN General Assembly and Security Council to show the world whether international criminal accountability and the International Criminal Court is exclusively reserved for sub-Saharan African wrongdoing!
Goldstone defined
Many have asked whether the Goldstone retraction will doom the future of the report. In my view, rather than performing a funeral rite, Goldstone miscalculated; he has given the report a second life. It may still languish in the UN system, thanks to the geopolitical leverage being exerted by the United States to ensure that Israeli impunity is safeguarded once more. But this new controversy surrounding the report has provided civil society with renewed energy to push harder on the legitimacy agenda which is animating the growing Palestinian solidarity movement.
Never before has the Goldstone Report received such affirming attention even from American mainstream sources. Astonishingly, even the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen chided Goldstone for trying belatedly to distance himself from the report, going so far as to suggest that he is responsible for a new verb: 'to Goldstone'.
"Its meaning: to make a finding, and then partially retract it for uncertain motive." Cohen's formal definition - "to 'Goldstone': (Colloq.) To sow confusion, hide a secret, create havoc."
History has funny ways of reversing expectations. Just as most of the world was ready to forget the allegations against Israel from the ghastly 2008-09 attacks on Gaza and move on, Richard Goldstone inadvertently wakes us all up to a remembrance of those morbid events, and in the process, does irreparable damage to his own reputation.
It is up to persons of conscience to seize this opportunity, and press hard for a more even handed approach to the application of the rule of law in world politics. There is much righteous talk these days at the UN and elsewhere about the 'responsibility to protect,' contending that the Qaddafi threats directed at Libyan civilians justified a No Fly Zone and a full-fledged military intervention from the air undertaken with UN blessings and NATO bombs and missiles. But, not even a whisper of support was provided for the still beleaguered people of Gaza with a No Fly Zone, despite a debilitating unlawful blockade that has lasted almost four years - a severe form of collective punishment that directly violates Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
This blockade continues to block the entry of building materials needed in Gaza to recover from the devastation caused more than two years ago.
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).
He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
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