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Berman, Goldstone, the grownups

By Ron Kampeas · November 3, 2009

Last Friday, I compared a congressional resolution condemning the U.N. Human Rights Council Goldstone report on last winter's Gaza war with a response from its author, Richard Goldstone. I gave the debate to Goldstone on points: The original (congressional) resolution was almost infantile in its obfuscations. (Goldstone himself was not above a few obfuscations.)

Somewhere on the Hill, a grown-up took charge and wrote a real response to Goldstone. Most significant is the news that the House Foreign Affairs Committee, from whence the resolution emerged, is conceding what I regarded as the congressional resolution's most egregious misrepresentation; by ignoring Goldstone's (ultimately futile) attempts to change the language of the UNHRC mandate that set up his commission, the drafters made it seem that Goldstone's report ignored alleged Hamas war crimes. According to the response (below the jump) a new version of the resolution will note Goldstone's bid for fairness.

This is important because the resolution condemns the report primarily, and the UNHRC mandate only in passing; this is profoundly unfair to Goldstone, and has the unintended -- but entirely forseeable -- effect of reinforcing precisely what the Israel-bashers on the not so august UNHRC set out to do when they launched the process: To make it appear as if Israel was solely responsible for the war.

Interestingly, the original resolution emerged from the office of U.S. rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the committee's senior Republican; the new response to Goldstone (below) comes from the offices of U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the committee chairman and Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), the Middle East subcommitee chairman.

The other substantial improvement in the response is that by actually combing through Goldstone's report (was that so hard?), the committee makes a persuasive case that Goldstone is more forgiving of the Palestinians for sins he readily ascribes to Israel. Goldstone's report depicts as unreliable Israeli statements in defense of the army's actions, while repeating without the same qualification Israeli statements that support allegationss of  Israeli war crimes. Goldstone is a lawyer, he should know that a witness is either reliable or not reliable however much one set of statements makes your case and the other does not. Meantime, the report quotes -- approvingly -- Palestinian claims that are vindicative of Hamas, and downplays those that suggest its guilt.

The committee's response continues to perpetuate a couple of the resolution's obfuscations. In the congressional resolution, for instance, the authors outright claim that "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."

Goldstone said, in effect "prove it" and the response fails to do so. It's mealy-mouthed, in fact: "Hamas is in full control of Gaza, and this 'fear of reprisals' significantly helped Hamas shape the findings." Maybe -- and the authors of the response go some way toward making this case -- but the resolution goes well beyond intimations of an an atmosphere of intimidation. The authors of the resolution (I'm convinced they are not the same authors of the response) expressly said that Hamas "selected and prescreened" witnesses, and the committee has yet to show that in either the resolution or the response. Furthermore, the authors of the committee's response frame this intimidation as inhibiting criticism of Hamas; they don't even try to make the case that it somehow tainted testimony regarding alleged Israeli actions. Goldstone's challenge, in this case, stands.

One other obfuscation that persists: The committee stands by the resolution's assertion that Goldstone -- apparently in a moment of madness, in the mind of the resolution's authors -- told The Forward that his report was worthless. What Goldstone actually said was this was the work of an investigator, not a judge; "If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven," refers to the document's prosecutorial intent. Goldstone is simply clarifying the intent of the report -- to launch investigations. Of course, nothing is proven in court if all that is presented is the prosecution's case.

I have a special beef with this distortion: The last thing journalists need is a climate of fear that the quotes we solicit will be distorted and used against the speaker.