Love of the Land: Where Does Goldstone Fit in Mearsheimer’s List?

Where Does Goldstone Fit in Mearsheimer’s List?

Emanuele Ottolenghi
Contentions/Commentary
09 May '10

So here’s a question for John Mearsheimer. As Noah Pollak pointed out not so long ago, John Mearsheimer classified Jews into three categories — new Afrikaner Jews, righteous Jews, and the “great ambivalent in the middle.” In his useful lists, he included one Judge Richard Goldstone among the noble ones. And so, in light of the revelations about Judge Goldstone to which Jennifer Rubin referred earlier on today, one is left to wonder. Where would Mearsheimer now put Goldstone — among the “New Afrikaner” or the “Righteous”? Maybe we should create a separate category — Old Afrikaner but Righteous? Good Ol’ Afrikaner?

Is he a Righteous Afrikaner because he bashes Israel after having hung a few Africans — the bashing makes him righteous, the hanging makes him Afrikaner?

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Love of the Land: Where Does Goldstone Fit in Mearsheimer’s List?

Love of the Land: Judge Goldstone's dark past

Judge Goldstone's dark past

Yedioth Ahronoth investigation reveals man preaching human rights, who authored scathing report against Israel's operation in Gaza, sent at least 28 black defendants to gallows as South African judge under Apartheid regime


Tehiya Barak
Israel Opinion/Ynet
07 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

He asserted that Israel committed war crimes and came out against the Israel Defense Forces, whom he claimed violated basic human rights. Judge Richard Goldstone forgot just one thing – to look long and hard in the mirror and to do some soul-searching before he rushes to criticize others.

A special Yedioth Ahronoth investigation reveals Richard Goldstone's dark side as a judge during the Apartheid era in South Africa. It turns out, the man who authored the Goldstone Report criticizing the IDF's actions during Operation Cast Lead took an active part in the racist policies of one of the cruelest regimes of the 20th century.

During his tenure as sitting as judge in the appellant court during the 1980s and 1990s sentenced dozens of blacks mercilessly to their death.

This stain on Goldstone's past kept him from coming out against the death penalty on many occasions and from vehemently criticizing countries who still allow executions. Goldstone didn't bother confessing and telling about his actions in any of his statements or speeches.

(Read full report)

Love of the Land: Judge Goldstone's dark past

Love of the Land: Who Is Goldstone to Judge Israel?

Who Is Goldstone to Judge Israel?

Honest Reporting/Backspin
06 May '10

Yediot Ahronoth's Hebrew site reports that that Judge Richard Goldstone sent 28 black South Africans to their death when they appeared before his court during the apartheid era.

And now that Yediot and the blogosphere is asking, "Who is Goldstone to judge Israel with his one-sided report on the Gaza war," the jurist's response is adding fuel to the fire.

First, the Yediot investigation, which will be published in full on Friday. Jerusalem Central (via Israel Matzav) provides details:

According to Yediot's findings, Goldstone confirmed the death sentences of at least 28 accused blacks, who had appealed their sentences, most of them for murder, and he expressed his support for death sentences in his decisions as well, as he wrote in the case of a young black man who was sentenced to death for killing the white owner of a restaurant after he fired him: "The death penalty needs to reflect the demands of society to take retribution for the crimes that people see, justifiably, as horrifying".

Goldstone, "declared that the gallows were the only punishment of deterrent in these cases", and wrote: "Fury is a relevant factor in the imposition of a suitable punishment".

Whoa! An internationally acclaimed jurist says that fury is a "relevant factor" in choosing a suitable punishment? Sounds, uh, disproportionate. If an Israeli judge were make such an assertion, can you imagine the outrage of the UN Human Rights Council, or Human Rights Watch?

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Who Is Goldstone to Judge Israel?

Love of the Land: Analyzing the Durban II Conference

Analyzing the Durban II Conference

Interview with Gerald Steinberg

Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg
Institute for Global Jewish Affairs
Published March '10
No. 96

From 20-24 April 2009, the Durban Review Conference took place in Geneva. It is also known as Durban II, a follow-up to the infamous "Durban I" World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in the late summer of 2001. At Durban I, an NGO Forum accepted what can be summed up as a declaration of war against Israel. Participating nongovernmental organizations adopted a strategy for the complete isolation of Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.

The Canadian Harper government was the first to announce in February 2008 that it would not participate in Durban II, followed nine months later by Israel. Other countries, including the United States, eventually followed suit in refusing to come to Geneva. The withdrawal accelerated when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his intention to participate. Many funders that had provided large amounts of money for the Durban I NGO Forum, including Canada and the Ford Foundation, did not provide NGO support for 2009.

Although the nonparticipation of so many key countries made Durban II less of a diplomatic disaster for Israel than Durban I, it did not result in any erasure or renouncement of the anti-Israeli "Durban strategy" adopted at the 2001 NGO Forum.

Many UN-sponsored mini-Durbans promoting the indictment of Israel continue to take place, led by the same NGOs active in the Durban I hate-fest. In the dominant narrative, Israel is the world's worst violator of human rights and must be held accountable through investigations predetermined to find it guilty. Judge Richard Goldstone has become the patron saint of this "Durban process."

(Read full interview and analysis)

Love of the Land: Analyzing the Durban II Conference

Love of the Land: Irish eyes not smiling on Israel

Irish eyes not smiling on Israel

Soccer Dad
07 March '10

Micheal Martin the Irish foreign minister writes of his recent visit to Gaza in Gaza a year later:

What I witnessed in Gaza, amidst all the rubble and devastation still so evident from last year's conflict, was a population traumatized and reduced to poverty by an unjust and completely counterproductive blockade. All that is being achieved through the imposition of the blockade is to enrich Hamas and marginalize even further the voices of moderation.
I view the current conditions prevailing for the ordinary population as inhumane and utterly unacceptable, in terms of accepted international standards of human rights.

Of course, as a guest of Hamas and someone who clearly wanted to see the worst he only saw what his hosts wanted him to see.

A couple of weeks ago Omri showed the effects of the blockade on Gaza. Like Judge Goldstone, Mr. Martin had no interest in seeing the bigger picture and was only interested in convicting Israel.

There is a blockade of Gaza, in order to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its offensive capabilities. It may not have worked, but it was a legitimate effort to prevent a terrorist organization from regaining its capacity to cause terror.

And here's the summary of the latest week's summary of humanitarian aid Israel allowed into Gaza (apart from what's smuggled in via the tunnels).

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Love of the Land: Irish eyes not smiling on Israel

Love of the Land: How my email to Goldstone was twisted by his report

How my email to Goldstone was twisted by his report

Hillel Neuer
U.N. Watch
21 January '10

Israeli public figures who say their country would have benefited by cooperating with the UN Human Rights Council’s “fact-finding” mission on the Gaza conflict are mistaken.

The raw malice that the Goldstone Report evinces toward Israel, the one party about which the panelists can say nothing good (as opposed to their exuberant, repeated praise for the “resilient” people of Gaza), demonstrates convincingly that the source of the imbalance lay in the UN committee’s mental structure. More information would have meant nothing. In the commissioners’ jaundiced view of the conflict, the Israeli leadership’s guilt for premeditated murder on a mass scale was taken as a philosophical given, a first premise not open to logical challenge.

Indeed it bears note that in July 2009, during the time that Goldstone, Chinkin, Jilani and Travers were conducting their UN inquiry, Israel did publish a voluminous document offering its side of the story, entitled “Factual and Legal Aspects of the Operation in Gaza, 27 Dec 2008 - 18 Jan 2009.”

When I saw this report on the internet, I emailed the link to Judge Goldstone, in the hope that it might provide some balance to the Hamas-influenced testimony on which the UN Human Rights Council appointees were basing their inquiry.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: How my email to Goldstone was twisted by his report