In Friday's Australian, retired General Jim Molan, who was the chief of operations of the multinational force in Iraq in 2004-05, blasts the Goldstone Commission (Hat Tip: Barry Rubin). With experience of having to tread through this legal and moral minefield while acting as an agent of the statesman who has an obligation to act, I was looking forward to how Goldstone was going to react to questions such as: How much discrimination is enough? How much of the inevitable killing of innocents is too much? How do we equate our complex war aims with the use of military force against a terrorist organisation that flouts the rule of law? How do you assess in legal terms the proportionality of a war between a terrorist force and one of the world's most advanced militaries? If one side uses backyard rockets is the other side not allowed to use precision-guided missiles? Do three Israelis killed and hundreds wounded by backyard rockets equal 1000 Gazans killed by Israeli actions? Given the legal regime recognises the difficulty of military decision-making amid the fog of war, and thus obligates planners and commanders to base decisions on information reasonably available at the time, how did the report handle this issue?
On these and many other questions, the Goldstone report is strangely silent, a luxury that I did not have in Iraq, and a luxury that the Israeli commanders probably did not have in Gaza.
The Goldstone report is an opinion by one group of people putting forward their judgments, with limited access to the facts, and reflecting their own prejudices. The difference in tone and attitude in the report when discussing Israeli and Hamas actions is surprising.
I probably do not need to state for most readers that as a soldier who has run a war against an opponent not dissimilar to Hamas, facing problems perhaps similar to those faced by Israeli commanders, my sympathies tend to lie with the Israelis. I can hold and openly declare those prejudices even while I acknowledge that within institutions that may be overall just and moral, there can be individuals or small groups who act outside the law. They must be dealt with, and in my war, they were.
But having stated my prejudice, I think I may be more honest than Goldstone, who seems to pass off his prejudices in a report that cannot be based on fact, and uses judicial language and credibility to do so. It comes down to equality of scepticism: if you refuse to believe anything the Israelis say, then you have no right to unquestioningly accept what Hamas says.
Moadim l'Simcha - a good holiday to everyone.The Goldstone Commission bears your name. One would expect the mandate of any report to be objective so that your name could be respected and a legacy ensured. Instead your committee ignored the facts, embraced bias and rendered the report bearing your name, illegitimate.
You tried to defend yourself in the New York Times but it was transparent and not effective. You could have resigned from the commission and retained your integrity. You knew that Israel faced 12000 Grads and Kassams from its Iran backed terror base of Gaza, 8000 irreversibly traumatizing the families and children of Sderot. You knew that the U.N. never passed one resolution condemning these deadly missiles. You knew that before and during Operation Cast Lead Israel made thousands of cell phone calls to warn civilians. You knew that Israel sent thousands of texts to warn civilians. You knew that Israel dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets in Arabic (I managed to obtain one of these as evidence) to warn civilians. You knew that Israel aborted operations to avoid civilian deaths. You knew that Israel set up medical facilities on the edge of Gaza to treat civilians. You knew that Israel dropped supplies of food into Gaza to feed civilians.
You also knew that Hamas operatives are not “civilians”. You knew that not only were they not civilians but that they hid behind their own civilians to fire on Israeli civilians. You knew that they misused ambulances for military purposes. You knew that mosques and schools were used for Hamas depots and launching pads. You knew that Hamas operatives kill or shoot at the legs of any Gazans refusing to target Israel.
The video footage and U-tube sequences are still available for any and all of us to witness.
You clearly knew that one of your team members had condemned Israel in a published letter even before the conclusion of the incursion or the beginning of your investigation. But you did not resign or distance yourself from the hypocrisy of this illegitimate report. Instead a tedious 500-page report of the 3 week battle was padded with pages from the tainted U.N. mockery of Israel’s security barrier (misnamed the “wall”). What a sad indictment of the charter of the United Nations.
Richard, you were indeed a respected legal giant in Johannesburg. This report did not arise from ignorance or naivete. I am trying so hard to resist the conclusion that your role and report might represent a self-serving desire to ingratiate yourself for a more senior position in the kangaroo court called the United Nations. But if true-and one hopes that this is not the case-at what price? Association with the infamous U.N. garners no respect in the USA so why would anyone seek to be head inmate at the U.N. Asylum?
While the US meets with the Iranians who want to reduce my neighbhorhood to glow-in-the-dark ash, I'm spending the week in an unsealed, anything-but-reinforced sukkah I built with my five-year-old son.
The hut's as high-tech as any extension cord, 60 watt lightbulb and electric timer can be on a dusty Jerusalem driveway.
One favorite sukkah activity is when the light's off and the kids asleep. Glass of wine in hand, I sit in the cool, quiet, night air and gaze up through the roof at the stars above. There's hardly a thought of arrogant messianic Persian autocrats, Western apologists, or fickle international opinion.
I'll be back and blogging with a vengeance after Sukkot, which for me is Sunday, October 11. A happy holiday to our readers.
Discussing Obama’s failed Mideast-peace strategy, Michael Gerson focuses on an increasingly critical ramification (aside from the soured U.S.-Israeli relations, the humiliating rebuff to the U.S., and the encouragement of Palestinian rejectionism) of the president’s decision to put “daylight” between America and Israel:
Obama has injected considerable suspicion into the American-Israeli relationship, picking public fights on issues such as settlements and adopting a tone of neutrality in other controversies. If Israel thinks America is an increasingly unreliable partner, Israel will be more likely to depend on itself alone — and let the bombers fly.
As Gerson points out, the Israelis (along with the French) have every reason to doubt U.S. resolve. Anyone who’s listened to Obama’s rhetoric from Cairo to Pittsburgh can discern that this is not a man who draws lines in the sand and not someone willing to take decisive action (unless it’s to capitulate unilaterally, as he did on missile defense). So we find ourselves in the not unexpected situation brought about by American weakness and procrastination: ”If the Israelis were confident that America would act decisively against the Iranian nuclear threat in the greatest extremity, they would be far less likely to act themselves.”
Indeed, one senses that Bibi Netanyahu and Barack Obama are on a rhetorical seesaw. The higher Obama’s rhetoric becomes and the less grounded in reality he appears (as was the case at the UN), the more blunt and steely-eyed Netanyahu becomes (as was the case with his UN speech). Obama ignores Iran’s genocidal threats, so Netanyahu must remind us of them. Obama loves to speak of a “process,” so Netanyahu warns we must have results. Obama clings to the security blanket of “multilateralism,” while Netanyahu emphasizes that the UN is no better than a low-rent circus. Obama obscures and conceals the Iranian nuclear operations, whereas Netanyahu highlights them. There is not simply “daylight” between the two leaders but a vast expanse that separates them.
Gerson is right: the Israelis will do what they must, in no small part because the American president does not view the world as they do. And they in turn are not about to put their fate in the hands of someone who lacks both the understanding and the will to keep nuclear arms out of the hands of butchers whose fondest hope is to eradicate the Jewish state.
And so when I say: The account we are getting of the meeting's significance is too good to be true there's a lot of evidence for that conclusion.
I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember the Paris Peace Talks that were designed to bring about an end to the Vietnam War. With his term of office coming to an end in late 1968, Lyndon Johnson was determined to get substantive peace talks with North Vietnam going before he turned over the reins of power to Richard Nixon on January 20, 1969. But North Vietnam had different ideas. The official talks still did not begin. South Vietnam raised a series of procedural issues, the most prominent of which were the particular use of flags and name plates, the speaking order of the participants, and the physical arrangement of the conference, including most notably the shape of the conference table. On the latter issue, the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF) insisted on a four-sided table to emphasize equality between the parties, while the United States and especially the GVN favored a two-sided arrangement that did not obviously give the NLF equal footing with the GVN. (250, 260, 264) On January 2, 1969, the North Vietnamese relented on their requirement that made flags and nameplates contingent upon the acceptance by the other side of a continuous round table. (268, 269) On January 7 Johnson sent Thieu a strongly worded message to desist from the "continued stalemate on present lines" that was undermining public support within the United States for South Vietnam. (276) Thieu continued to refuse to consider such a trade-off from his original position on the shape of the table. (277-279) Pressure on Thieu from Washington coupled with the involvement of Soviet diplomats eventually overcame this impasse. On January 13 the Soviet Ambassador in Paris directed his subordinate to propose a resolution: a round table with two smaller rectangular tables at opposite sides; no flags or nameplates; and speaking order arranged by the drawing of lots. (280, 281) Both the North Vietnamese and the American delegations agreed to this proposal on January 15, as did both South Vietnam and the NLF the next day. (283, 284) On January 18 the first meeting between the four parties, which focused solely on modalities for the substantive talks, was held. (286) The Johnson administration left office on January 20, 1969, with the knowledge that peace talks were finally underway.
So what are Obama’s options at this point?
Option 1: Go back to having a confrontation with Israel demanding it freeze construction and get nothing in return. That’s not going to happen.
Option 2: Criticize the Palestinian stand and pressure it (after all, the United States is providing all of its money or helping to raise it among allied countries) to go to talks. That’s not going to happen.
Option 3: Pretend everything is going well, have officials run around as if something is getting done, develop some new photo opportunities, and hope no one notices. Yep, that’s the one.
Here's how Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat put it: "There will not be Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in Washington. There will be parallel American-Israeli negotiations and Palestinian-American negotiations." That sort of sets things back to the way they were around 1990.
After nine months in office and after having declared it would hit the ground running on Israel-Palestinian issues and get peace very fast, the Obama Administration has achieved nothing. In fact, it has set back the process and is getting less done than the supposedly criminally passive Bush Administration.
The Washington Post reports that Iran and the P - 5 + 1 reached a 'series of understandings' in Geneva on Thursday, which represent a step back from confrontation between Iran and the West (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). Under the tentative deal, Iran would give up most of its enriched uranium to Russia in order for it to be converted into desperately needed material for a medical research reactor in Tehran. Iran also agreed to let international inspectors visit the newly disclosed uranium-enrichment facility in Qom within two weeks, and then to attend another meeting with negotiators from the major powers by the end of the month. The series of agreements struck at the meeting was in itself unusual because, in the past, the Iranian negotiators have said they would get back with an answer -- and then fail to do so.
The outcome of the talks was immediately criticized by former U.N. ambassador John R. Bolton, who as a Bush administration official balked at George W. Bush's efforts to entice Iran into negotiations. "They've now got the United States ensnared in negotiations," he said. "This is like the movie 'Groundhog Day.' " But another Bush-era official, former undersecretary of state R. Nicholas Burns, said that even if talks fail, Obama will have demonstrated that he tried hard to make diplomacy work -- and will win greater support for sanctions.
"This is only a start, and we shall need to see progress through some of the practical steps we have discussed today," said European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who headed the delegation of six nations meeting with Iran. He said he hoped for "rapid and intense" negotiations to follow.
U.S. officials have asserted that the revelation of the Qom facility had diplomatically isolated Iran, leaving it little choice but to cooperate or face new sanctions. Diplomats said the term "sanctions" was never uttered during the lengthy day, though oblique reference was made to a statement issued by foreign ministers of the group last week. That statement raised the possibility of more sanctions if no negotiating track was soon established.
Iran’s agreement in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing — if it happens — would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit.
If Iran has secret stockpiles of enriched uranium, however, the accomplishment would be hollow, a senior American official conceded.
While American officials refused to specify the amount, other Western officials said it could be 1,200 kilograms, or more than 2,600 pounds, of enriched uranium, which could be as much as 75 percent of Iran’s declared stockpile. While there may be hidden stocks of enriched uranium, such a transfer, if it occurs, “buys some time” for further negotiations, a senior American official said.
...
Many diplomats and analysts believe that the plant near Qum is only one of a series of hidden installations that Iran has constructed, in addition to its publicly acknowledged ones, for what is considered to be a military program. Iran insists that its program is purely peaceful and that it has a right under the nonproliferation treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. But it has regularly lied to the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency about its facilities.
With the consent of the 'Palestinian Authority,' the 'Human Rights Council' agreed on Thursday to postpone a vote on referring the Goldstone Commission Report to the United Nations Security Council to March. The deferral came after unsuccessful negotiations to find a compromise text that would be acceptable to the six Western countries on the 47-member council: the United States, Belgium, France, Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom.
...
There were reports of US pressure on the PA to defer the vote, with some sources claiming that US President Barack Obama had personally intervened behind the scenes, impressing upon the Palestinians that the diplomatic process would be adversely affected if the vote were not shelved.
The PLO ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi, told The Jerusalem Post he was interested in a compromise text because it was important that the report, which condemned Israel's military actions in Gaza last January, received the widest range of support possible.
"It will help us to explain to the Israelis that the international community is with the Palestinians to achieve their hopes and their dreams," said Khraishi.
When the hour grew late and no compromise was in sight, he said, "we decided to defer the matter" to the council's next session in March.
"What happened today is proof that their strategy of not cooperating" with the four-person fact-finding mission led by South Africa jurist Richard Goldstone "was correct... Israel insisted from the beginning that this was about politics against the State of Israel and not human rights. It emphasized the primacy of the peace process. It is a precedent for all states fighting terror," said Leshno-Yaar.
He added that "it shows above all that the priority of the international community is to bring Israelis and Palestinians together to relaunch negotiations."
He noted that Fatah, which "pushed us to do away with Hamas" in Gaza, is "now trying to take us into the international courts" for Israel's military actions against Hamas.
"Not to mention the fact that the ones who are benefiting from this report are the extremists anywhere and everywhere, especially in Gaza," said Ayalon.
"This constitutes a massive defeat for Mr. Goldstone's biased report, a slipshod piece of work whose scattershot recommendations to the entire world threatened to ...harm, not help, the peace process," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva human rights monitoring group.
It’s Erev Succot and “harvest” time in Israel...
This is one of those cartoons.
In Arab News, we learn that Bava Jain, secretary-general of the World Council of Religious Leaders, has described as historic and bold the two-day international inter-faith conference which opened today in Geneva. The conference is the initiative of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who, says Bava Jain, deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for an initiative which potentially
would have tremendous impact on world peace and stability if effective measures were taken to implement it.
The report tells us:
Delegates from 35 countries are taking part in the conference, which opens Wednesday. They include William Baker, president of Christians and Muslims for Peace in the US; David Rosen, director of inter-religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee; Pramjeet Singh Sarna, president of Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Sahib; Kuniaki Kuni, president of the Association of Shinto Temples in Japan; and Xue Cheng, vice chairman of the Buddhist Association of China.
Er...William Baker? Wikipedia tells us:
William Baker ... was expelled from Robert H. Schuller's Crystal Cathedral mission after exposure of his affiliations with extremistfar-right racist, antisemitic and Neo-Nazi groups, including chairmanship of the Neo-Nazi Populist Party.
Orange County Weekly reported in 2002:
... evidence supplied by the Anti-Defamation League shows that Baker delivered a 1983 speech to the racist Christian Patriot Defense League in Licking, Missouri, in which he made several references to [Willis] Carto’s neo-Nazi newspaper, Spotlight. A 23-page transcript of that rambling speech reveals a number of anti-Semitic remarks, including Baker's reference to Reverend Jerry Falwell as ‘Jerry Jewry.’ (Falwell is known to be friendly to Jews.) In the same speech, Baker described his disgust at traveling to New York City: ‘God help me. Why? ’Cause the first people I meet when I get off the plane are pushy, belligerent American Jews.’
... During the same period, Baker wrote and published Theft of a Nation, a 1982 book whose salient feature is its unrelenting pro-Arab, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish politics. Writing on contemporary Middle East politics, Baker stated that ‘true justice and real conciliation’ requires that ‘all Jews who entered Palestine during the British Mandate from 1917 to 1948 and after the establishment of the state of Israel should return to the various countries of their origin’ and that the ‘Zionist state of Israel . . . should be dismantled and eventually eliminated.’
Isn’t inter-faith dialogue wonderful?
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