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Here's an article in the Business Day last week that bewilders me beyond exasperation. It is authored by Nicole Fritz, Director of the South African Litigation Centre and former law clerk to Justice Richard Goldstone: SA must insist on justice without exception
The article draws equivalence between Israel and Sudan, claiming that both use the same banal excuses of selectivity in order to deflect attention away from their crimes. It behoves the director of the SA Litigation centre to do better than to put forward evidence suggesting that the application of a critique by one actor (Israel) is incorrect because it has been applied speciously by another actor (Sudan).
Fritz states that the report by Goldstone cannot be accused of being selective. Her evidence? “It subjects both Israel and Palestinian faction Hamas to scrutiny. It concludes that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. If the report pays greater attention to allegations made against Israel, that was unavoidable. Despite numerous requests to co-operate in the investigation, Israel refused. It refused the mission permission to enter Israel or the West Bank.”
Fritz does nothing to counter one of the major critiques of the report – that of its origins. It originated from the UN Human Rights Counsel that was formed to rid the world’s primary Human Rights organisation of the tainted history of selectively censuring Israel. But the new counsel has fared no better than the old commission. The new UN Human Rights Counsel has spent as much, if not more, of a disproportionate focus on Israel as the previous disbanded UN Human Rights commission did. Over 80% of its country specific resolutions have targeted Israel. Its members who oppress their own people with impunity, free from fear of retribution, use it as a shield to protect their own records by focusing only on Israel. This is the same counsel that congratulated Sri Lanka after it brutally wielded its power to topple a Tamil Tiger uprising, allegedly killing more than 20 000 civilians. But listen to Nicole Fritz. Listen to Goldstone's previous law clerk. The Gaza report was not selective. Oh dear!
Digging deeper into its origins, the original mandate of the resolution called for an investigation into only the war crimes committed by Israel. Granted, Goldstone did widen its mandate to include investigations of Hamas but the original mandate was never actually altered. Perhaps for this reason, in the context of the findings against Israel, the criticism of Hamas is provided almost as an after-thought, almost as if it were there serving purely as the veneer of balance.
Thirdly, the make-up of the investigation team was highly questionable, in particular, Christine Chinkin signed a petition declaring that Israel had committed war crimes before the investigation began. Including her on the investigation was akin to including a Nationalist apartheid judge to rule over a dispute between a white and black person in the 1960s. The positions of the Nationalist judge are already known, so why even bother with the investigation?
Fritz also discounts the affront caused by the Report’s conclusions, pretending that it equally condemned Hamas and Israel. But the report’s over-arching conclusions are (1) that what happened in Gaza was nothing but a premeditated, deliberate and targeted attack in order to punish, humiliate and subjugate a civilian population, and (2) that Hamas fighters did not abuse civilian compounds such as mosques, schools and hospitals as bases for cover.
Without even looking at a critique of the facts that the report stands upon, it is patently clear that Israel launched the attack to stop incessant rocket fire from Gaza. Further, there is an abundance of evidence in the public domain supporting the Israeli claims that Hamas operated from civilian compounds. The report doesn’t find against Israel. It makes a mockery of justice! Whilst I can tolerate criticisms of methods used by Israel, a distortion of the entire objective renders it nothing but a vicious and personal attack on Israel and all her citizens and supporters.
Today on eNews SAUJS Political officer Rafi Eliasov and Shministim member Sahar Vardi debated issues raised by the young Israelis visiting South Africa who refused to serve time in the Israeli Defence Force.
The debated was aired on the programme Judge for Yourself (hosted by Judge Dennis Davis) and if you missed it you can catch the repeat on DSTV Channel 403 at the following times throughout this week:
Judge for Yourself
Monday 21:30
Tuesday 10:30
Wednesday 21:30
Thursday 9:30
Friday 23:30
Saturday 12:30
Here's an article from the Jerusalem Post on the views of South African Jewish communal leaders regarding Goldstone's Gaza report: What South African Jews think of Richard Goldstone (thanks Shaun).
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"He sold us out," said an angry Ze'ev Krengel, the usually soft-spoken, liberal, Zionist chairman of the South African Board of Governors. "The damage has been done. He proved that terrorism works, that if you fight from within your own civilians you can win." [...] Krengel and the others, who preferred to remain anonymous, say they are "very, very angry" at Goldstone. "In the end, the biggest loser will be Richard Goldstone, who will go down in history as the person who judged Israel unfairly," said Krengel. "He had the power to right the wrongs [of the anti-Israeli Human Rights Council], but he didn't. He did the opposite." |
The Cape Times has published former anti-apartheid activist Benjamin Pogrund's criticism of the Goldstone report. Its for subscribers only at the Cape Times, but you can view the full article at the UN Watch blog: U.N. Goldstone Report Slammed by Anti-Apartheid Activist
Pogrund believes that Goldstone has acted only with the best of intentions throughout his life and, like us, cannot fathom how Goldstone could have been so duped by the UN Human Rights Council's extreme malevolence - at the expense of all other victims of abuse in the world - towards Israel.
Furthermore, Pogrund questions Goldstone's "own good sense" for his decision to allow Christine Chinkin to remain a member of his four person mission, even though she had publicly signed a letter accusing Israel of war crimes before any "investigations" had even started.
Read it all.
Shminitism (meaning twelth graders) are a group of 19 and 20 year old Israelis who served time in Israeli military jails because of their refusal to serve in the Israeli Defence Force. They are currently in South Africa having been brought here by Open Shuhada Street, the group that Doron Isaacs helped to establish.
Over the past two days I have seen four articles in the local press screaming that they have been barred from speaking at the Jewish Day schools in South Africa. Various speakers often make requests to adress schools and the schools often turn them down, but obviously in this scenario the decision to turn the Shminitism speakers down will be leveraged as a fat political cow ready to be milked. The group will in the end have more coverage. That is no fault of the school, just an implication of the way Jewish communal politics meshes with media coverage. At least one of the two articles in the Cape Times quotes the Herzlia principle along with David Saks.
Herzlia principle Geoff Cohen said that although the school would defend freedom of speech, it reserved the right to vet those wanting to address learners at the school. A perfectly acceptable position.
David Saks, associate director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies also weighed in on the spurious comparison between the Shminitism campaign and conscription in apartheid South Africa, explaining that "conscription in apartheid South Africa perpetuated an unjust system whereas in Israel it is protecting the country against external threats."
Former South African anti-apartheid activist, Maurice Ostroff, has devoted more effort to leading the fight against the Goldstone report than probably anyone else not paid to actually do so. Throughout the process he has opened up a civil dialogue with Goldstone, sending through points and questions like the ones below, that Goldstone is unwilling, or perhaps unable, to answer.
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Dear Richard, [...] Paragraph 9 of the Report deals at very great emotional length with the unfortunate shooting of Amal, Suad, and Samar, daughters of Abed Rabbo, and accepts, without any attempt at corroboration, testimony that they walked out of their house carrying white flags to find an Israeli tank. The Report describes two soldiers sitting on top of the tank, one eating chips, the other eating chocolate. One cannot but wonder how the witnesses in the tense circumstances were able to distinguish what the soldiers were eating. Without warning, the report says, a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls. All very incriminating, creating an emotional picture of callous Israeli soldiers eating chips and chocolate while a third mows down innocent children carrying white flags. It is not inconsequential that none of these types of emotional descriptions are used when Hamas' infractions are mentioned. BUT! Most importantly, the writers of this Report failed in their bounden fact-finding duty to check the accuracy of the information they purveyed. With just a little attention to detail, they would have read the report by Palestinian News Agency Ma'an and MECA the Middle East Children's Alliance, that the unfortunate girls were killed in collateral damage from an attack by Israeli planes. No tank, no soldiers eating chocolate (or chips), and no white flags are mentioned. I trust you will agree that the Report must be amended to correct this and other inconsistencies. Sept 26, 2009Dear Richard, While you may not feel an obligation to respond to individual responses, very many responsible people believe that because of the momentous implications of your report, all persons who have taken the trouble to address sincere credible questions to you, deserve the courtesy of considered replies to the issues raised, if not in direct correspondence, at least in your published comments. In fact, if the HRC is to arrive at a meaningful decision, it too, is entitled to receive explanations to questions that have been raised. Unfortunately, none of the valid critical issues that have been raised have been addressed in your many public comments in the press and on TV. Your recent interview on Al Jazeera TV was disturbing, and I quote only one example of a factor that cries out for correction. You quoted the firing on a mosque as one of Israel's heinous crimes, denying Israel's claim that mosques were used for military purposes and storage of weapons. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbi6FnvWwvc Yet on August 14, while your report was being prepared, a fierce gun battle was reported as Hamas stormed a mosque that had been taken over by a group of Islamic militants resulting in 22 people killed, (or massacred in the words of Mahmoud Abbas), including an 11-year-old child, and 125 badly wounded. This incident unambiguously confirms Israel's claim that mosques are used for military purposes and in the circumstances it is not only fair, but incumbent that your report be amended accordingly. Or does Hamas enjoy the impunity that you mistakenly referred to in regard to Israel, during that interview? Sincerely Spet 25 2009 |
Also see Ostroff's recent article at the Intellectual Conservative: Send the Goldstone Report Back to the Drawing Board
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