Goldstone Recants--It's A Start

If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.
Richard Goldstone

In Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes, Justice Richard Goldstone backtracks on his Goldstone Report in which he condemned Israel's actions in Operation Cast Lead as potential war crimes.

Yet even now, what he writes comes across as somewhat jarring.


For instance, Goldstone writes:

That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

What an odd thing to say--because in fact the Goldstone Report did in fact let the actions of Hamas go without saying.

At the time, Elder of Ziyon analyzed the conclusions of the Goldstone Report and found that Hamas was barely mentioned at all--and made a wordle to illustrate his point:

As you can see, words like Israel and Israeli are easy to spot, but can you spot the word Hamas?
If you look at the right, I've placed an arrow where the word Hamas is.
You'll have to click on the image in order to actually see the word Hamas--and even then, in comparison with the words Israel and Israeli, it is clear that Hamas was barely mentioned.

Indeed, Goldstone was not exaggerating when he wrote that the rockets fired by Hamas at Israeli civilians went without saying.

As Elder of Ziyon points out in another post:

Hamas is not given a single recommendation to stop rocket attacks. Hamas is not told to stop incitement. Hamas is not told to release Gilad Shalit (as if he is being held against Hamas' wishes!).

No wonder Hamas is thrilled about the report. In the entire 450 page report, Hamas is not singled out once for condemnation.

Beyond saying that Hamas deliberately targeted civilians, Goldstone makes a further admission:

The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).

"Recently furnished by Hamas"? That admission by Hamas was reported back on November 1st!

At the time, a Hamas Minister admitted:

"On the first day of the war, Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs who were part of Hamas and the various factions fell." He added that, "about 200 to 300 were killed from the Qassam Brigades, as well as 150 security personnel."

And Evelyn Gordon did the math:

Combining the higher of Hammad’s estimates for the Qassam Brigades, 300, with the 150 “security personnel” and the 250 policemen brings the total number of combatants killed by Israel to 700. Add in the fact that Israel also killed combatants from other organizations, like Islamic Jihad, and you’re already above the 709 people the Israel Defense Forces said it had definitely identified as combatants — that is, some of the 162 whose status the IDF couldn’t determine were (as it suspected) also combatants. Based on the IDF’s total casualty figure of 1,166, that means at least 61 percent of the Palestinian fatalities were combatants, and quite possibly more.

Nor does taking the lower estimate, 200, alter the results significantly: that gives a total of 600 combatants, which, assuming some from other organizations as well, brings you quite close to the IDF’s figure of 709.

And of course, even the lower estimate gives you almost double the 349 combatants cited by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

But all this evades an issue never addressed by Goldstone. Although he promised to address the published criticisms of the report, Goldstone never did so. So it is not surprising that even now he refused to address, let alone admit, to any of the flaws in the Goldstone Report that have been pointed out

For example, Trevor Norwitz, partner, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Adjunct professor, Columbia Law School wrote an open letter to Goldstone in October 2009, where Norwitz listed and examined the flaws in the Goldstone Report, such as:

• Failure to Investigate Critical Facts.
• Use of Hearsay and Anonymous Accusations as Evidence.
• More Prejudice than Proof.
• The Appointment and Composition of your Mission.
• Double Standard in Assessment of Credibility of Evidence and Intentions.
• Your Selection of Incidents to Investigate
• Your Characterization (and Extension) of Your Mission
• Seeking Political Impact Rather than Truth.
• Law-Making Rather than Fact-Finding.
• Piling On Gratuitous Anti-Israel Criticisms.
• Fundamental but Dubious Assumptions
• Legitimizing Hamas.
• Gaza Still Occupied?
• Placing Blame.
• Your Ahistorical Context
• The Language of Your Report Illustrates Its Bias
• Differences in Tone and Equivocation.
• Gilad Shalit.
• Post-Publication Comments.
• The Implications of your Report

Read the whole thing.

Goldstone's admissions in his op-ed really barely scratch the surface. The issues outlined by Norwitz and others are the ones that Justice Richard Goldstone should address next.

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