Love of the Land: ECLJ: Goldstone Report's Criticism of Israel Flawed, Biased, Unwarranted

ECLJ: Goldstone Report's Criticism of Israel Flawed, Biased, Unwarranted

American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ)
26 January '10

(Strasbourg, France) - The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) - the international affiliate of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) - today filed a comprehensive response with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) challenging the objectivity of the UNHRC-sponsored Goldstone Report on Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last year.

The UNHRC authorized a Fact-Finding Mission with a resolution that called for an investigation of “all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression...”

The Goldstone Report accuses Israelis of war crimes and encourages states and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to exercise universal jurisdiction to prosecute the Israelis. Last January, the Palestinian Authority filed a “Declaration recognizing the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court” - attempting to accede to the ICC despite not meeting the statutory prerequisite of statehood for doing so.

The ECLJ today filed its Written Statement and supporting Memorandum on its analysis of the Goldstone Report with the U.N. Human Rights Council and will file the documents with the U.N. Security Council in the weeks ahead.

The Written Statement is posted here. And the Memorandum is posted here.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: ECLJ: Goldstone Report's Criticism of Israel Flawed, Biased, Unwarranted

Love of the Land: Israel and the illusion of international justice

Israel and the illusion of international justice

Gerald Steinberg/Anne Herzberg
Haaretz
15 January '10
Posted before Shabbat

Speaking at a legal conference on January 4, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak suggested that Israel would benefit from participation in bodies such as the International Criminal Court in order to fight for "its positions and justice." In endorsing Barak's recommendation, a Haaretz editorial ("Join the Court," January 6) contended that such participation would "place Israel on the side of the enlightened nations." Similarly, the argument goes, Israel erred in refusing to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Council's Goldstone Commission and the International Court of Justice proceedings on the security barrier.

While surely well-intentioned, in practice this line of thinking is pure folly. The dominance of nondemocratic and Islamic nations in international organs, and the increasing politicization of these bodies, virtually guarantees that no justice will be done when it comes to Israel or even NATO countries. In such morally corrupt frameworks, international law and human rights have become political weapons, disconnected from legitimate judicial processes and legal systems in democratic societies.

The ICJ's handling of the 2004 case regarding Israel's security barrier is a telling example. The suit was initiated by the UN General Assembly at the behest of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. European-funded advocacy groups such as B'Tselem, aided by NGO superpowers Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were central to this effort. Legal scholars sharply criticized the court for accepting a predetermined political mandate from the UN and for its breach of procedural protocols in deliberations on the matter.

The ICJ's resulting advisory opinion negated Israel's right of self-defense and displayed an utter lack of sympathy for terror victims. Its simplistic and troubling legal analysis clearly reflected the influence of the Arab League and politicized NGOs. Hardly an independent judicial inquiry, this distorted proceeding encouraged subversion of the rule of law, rather than its enforcement, by allowing for political manipulation of the judicial process.

(Read full article)

Gerald Steinberg is a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor; Anne Herzberg is NGO Monitor's legal advisor
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Love of the Land: Israel and the illusion of international justice

Israel Matzav: Russia: 'We'll veto Goldstone referral to ICC'

Russia: 'We'll veto Goldstone referral to ICC'

Although Russia voted in favor of referring the Goldstone Report to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Israel's foreign ministry says that it has received messages from Russia indicating that it will use its veto in the Security Council to prevent the report from being discussed in the Security Council or referred to the International Criminal Court.

The remarks were made in a meeting between Russian Ambassador to Israel Peter Stegney and a Foreign Ministry official. The ambassador relayed messages from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the Foreign Ministry sources said.

...

Stegney noted that Russia had voted in favor of passing the report to the UN headquarters in New York "because it had no choice," and even blamed European Union countries. According to the ambassador, the EU tried to ease the resolution's wording, but failed "due to the stance of Western countries."

Stegney stressed that Russia believes Israel should investigate itself. "The most important thing is that the peace process won't suffer," the Russian ambassador said.

State officials said that Stegney had slammed the Goldstone Report, saying that "it includes statements that do not relay on facts, but rather on subjective estimations."

Russian denial coming in 4, 3, 2, 1.....

No, I don't trust the Russians. The only real motivation they have to vote against Goldstone is that it could be used against them some day in Chechnya (or Georgia or Ukraine, although the latter two countries don't have terrorists and the Russians are bullying them). If that were to happen, I believe the Russians would just ignore it or get the OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) and the 'non-aligned' countries to bail them out.

Another motivation the Russians may have - which I don't regard as real because its effect is an illusion, but which is likely to be the price Israel will pay for Russian support in the Security Council - is to make Israel show up at Russia's 'peace conference.'

One official said the Moscow conference may be in peril now, not because Israel is trying to punish Russia, but rather because the diplomatic process - as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned - would be harmed as a result of the Palestinian Authority's pushing the Goldstone Report forward.

"This is not a threat, just a statement of fact," the official said.

...

Russia has been trying for nearly two years to put together a Middle East conference as a follow up to the November 2007 Annapolis conference, but so far to no avail. Israel had up to now not objected, but just wanted to ensure that the timing was right and that the meeting would be more than just a photo opportunity.

The Middle East Quartet, made up of the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, reaffirmed at its meeting last month its call for a conference in Moscow.

Israel ought not to show up for that conference anyway.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Russia: 'We'll veto Goldstone referral to ICC'

Love of the Land: Post Colonialist Dogma Doesn’t Fit

Post Colonialist Dogma Doesn’t Fit

Fresnozionism.org
17 October 09

The following illustrates an argument I hear a lot:

The Palestinian Authority would not oppose the prosecution of Hamas militants on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court, Israel Radio on Saturday quoted the PA’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva as saying.

Ibrahim Khraishi reportedly made the comments after the UN Human Rights Council’s voted in favor of his motion to endorse a report accusing both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the December-January hostilities in Gaza.

Speaking in an interview with Israel Radio, Khraishi said he had no problem in saying that legal proceedings against Israel over alleged human rights abuses should also be instigated against Palestinians. But he was quoted as adding that occupiers must not be confused with the occupied.

It’s not surprising that the PA would like to see Hamas suffer! But what I’m interested in is the phrase I boldfaced at the end.

It represents a ‘postcolonialist’ ideology, traceable to Frantz Fanonand Edward Said, that enshrines a double standard for behavior as applied, for example, to Israel and the Palestinians.

Postcolonial theory asserts that there are ’settler countries’ and ‘non-settler countries’, and of course you can imagine who are supposed to be the good guys. A great deal of effort is expended by the Arabs and their supporters to place Israel in the first group, with the Zionists in the position of colonizers of the ‘indigenous’ Palestinian Arabs. Honest historical analysis shows that in fact this is not accurate, but it’s important for them to say this in order to take advantage of the special dispensations granted to the ‘colonized’.

Here’s an example of the reasoning, as expressed in an article by Nir Rosen, an American-born journalist:

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors…

Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel…

Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid in his face. “The terrorist was arrested by security forces,” the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?

The argument depends on the “overwhelming odds”, the disparity in power between the ‘colonizer and colonized’. Edward Said, the high priest of applying postcolonial theory to Israel and the Palestinians,never tired of mentioning that Israel was a “nuclear power”, as if this had some relevance to its responses to Arab terrorism!

Once it is established that one party is a ‘colonizer’ and the other ‘colonized’, the game is over. For the postcolonialist, nothing that the colonizer does to defend himself is permissible, and anything that the colonized does in the name of resistance is justified.

This is insisted upon despite the actual power relationship between the sides, which — because of the actions and constraints of outside powers and the force-multiplying effect of asymmetric warfare — may be much closer to equal than the postcolonialist wants us to think.

The postcolonialist point of view is endemic to the academic world — google ‘postcolonialism’ and you will be overwhelmed by the huge mass of professorial careers that have been built on it — but it has little applicability to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite Said’s struggle to make it appear so.

Like most grand theories — those of Marx or Freud, for example — postcolonialism gets its explanatory power when an apparently chaotic situation can be shown to be a special case of some general principles. Most such theories are inspired by a particular paradigm case; for Fanon it was the French in Martinique. Said, who was comparatively an intellectual lightweight, saw the huge power of the postcolonial metaphor to promote his own — Palestinian — cause.

(Full Article)

Love of the Land: Post Colonialist Dogma Doesn’t Fit

Love of the Land: Goldstone says Israel guilty until proven innocent

Goldstone says Israel guilty until proven innocent

Ted Belman
Israpundit.com
09 October 09

The Goldstone Commission Inquiry reported that “Israel was guilty of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.” But I thought it was a fact finding inquiry only.

The Forward reports Goldstone: ‘If This Was a Court Of Law, There Would Have Been Nothing Proven.’.

WOW. What an admission.

Tellingly, in an interview with the Forward on October 2, Goldstone himself acknowledged the tentative nature of his findings.

“Ours wasn’t an investigation, it was a fact-finding mission,” he said, sitting in his Midtown Manhattan office at Fordham University Law School, where he is currently visiting faculty. “We made that clear.”

[..] For all that gathered information, though, he said, “We had to do the best we could with the material we had. If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”

Goldstone emphasized that his conclusion that war crimes had been committed was always intended as conditional. He still hopes that independent investigations carried out by Israel and the Palestinians will use the allegations as, he said, “a useful road map.”

This is disgusting. Even the ICC holds the accused, innocent until proven guilty. Goldstone reverses this and holds Israel guilty and requires her to prove her innocence.

He recalled his work as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal in Yugoslavia in 1994. When he began working, Goldstone was presented with a report commissioned by the U.N. Security Council based on what he said was a fact-finding mission similar to his own in Gaza.

“We couldn’t use that report as evidence at all,” Goldstone said. “But it was a useful roadmap for our investigators, for me as chief prosecutor, to decide where we should investigate. And that’s the purpose of this sort of report. If there was an independent investigation in Israel, then I think the facts and allegations referred to in our report would be a useful road map.”

Nevertheless, the report itself is replete with bold and declarative legal conclusions seemingly at odds with the cautious and conditional explanations of its author.

This article goes on to analyse the Report. But in my opinion what I have quoted above says it all.

I also read Richard Landes’ excellent fisking of Goldstone’s NYT Op-Ed but wanted to add something. The indented comments are those of Goldstone.

But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.

He has this backwards. The law prohibits “intentional killing” of protected persons. His language ignores the prohibition and uses language that mandates a duty to protect. The is no such duty.

Many civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt.

Once again he invents a new standard, namely whether civilian deaths were “necessary”.

This is not part of the language of war crimes. The only question is whether civilians were intentionally targeted.

To some extent the law demands that you attack your military object in the way that minimizes civilian casualties if you had options. If you failed to avail yourself of alternatives, it might be said that the ensuing deaths were “unnecessary”. But this is debatable. My legal advisors tell me that the IDF doesn’t have a duty to use smart bombs and can use artillery.

Reading Goldstone carefully, it appears he wanted to force the issue and make Israel carry on an investigation to avoid the ICC. So the inquiry was not so much a fact finding mission as it was a prod to force Israel to hold its own investigation. That’s why he said Israel was guilty. Had he only said Israel might be guilty then the need for Israel to investigate is much reduced.

This is what all the NGO’s do. They don’t say Israel may have committed war crimes but that Israel did commit war crimes. Its all about putting pressure on Israel.

As I mentioned about the ICC itself says that all accused are to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a basic human right. Too bad that the HRW and the others, couldn’t care less.

I wonder if Goldstone can be sued for libel. He made an allegation that Israel was guilty that he himself says has not been proven?

Love of the Land: Goldstone says Israel guilty until proven innocent

Love of the Land: In Case You Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse

In Case You Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse

Jennifer Rubin

Contentions/Commentary

24 September 09

The Goldstone report can’t even get a stamp of approval from Mary Robinson. (I bet it’ll make the Osama bin Laden reading list, however.) We noted last week the rather tepid response from Ambassador Susan Rice. Then it appeared that the U.S. was actually going to step in to block further action on the report—almost like it was defending an ally who had been unjustly accused by ideologically craven opponents. But that, it turns out, was a mistake, a misstatement, a gaffe. The Obama administration wouldn’t dream of such a thing. This report explains:

A White House official “misspoke” when he said the Obama administration would not allow the Goldstone report recommendations on Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war to reach the International Criminal Court. A top White House official told Jewish organizational leaders in an off-the-record phone call Wednesday that the U.S. strategy was to “quickly” bring the report—commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council and carried out by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone—to its “natural conclusion” within the Human Rights Council and not to allow it to go further, Jewish participants in the call told JTA.

Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, called JTA later to say the official “misspoke” and that administration policy on the Goldstone report remains as articulated last week by Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador.

Rice described the UNHRC mandate as “unbalanced, one sided and basically unacceptable. We have very serious concerns about many of the recommendations in the report. We will expect and believe that the appropriate venue for this report to be considered is the Human Rights Council and that is our strong view.”

She did not mention what the United States would do were the report to be referred to the ICC.

Well this is pretty much par for the course in the hapless and comically inept Obama foreign-policy operation. It’s bad enough to pull out on missile defense, but then we call allies in the middle of the night and announce the news on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. It’s bad enough that we don’t put an end to the Goldstone travesty, but first we say we will—before we say we won’t.

Implementation and execution matter in foreign policy, as the Obama campaign reminded us continually. They assured us that they would be smart, adept, subtle, and sophisticated—and oh so worldly. The reality is a shocking display of amateurism and disdain for our allies. The Obama team was supposed to “restore” our place in the world; instead we are transforming friends into embittered former allies.

It makes one long for the “clumsy” cowboy diplomacy of George Bush. You remember—when Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras, and human-rights activists felt they had a friend in the White House and when the administration’s pronouncements weren’t always popular but didn’t require an errata sheet.

Love of the Land: In Case You Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse

Israel Matzav: International Criminal Court may try IDF lawyer

International Criminal Court may try IDF lawyer

As a result of the Goldstone Commission Report, the International Criminal Court is exploring the possibility of trying IDF reserve officer David Benjamin, a dual citizen of Israel and South Africa, for 'war crimes' allegedly committed during Operation Cast Lead.

A senior prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said Monday that he is considering opening an investigation into whether Lt. Col. David Benjamin, an Israel Defense Forces reserve officer, allowed war crimes to be committed during the IDF's three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip this winter.

The officer - a dual citizen of Israel and South Africa, where he was born - served in the Military Advocate General's international law department, which authorized which targets troops would strike before and during the operation.

Newsweek magazine released an interview Monday with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina in which he said he is convinced his office has the authority to launch an investigation into Benjamin's actions.

The ICC has until now refrained from trying IDF officers, as it lacks authority to do so, since Israel is not a signatory to the 2002 Rome Treaty that founded the court. South Africa, however, did sign the treaty, so the ICC is authorized to indict its citizens.

In case any of you missed it, Benjamin is not a combat officer on the field of battle: He's a lawyer. So in addition to the question of whether Benjamin ought to be subject to ICC jurisdiction as a South African citizen for acts he performed as an Israeli citizen, we face a situation where Benjamin may be prosecuted for giving legal advice to the IDF regarding the permissibility of targeting certain terrorists or facilities. Does that sound familiar to you Americans? If not, it should.

In the United States, the Obama administration has vacillated regarding the idea of prosecuting Bush administration lawyers who approved 'enhanced interrogation techniques' for terrorists out of fear that such a prosecution would have a chilling effect on legal advice given to its own and future administrations. An ICC prosecution of lawyers could have precisely the same effect, and the United States and all western democracies ought to oppose it.

There's no picture on this post, because I'm sure the IDF and Advocate Benjamin would rather not have his picture all over the web even if I could find it and be sure it was him.

Israel Matzav: International Criminal Court may try IDF lawyer