Israel urges EU to reject Goldstone

An Israeli foreign ministry official, Yossi Gal, held a meeting with 26 European ambassadors today and asked them to renounce the Goldstone Report.

Gal told the EU envoys that the report submitted by the Goldstone committee, which looked into the Israeli operation in Gaza, "must be a source of concern for democratic countries fighting terror, and contradicts the basic principle of countries' self-defense."

I've read a lot of criticism of the report, mostly from people who think Goldstone was too hard on Israel. And I'm struck by how little of the criticism points out specific flaws in the report. Critics aren't saying that Goldstone got his facts wrong, that Israel did not in fact use white phosphorus on a hospital or destroy Gaza's only working flour mill.

Instead they fault the report for failing to differentiate between offense and self-defense -- as if that distinction somehow validates everything Israel did during Operation Cast Lead. They make facile comparisons between Hamas and Nazi Germany. Or they simply reject the report altogether.

This dismissive attitude was encapsulated perfectly by Jeffrey Goldberg, who slanders the commission as a "hanging party" and the U.N. as "hopelessly biased" against Israel. Goldberg doesn't address a single one of Goldstone's conclusions. In fact, he willfully ignores them.

A reminder: We're blogging the report in installments, one per day, before we draw any conclusions. (The next report will go online tonight.)

I'd be curious to know how many of Goldstone's critics have done the same.

2 Comments

i — September 22, 2009 3:58 PM

"And I'm struck by how little of the criticism points out specific flaws in the report"

if you want specific flaws, this is your guy.

He has several posts about this, so you will have to scroll and be a little patient .

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

Raphael — September 22, 2009 7:40 PM

"The report is seriously flawed in a number of ways," Dr Bell said. "This commission was appointed as a fact finding mission, but it made itself into some kind of court. It did this without following any legal procedures which would include proper examination by both sides, and the report is full of legal conclusions based on evidence unavailable to the public and without legal redress for the accused. So I consider it simply outrageous to have this kangaroo court reaching legal conclusions that they have no right to reach."

"Furthermore, their legal conclusions are wrong," he claimed. "For example, throughout the report where evidence was missing in determining whether or not Hamas committed a crime they assumed a crime had not been committed, but where evidence was missing in determining whether or not Israel committed a crime they said they couldn't find exculpatory evidence for Israel. In other words they assumed that Hamas was innocent but required that Israel prove its innocence."

http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=26508#