Goldstone Recants (3 page)

The key example of revelatory new information Goldstone cites is the alleged misreading of a drone image which caused Israel to mistakenly target an extended family of civilians. If, as humanitarian and human rights organizations declared right after the al-Samouni killings, it was one of the “gravest” and “most shocking” incidents of the Israeli assault, and if, as Goldstone said, the al-Samouni killings were “the single most serious incident” in the Mission’s Report, it is odd that Israel did not rush to restore its bruised reputation after the Gaza invasion but instead waited
22 months
before coming forth with such a simple explanation.

To defend Israel against the Mission’s findings, the report
Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip
reproduced numerous Israeli aerial photographs taken during the Gaza assault. Why has Israel still not made publicly available this drone image that allegedly exonerates it of criminal culpability for the most egregious incident of which it was accused?

It is also cause for wonder why Goldstone credits this new Israeli “evidence” sight unseen, yet ignores genuinely new evidence revealed by Amira Hass in
Haaretz
after his Report’s publication: that before the attack—the civilian deaths of which allegedly surprised the Givati brigade commander who ordered it—“a Givati force set up outposts and bases in at least six houses in the Samouni compound.”

Didn’t the Givati commander check with these soldiers on the ground before launching the murderous attack to make sure they were out of harm’s way? Didn’t he ask them whether they saw men carrying rocket launchers and didn’t they reply no?

Israel might be able to furnish plausible answers in its defense. But Goldstone does not even bother to pose these obvious questions because “we know . . . today”—Israel said so—it was just a simple mistake.

After publication of the Mission’s findings Israel had a ready, evidence-free explanation not just for the al-Samouni killings but also for many other war crimes documented in the Report. It alleged that the al-Bader flour mill was destroyed “in order to neutralize immediate threats to IDF forces”; that the Sawafeary chicken farm had been destroyed “for reasons of military necessity”; and that the al-Maqadmah mosque was targeted because “two terrorist operatives [were] standing near the entrance.”

Do “we know . . . today” that the evidence of war crimes assembled in the Goldstone Report and thousands of pages of other human rights reports was all wrong just because Israel says so?

Did we also “know” that Israel didn’t use white phosphorus during the Gaza assault because it repeatedly denied doing so?

THE ONLY other scrap of new information Goldstone references in his recantation is the recent figure supplied by a Hamas official of the number of Hamas combatants killed during the invasion that “turned out to be similar” to the official Israeli figure. This Hamas figure appeared to confirm Israel’s claim that the majority of Gazans killed during the invasion were combatants, not civilians. But then Goldstone notes parenthetically that Hamas “may have reason to inflate” its figure. So why does he credit it?

To prove that it defeated Israel on the battlefield Hamas originally alleged that only 48 of its fighters had been killed. After the full breadth of Israel’s destruction became apparent and the claims of a battlefield victory rang hollow, and in the face of accusations that the people of Gaza had paid the price of its reckless decisions, Hamas abruptly upped the figure by several hundred to show that it too had suffered major losses.

As Goldstone himself put it at Stanford just two months before his recantation, the new Hamas figure “was intended to bolster the reputation of Hamas with the people of Gaza.”

Whereas Goldstone now defers to this politically inflated Hamas figure, the Mission’s Report relied on numbers furnished by respected Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, each of which independently and meticulously investigated the aggregate and civilian/combatant breakdown of those killed.

Disputing Israel’s claim that only 300 Gazan civilians were killed, these human rights organizations put the figure at some 800-1,200 and also demonstrated that Israeli figures lacked credibility.

Even the largely apologetic U.S. Department of State
2009 Human Rights Report
put the number of dead “at close to 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 1,000 civilians.”

But because a politically manipulated Israeli figure chimes with a politically manipulated Hamas figure, Goldstone discards the much larger figure for Palestinian civilian deaths documented by human rights organizations and even validated by the U.S. State Department.

IN HIS RECANTATION Goldstone says he is “confident” that Israeli military investigations will bring those guilty of wrongdoing to justice and goes on to assert that Israel has already “done this to a significant degree.” In fact in this instance we do have new data since publication of the Mission’s findings but, alas, they hardly buttress Goldstone’s newfound faith.

In the course of Israel’s assault on Gaza, it damaged or destroyed “everything in its way,” including 280 schools and kindergartens, 1,500 factories and workshops, electrical, water and sewage installations, 190 greenhouse complexes, 80 percent of agricultural crops, and nearly one-fifth of cultivated land.

Entire neighborhoods in Gaza were laid waste and some 600,000 tons of rubble were left behind after Israel withdrew.

More than two years after the Gaza invasion the only penalty Israel has imposed for unlawful property destruction was an unknown disciplinary measure taken against one soldier.

But Goldstone is now “confident” that Israeli wrongdoers will be punished and also asserts that Israel has already “done this to a significant degree.”

Beyond killing 1,400 Palestinians (including more than 300 children) and the massive destruction it inflicted on civilian infrastructure, Israel damaged or destroyed 29 ambulances, almost half of Gaza’s 122 health facilities (including 15 hospitals), and 45 mosques. It also—in the words of Human Rights Watch—“repeatedly exploded white phosphorus munitions in the air over populated areas, killing and injuring civilians, and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital.”

Both the Goldstone Report and human rights organizations concluded that much of this death and destruction would constitute war crimes.

More than two years after the Gaza invasion the only Israeli soldier who did jail time for criminal conduct served seven months after being convicted of credit card theft.

But Goldstone is now “confident” that Israeli wrongdoers will be punished and also asserts that Israel has already “done this to a significant degree.”

To be sure Israel did express remorse at what happened in Gaza. “I am ashamed of the soldier,” Information Minister Yuli Edelstein declared, “who stole some credit cards.”

After this wondrous show of contrition how could Goldstone not be “confident” of Israel’s resolve to punish wrongdoers?

IN HIS RECANTATION Goldstone can barely contain his loathing and contempt for Hamas. He says that—unlike in Israel’s case—Hamas’s criminal intent “goes without saying—its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.” The Mission’s Report had reached this conclusion on the basis of a couple of statements by Hamas leaders combined with Hamas’s actual targeting of these civilian areas.

It is unclear however why comparable statements by Israeli officials combined with Israel’s purposeful and indiscriminate targeting of civilian areas in Gaza no longer prove Israel’s criminal guilt. In fact judging by the Mission’s findings, none of which Goldstone recants, the case against Israel was incontrovertible.

If, as Israel asserted and investigators found, it possessed fine “grid maps” of Gaza and an “intelligence gathering capacity” that “remained extremely effective”; and if it made extensive use of state-of-the-art precision weaponry; and if 99 percent of the firing that was carried out by the Air Force hit targets accurately; and if it only once targeted a building erroneously: then, as the Mission’s Report logically concluded, the massive destruction Israel inflicted on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure must have “resulted from deliberate planning and policy decisions throughout the chain of command, down to the standard operating procedures and instructions given to the troops on the ground.”

Goldstone also chastises Hamas because—unlike Israel—it has “done nothing” to investigate the criminal conduct of Gazans during the Israeli invasion.

Hamas attacks killed three Israeli civilians and nearly destroyed one civilian home. The Israeli assault on Gaza killed as many as 1,200 civilians and nearly or totally destroyed more than 6,000 civilian homes. Hamas did not sentence anyone to prison for criminal misconduct whereas Israel sentenced one soldier to seven months prison time for stealing a credit card.

Isn’t it blazingly obvious how much eviler Hamas is?

In his recantation Goldstone avows that his goal is to apply evenhandedly the laws of war to state and non-state actors. It is unlikely however that this admirable objective will be advanced by his double standards.

Goldstone now rues his “unrealistic” hope that Hamas would have investigated itself, while his detractors heap ridicule on his past naiveté. How could a terrorist organization like Hamas have possibly investigated itself? Only civilized countries like Israel are capable of such self-scrutiny. Indeed Israel’s judicial record is indisputable testimony to this capacity.

The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din found that, although thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed during the second intifada, only five Israeli soldiers were held criminally liable and not a single Israeli soldier was convicted on a murder or manslaughter charge, and that 80 percent of the investigations of violent assault by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in 2005 were closed without criminal indictments.

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem found that in the decade following the outbreak of the first intifada 1,300 Palestinians had been killed yet only 19 Israeli soldiers were convicted of homicide, and that for the period 2006-9 “a soldier who kills a Palestinian not taking part in hostilities is almost never brought to justice for his act.”

IT IS CLEAR that Goldstone did not publish his recantation because “we know a lot more today.” What Goldstone calls new information consists
entirely
of unverifiable assertions by parties with vested interests. The fact that Goldstone cannot cite any genuinely new evidence to justify his recantation is the most telling proof that none exists.

What then happened?

As already noted, ever since publication of the Mission’s Report, Goldstone has been the object of a relentless smear campaign. Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz compared him to Auschwitz “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele, while the Israeli ambassador to the United States castigated his Report as even worse than “Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers.”

Goldstone was not the only one who came under attack. The U.N. Human Rights Council appointed the eminent international jurist Christian Tomuschat to chair a follow-up committee mandated to determine whether Israeli and Hamas officials were investigating the allegations in the Goldstone Report. Deciding that Tomuschat was insufficiently pliant, the Israel lobby hounded and defamed him until he had no choice but to step down.

Many aspects of Goldstone’s recantation are perplexing.

Goldstone has the reputation of being very ambitious. Although he was savaged after publication of the Report, the tide began to turn in his favor this past year.

In Israel the newspaper
Haaretz
editorialized that it was “time to thank the critics for forcing the IDF to examine itself and amend its procedures. Even if not all of Richard Goldstone’s 32 charges were solid and valid, some of them certainly were.” In the United States,
Tikkun
magazine honored Goldstone at a gala 25th anniversary celebration. In South Africa distinguished personalities such as Judge Dennis Davis, formerly of the Jewish Board of Deputies, publicly denounced a visit by Alan Dershowitz because, among other things, he had “grossly misrepresented the judicial record of Judge Richard Goldstone.”

It is puzzling why an ambitious jurist at the peak of a long and distinguished career would commit what might be professional suicide, alienating his colleagues and throwing doubt on his judgment, when the tide of public opinion was turning in his favor.