By Alan M. Dershowitz, THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
Judge Richard Goldstone’s recent acknowledgement that “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” by Israel during Operation Cast Lead could be a game changer — if Goldstone continues to do the right thing.
Goldstone’s reassessment of the conclusions reached in the Goldstone Report pulls the rug out from under those who are currently using the Goldstone Report as a centerpiece of their efforts to accuse Israel of war crimes, to delegitimize the Jewish state in the court of public opinion, to impose boycotts and to suggest a moral equivalence between the democratic nation of Israel and the terrorist-group-cum-“government” of Hamas.
Citing new evidence and reports, the carefully selected chairman of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict — picked by the U.N. precisely because he was a Jewish international lawyer of some repute who would lend credibility to the widely discredited U.N. Human Rights Council — has now declared in a Washington Post opinion article that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document.”
Based on what we know today — as a result of numerous credible investigations by NGOs, individual experts, the media, the Israeli military, even a United Nations task force — there is absolutely no justification for the International Criminal Court or any other organization opening an investigation against Israel or imposing sanctions on the Jewish state. Indeed, it has now become clear that Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a recognized military expert on terrorists who hide among civilians, was correct when he offered the following testimony, which the Goldstone commission refused to accept:
[F]rom my knowledge of the IDF and from the extent to which I have been following the current operation, I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.…
Hamas factor in the uses of the population as a major part of their defensive plan. So even though as I say, Israel, the IDF, has taken enormous steps… to reduce civilian casualties, it is impossible, it is impossible to stop that happening when the enemy has been using civilians as a human shield.
As I demonstrated in a 50-page analysis of the original Goldstone Report, published immediately after it was issued, the commission applied unacceptably different standards of evidence in evaluating Israeli as distinguished from Hamas’s actions and intentions. A careful reading of the original report — an exercise few supporters or critics bothered to engage in — demonstrates both the bias and sloppiness of its authors.
Now its chief author has acknowledged that its central conclusion that Israel deliberately targeted civilians for death is not supported by the evidence. He has also acknowledged that the Israeli government is fully capable of dealing with charges that certain military personnel may have been negligent. If this is true, then the International Criminal Court cannot exercise jurisdiction over Israel in this matter and must drop the case, because the treaty under which the court operates authorizes it to prosecute only countries that are unwilling or unable to conduct their own investigations. Hamas, on the other hand, as Goldstone now notes, has shown a total unwillingness to investigate credible charges that it engaged in repeated war crimes.
Goldstone now has a responsibility to report his new conclusions to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and to other officials who are considering acting on the basis of the Goldstone Report. Although the report did not purport to make judicial findings of fact, demonizers of Israel, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have used the report as a bludgeon against Israel, demanding boycott, divestment and other forms of delegitimizing sanctions. Goldstone has a moral and legal obligation to tell those who are treating the original report as if its findings were conclusive that even its primary author currently finds them unworthy of belief. It remains to be seen whether Goldstone will carry through on these obligations.
What then is there to say about Goldstone the man? When his report was first issued, I wrote critically not only of it, but of him. I knew Goldstone as a colleague at Harvard, and I was disappointed in him for lending his credibility to so biased and mendacious a report.
CONTINUE
The Hasidic parable
Actually, Bland, he’s done part of “his part.”
Now he needs to make amends.
The Gallstone Report has done incalculable damage.
He must do whatever a man in his position can do to neutralize the effects of the damage.
Assuming he’s for real.
You can stop holding your breath now.
How to handle this…
I would not just buy into anything Mr. Goldstone says until we observe his corrective actions taking root. That means, he will have to, on his capacity, take the UN to Court if need be, to have that infamous document removed.
It is incumbent upon him to do so and failing to do it will prove that his newspaper release is only another maneuver.
Professor Dershowitz has a long way to go on accounting of his own activities on behalf of the Oslo infamous protocols and in particular with repect of his support of an arch enemy of Israel, Soetoro-Obama.
BlandOatmeal is a classic case of Christian antisemitism that may or may-not love an idealized Israel but hate Jews and Judaism. The only Jews who might be acceptable to them are apostate Jews who are in essence a mirror image of themselves.
oatmeal, what are you doing here then?
Either Jewish patriots are good, or Jewish hellenists helping the warmongering and slave-taking killers of the former are good. It’s a simple binary situation.
Wrong assumption.
Wrong assumption.
Ask your prejudiced self what made you assume so.
Teshuvah and Repentance
“Repentance” in Hebrew is not teshuvah but charatah. Not only are these two terms not synonymous. They are opposites.
Charatah implies remorse or a feeling of guilt about the past and an intention to behave in a completely new way in the future. The person decides to become “a new man.” But teshuvah means “returning” to the old, to one’s original nature.
Underlying the concept of teshuvah is the fact that the Jew is, in essence, good. Desires or temptations may deflect him temporarily from being himself, being true to his essence.
But the bad that he does is not part of, nor does it affect, his real nature. Teshuvah is a return to the self.
While repentance involves dismissing the past and starting anew, teshuvah means going back to one’s roots in G-d and exposing them as one’s true character.
For this reason, while the righteous have no need to repent, and the wicked may be unable to, both may do teshuvah.
The righteous, though they have never sinned, have constantly to strive to return to their innermost. And the wicked, however distant they are from G-d, can always return, for teshuvah does not involve creating anything new, only rediscovering the good that was always within them.
(Excerpt: Teshuvah, Tefilla and Tzedakah
I’m not familiar with the concept of “Teshuvah”. I imagine it’s some sort of ritual grovelling. I am familiar with “repentance”, which means doing a 180° back to God. Goldstone has done the latter, in a real and very helpful way; so if some here want him to do a further song and dance, I don’t know what motivates them. Goldy made a mistake, recognized it, and corrected himself. He’s done his part.
As for the international community, it would be very naive to expect them to do their part. Charles Darwin went to his grave, doubting his theories about random change and natural selection; but the pseudo-scientific community would have none of such things. Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” was the lever they needed to take apart people’s faith in God and replace Him with themselves. “Darwin be hanged”, as far as they’re concerned; and “Goldstone be hanged”, as far as the anti-Israel UN is concerned. Goldstone, the person, means nothing to them, nor does his repentance. They have the paper, which is all they wanted, and they are running with it.
Dershowitz, too