Goldstone Report: Let's Do The Time Warp Again!

It's astounding, time is fleeting Madness takes its toll
The Time Warp, Rocky Horror Show

Anyone read this editorial by Alan Dershowitz?

When it comes to Israel and its enemies, The Goldstone Report cooks the books about facts, cheats on interviews, and releases predetermined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence. These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true. Consider the following highly publicized "conclusion" reached by The Goldstone Report about the recent war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel: "The Goldstone Report found no cases in which Hamas deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack."

No cases! Anyone who watched even a smattering of TV during the war saw with their own eyes direct evidence of rockets being launched from civilian areas. But not The Goldstone Report. How could a mission, which claims to be objective, have been so demonstrably wrong about so central a point in so important a war? Could it have been an honest mistake? I don't think so. The Goldstone Report not only failed to interview witnesses who had contrary evidence, it ignored credible news sources, such as the New York Times and the New Yorker.

Truth be told, I found this while going through some editorials in the NY Sun--from 2006. The actual op-ed reads:

When it comes to Israel and its enemies, Human Rights Watch cooks the books about facts, cheats on interviews, and releases predetermined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence. These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true. Consider the following highly publicized "conclusion" reached by Human Rights Watch about the recent war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel: "Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack."

No cases! Anyone who watched even a smattering of TV during the war saw with their own eyes direct evidence of rockets being launched from civilian areas. But not Human Rights Watch. How could an organization, which claims to be objective, have been so demonstrably wrong about so central a point in so important a war? Could it have been an honest mistake? I don't think so. Human Rights Watch not only failed to interview witnesses who had contrary evidence, it ignored credible news sources, such as the New York Times and the New Yorker.

Dershowitz then continues:

How could Human Rights Watch have suppressed this evidence from so many different sources? The only reasonable explanation is that they wanted there to be no evidence of Hezbollah's tactic of hiding behind civilians. So they cooked the books to make it come out that way. Even after the fighting ended and numerous reports of Hezbollah hiding among civilians were published, Kenneth Roth essentially repeated the demonstrably false conclusions that "in none of those cases was Hizbullah anywhere around at the time of the attack." So committed is Human Rights Watch to its pre-determined conclusions that it refused to let the facts, as reported by objective sources, get in its way.

Keeping in mind that Goldstone was a member of HRW makes the applicability of  Dershowitz's 3-year old criticism even sharper today .

As to the proof that was ignored by The Goldstone Report: Israel Matzav provides the evidence--including 5 videos that illustrate the point, and in a later post provides a 6th video.

Keep in mind that Dershowitz is not any more impressed by the Goldstone Report than with Human Rights Watch. In an appearance at Fordham University--Goldstone refused to appear--Dershowitz tears into the Report's bias and inaccuracies (watch the video).

Bottom line, both the Goldstone Report and Human Rights Watch demonstrate a bias against inconvenient facts.

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