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What they’re saying about the Goldstone resolution

By Eric Fingerhut · October 30, 2009

Several Jewish groups are backing a bipartisan congressional resolution condemning the Goldstone report on the Gaza war, but J Street and Americans for Peace Now say they cannot support the measure as written.

AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, the Orthodox Union and the Zionist Organization of America are among the pro-Israel organizations who are supporting the legislation, co-sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Ranking Member Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). The resolution calls the report "irredeemably biased" and urges the Obama administration to oppose any endorsement or further consideration of the report in multilateral forums. The Goldstone report charged that both Israel and Hamas were guilty of war crimes during last winter's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

"We agree with the Obama Administration which has clearly said the biased and flawed Goldstone Report is based on an anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council madate, makes unacceptable recommendations and undermines the peace process," said AIPAC spokesman Josh Block. "In echoing the administration's condemnation and calling for concrete action,  Congress will be sending the strong message that the United States will not stand for turning the victim into the perpetrator," said AIPAC spokesman Josh Block.

Both J Street and Americans for Peace Now came out with statements on Friday saying they didn't like the resolution, although they took different tacks: J Street compiled a list of changes they'd like, while APN didn't propose changes but simply said the resolution was not helpful in the quest for peace.

J Street said it was not urging Congress to oppose the resolution, but said it would instead support an amended version calling on the United States to "oppose and work actively to defeat one-sided and biased action" in the United Nations regarding the Goldstone report.

Among other things, J Street wants the resolution to include a call for both the Palestinians and Israelis to launch independent investigations into their conduct during the Gaza conflict. J Street also rejects the idea of opposing any further consideration of the report by the United Nations, the United States will oppose any U.N. resolution that "unfairly focuses" on Israel or refers charges against Israel to the International Criminal Court.

APN also called on Israel to launch its own independent investigation of alleged human rights violation during Operation Cast Lead, and said it had "serious reservations" about the congressional resolution, while also saying it would not oppose the legislation

"We do not believe that Israel or the cause of peace is aided by a Congressional effort that, however well-intentioned, is focused solely on denouncing the Goldstone Report and its authors and dismissing its findings," said the group in a statement.

After the jump, J Street's statement and proposed changes, and APN's statement. The Orthodox Union also released a statement in support of the resolution, which is also belowRead More >>>

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Shut up, he explained

By Ron Kampeas · October 30, 2009

Bernard Avishai asks Jeffrey Goldberg to please shut up, and actually makes a moving case for it:

In any case, I am humbly asking that you stop. The claims you continue to make about me--that is, "anti-Zionists" like me--are too silly to be worth anyone's time, but the reach of the Atlantic website is too important to ignore. If I do not respond, it may seem that your take-away is true, or plausible, or at least worth repeating.

Nor is this 1909, when calling someone anti-Zionist meant you were merely a part of a fascinating debate on how Jews survive "modernity." It is 2009, and calling someone anti-Zionist tends to type him as opposed to the very existence of Israel or a Jewish national home of any kind. Given the constellation that runs from Hamas to the Oxford Debating Union, the epithet can do a person harm.

And I write from the gate at JFK, returning (legally, but warily) to Jerusalem, embattled enough by the fear that Sidra's and my home will soon be swept up in a kind of Balkan tragedy, with bloody-minded fanatics on both sides demanding allegiance, and "experts" like Lozowick only too eager to choose sides. My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, if not that law. I have enough on my mind.

Avishai, it must be said, started this (I cover the back and forth here) by claiming, wrongly, that Goldberg was boycotting the J Street conference. He was not, and in fact commissioned coverage. (Where, by the way, can I get a Tali Yahalom? Just asking.) Avishai should eat his words, period.

But lumping Avishai in with "anti-Zionists" -- ugh.

Look, the triumph of Zionism is Israel. Self evident, I know, but not when you consider other contemporary national movements -- Ireland, for instance, has yet to make a persuasive case for speaking Gaelic to its own people, the Quebecois aren't quite sure who they are, Pakistan is a godawful mess, and - and, and Hebrew is not only thriving, it is kicking serious תחת, Israelis possess self-knowledge in abundance (maybe in surfeit) and the country is stronger than ever.

The key to perpetuating this success, this triumph -- or a key (a good anti-missile defense system also helps) -- is to think it, rethink it and rethink it again. This, it seems to me, is what Avishai does.

Drawing up checklists, applying litmus tests, demanding renunciations -- these are not formulas for healthy growth.

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Goldstone v. Ros-Lehtinen and Berman

By Ron Kampeas · October 30, 2009

We reported earlier this week the resolution that U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the senior Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives, introduced condemning the Goldstone report, and urging the Obama administration not to allow it to advance further.

(Quickie refresher: the U.N. Human Rights Council mandated a fact finding mission, led by Richard Goldstone, a noted pro-Israel human rights judge, to investigate alleged war crimes during last winter's Gaza war. Israel would not cooperate with the mission, saying the original mandate, by naming only Israel and assuming war crimes had been committed, was inherently biased. Goldstone addressed Hamas actions as well in his report and accused both sides of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.)

Ros-Lehtinen marshalled to her side the who's-who of House Middle East luminaries: The chairman, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and the chairman and ranking member of its Middle East subcommittee, Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind.) respectively.

We briefed this, but I haven't had time until now to post the whole thing, and it's below the jump. Last I looked, it's garnered 114 co-sponsors (very good in a four-day period).

Also below the jump is Goldstone's reply. I give him a win on points.

He raises serious issues of fact with the "Whereases" preceding the resolution's non-binding recommendations.

The most egregious of these is less a lie than a problematic conflation; the resolution ellides from Goldstone's mandate to his report without noting that he expanded his mandate. Here's Goldstone:

Whereas clause #3: “Whereas the mandate of the `fact-finding mission' makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel's defensive measures;”

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. As noted above, the expanded mandate clearly included the rocket and mortar attacks. Moreover, Chapter XXIV of the Report considers in detail the relentless rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel and the terror they caused to the people living within their range. The resulting finding made in the report is that these attacks constituted serious war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

Now, Goldstone is also a little spare with the truth here (but not as parsimonious as the resolution's drafters, and I'll explain below); He had no "expanded mandate;" He had, as this Jerusalem Post interview relates, a chat with the UNHRC's president who seems to be a weasel ("Read into it what you want, Judge Dick!"), but who finally went to the Council and essentially said, "This is what Goldstone wants," and there were no objections.

"I indicated to the then-president of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Martin Uhomoibhi of Nigeria, that I could not agree to take on the mission unless alleged war crimes and human rights violations on all sides were subject to the investigation."

Uhomoibhi replied that this was already "implied in the resolution and he made it absolutely clear in the mandate he gave the fact finding mission that the investigation should cover all sides. The mandate that my colleagues and I accepted is 'to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after,'" Goldstone wrote.

Goldstone is a lawyer and must know that this is not a formally expanded mandate, or perhaps he has an expansive notion of his own Solomonic powers to issue judgments ("So it is said, so it shall be done.") And this is not a minor matter: The UNHRC explicitly condemns Israel in its resolution advancing the report, but not Hamas. (There is an allusion to Hamas, inserted, Goldstone has said, only after his objection to an earlier draft.)

But the Ros-Lehtinen resolution's deception is more serious, in that it principally condemns the report and not the UNHRC resolution or even the mandate (although both are condemned in passing). This suggests that the report made no effort to place the war in context, or even to address Hamas; this simply is not true, although one can argue -- persuasively, I think -- that its conclusions, in terms of underweighting the asymmetry of urban warfare against a group that hews to a genocidal manifesto are nonetheless skewed.

Another deception Goldstone notes is the misrepresentation of his interview recently with the Forward (and Ros-Lehtinen is not alone in this, this misrepresentation has gone viral); Goldstone explains that he is the prosecutor bringing the indictment, not the judge in court:

Whereas clause #10: ‘Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward, Richard Goldstone, the head of the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict', is quoted as saying, with respect to the mission's evidence-collection methods, `If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.'”

The remark as quoted is both inaccurate and taken completely out of context. What I had explained to The Forward was that the Report itself would not constitute evidence admissible in court of law. It is my view, as jurist, that investigators would have to investigate which allegations they considered relevant. That, too, was why we recommended domestic investigations into the allegations.

And Goldstone takes issue with the notion that the report denies Israel's right to self-defense:

Whereas clause #11: “Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to selfdefense, and never noted the fact that Israel had the right to defend its citizens from the repeated violent attacks committed against civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations operating from Gaza;”

It is factually incorrect to state that the Report denied Israel the right of self-defense. The report examined how that right was implemented by the standards of international law. What is commonly called ius ad bellum, the right to use military force was not considered to fall within our mandate. Israel’s right to use military force was not questioned.

The resolution alludes to Israel's claim, in its formal reply, that the mission "was continuously accompanied by Hamas officials," although Goldstone has explicitly denied this, citing passages in the report in which the mission interviews  witnesses, unhampered. You'd think Ros-Lehtinen's staff would base the resolution's language on more than a claim made without substantiation and, moreover, would not leap from "continuously accompanied" to "selecting and prescreening" based on ... what? I give this point to Goldstone.

Whereas clause #16: “Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission's report by selecting and prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others, as the report acknowledges when it notes that `those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups . . . from a fear of reprisals';”

The allegation that Hamas was able to shape the findings of my report or that it pre-screened the witnesses is devoid of truth. I challenge anyone to produce evidence in support of it.

Which is not to say Goldstone is above futzing around with the truth. Here he addresses the complaint that a member of his mission, Christine Chinkin, had signed a letter before joining the mission concluding that Israel was guilty of war crimes:

Whereas clause #4: “Whereas the `fact-finding mission' included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel's actions `war crimes';”

This whereas clause is misleading. It overlooks, or neglects to mention, that the member concerned, Professor Christine Chinkin of the London School of Economics, in the same letter, together with other leading international lawyers, also condemned as war crimes the Hamas rockets fired into Israel.

So what. All this means is that Hamas also has a valid case against Chinkin and, by extension, the commission. Her membership still undermines (although, I don't think, nullifies) the entire mission and its report.

Also, while Goldstone's point here is essentially correct ...

Whereas clause #15: “Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did not consider the admission of a Hamas official that Hamas often `created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against [the Israeli military]' specifically to `constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack.';”

This whereas clause is misleading, since the quotation is taken out of context. The quotation is part of a section of the report dealing with the very narrow allegation that Hamas compelled civilians, against their will, to act as human shields. The statement by the Hamas official is repugnant and demonstrates an apparent disregard for the safety of civilians, but it is not evidence that Hamas forced civilians to remain in their homes in order to act as human shields. Indeed, while the Government of Israel has alleged publicly that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields, it has not identified any cases where it claims that civilians were doing so under threat of force by Hamas or any other party.

... it raises the legitimate question of why Goldstone's commission saw fit to cite Israeli know-nothings like Haim Ramon and Eli Yishai (I mean, really) to prove intent to target civilians.

Full resolution and Goldstone reply below the jump.