Direct link to scholarships offered by  Govt. of India

List of Private NGOs offering scholarships

Abu Marwan Abdal Malik Ibn Zuhr: ‘Avenzoar’

Abu Marwan Abdal Malik Ibn Zuhr, known in the west as Avenzoar, was

Ummid Assistant

IDB Scholarship Program: Application form can be downloaded from here

Welcome Guest! You are here: Home » Views & Analysis

Gaza war and Goldstone’s moral collapse

Wednesday April 13, 2011 09:59:41 AM, Ramzy Baroud

Related Articles

Israel asks UN to dump Gaza war crimes report

Israel has asked the United Nations to dump a damning report on its much-criticised military operation in Gaza two years back after its author regretted some of his conclusions.  »

Shocking is not a sufficient term to describe Justice Richard Goldstone’s decision to recant parts of the 2009 report on alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The document, known as the Goldstone Report, was compiled after a thorough investigation led by the South African judge and three other well-regarded investigators. They documented 36 incidents that occurred during the Israeli Operation Cast Lead, an unprecedentedly violent attack against small, impoverished and besieged Gaza. It resulted in the death of over 1,400 Palestinians, and the wounding of over 5,500.

Goldstone is both Jewish and Zionist. His love for Israel has been widely and affectionately conveyed. In this particular case, he seemed completely torn between his ideological and tribal position and his commitment to justice and truth, as enshrined in the mandate of the UN Human Rights Council.

After 18 months of what seemed a wholly personal introspection, accompanied by an endless campaign of pressure and intimidation by Zionist and pro-Israel Jewish groups from all over the world, the man finally surrendered.

“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,” he wrote in the Washington Post on April 1. But what did Goldstone learn anew since he issued his 575-page report in September 2009?

The supposed basis of Goldstone’s rethink is a follow-up report issued by a UN committee chaired by retired New York Judge Mary McGowan Davis. Her report was not a reinvestigation of Israel’s — and Hamas’ — alleged war crimes in Gaza, but a follow up on the Goldstone Commission’s findings, which urged the referral of the matter to the International Criminal Court. McGowan Davis made this distinction clear in a recent interview with the Israeli Jerusalem Post. According to the post, she said, “Our work was completely separate from (Goldstone’s) work.” She further stated, “Our mandate was to take his report as given and start from there.”

So how did a probe that used Goldstone’s findings as a starting point go on to inspire such a major refutation from one of the authors of the original report?

McGowan Davis’ report merely acknowledged that Israel has carried out an investigation into a possible “operational misconduct” in what is largely known outside Israel as the Gaza massacre. The UN follow-up report recognized the alleged 400 investigations, but didn’t bear out their validity. These secret inquiries actually led to little in terms of disciplinary action.

More, the UN team of experts claimed there was “no indication that Israel has opened investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead.”

In fact, Israel is known for investigating itself, and also for almost always finding everyone but its own leadership at fault. Israeli investigations are an obvious mockery of justice. Most of their findings, like those that followed another investigation of the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006, merely chastised the failure to win the war and to explain Israeli action to the world. They said little about looking into the death and wounding of innocent civilians. Is this what Goldstone meant when he used the words, “if I had known then what I know now”? And could this added knowledge about Israel’s secret — and largely farcical — investigations be enough to draw such extreme conclusions such as “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy”?

This was the trust of the Israeli argument, which attempted to reduce a persistent policy predicated on collective punishment — one that used controversial and outright illegal weapons against civilians — to the injudiciousness of individual soldiers. Goldstone’s calculated retraction is an adoption of “the Israeli position that any misdeeds during the Gaza assault were caused by individual deviants, not by policies or rules of engagement ordered by military leaders,” according to George Bisharat, professor at the Hastings College of the Law (as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, April 7). Bisharat added, “Yet the original report never accused Israel of widespread deliberate attacks on civilians, and thus Goldstone retracted a claim that had never been made. Most of its essential findings remain unchallenged.”

John Dugard, professor of law at the University of Pretoria and former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory agrees. “Richard Goldstone is a former judge and he knows full well that a fact-finding report by four persons, of whom he was only one, like the judgment of a court of law, cannot be changed by the subsequent reflections of a single member of the committee.”

Dugard, well known for his principled stances in the past, is also known for his moral consistency. “It is sad that this champion of accountability and international criminal justice should abandon the cause in such an ill-considered but nevertheless extremely harmful op-ed,” he wrote in the New Statesman on April 6.

Unsurprisingly, Israeli leaders are gloating. “Everything we said was proved true,” declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response to Goldstone’s moral collapse. The New York Times reported on April 5 that Goldstone agreed to visit Israel in July during a telephone call with Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai. “I will be happy to come,” Yishai quoted Goldstone as saying. “I always have love for the State of Israel.”

The fact is, Goldstone’s repudiations of some of his commission’s findings clearly have no legal validity. They are personally, and in fact selfishly motivated, and they prove that political and ideological affiliations are of greater weight for Goldstone than human suffering and international law and justice. There is no doubt, however, that Goldstone’s rethink will represent the backbone of Israel’s rationale in its future attacks on Gaza. Goldstone, once regarded as an “evil, evil man” by a prominent Israel apologist in the US, will become the selling point of Israel’s future war crimes.

If the killing of over 1,400 Palestinians is not a “matter of policy”, and Hamas’ killing of four Israelis is “intentional” — as claimed by Goldstone — then the sky is the limit for Israel’s war machine.

Indeed, “shocking” is not the right term. “Disgraceful” may be more fitting.


 

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.

His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.
 



 

 

 

  Bookmark and Share                                          Home | Top of the Page

Comments

Note: By posting your comments here you agree to the terms and conditions of www.ummid.com

Comments powered by DISQUS

 

 

 

Top Stories

BRICS countries need to further enhance coordination: Manmohan Singh

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday said the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) should combine their "huge potential" to continue enhancing their coordination on major  »

Ties with China stable, says India

 

  Most Read

Hundreds listen as experts unveil secrets of cracking Civil Services exams

Despite soaring temperature and intense heat, more than 1200 Civil Services aspirants thronged the Abdullah Ash-Shae Auditorium of Mansoora in Malegaon  »

Gandhi, Hazare and fight against corruption

Anna Hazare is emerging as another Gandhi and he is not only in every newspaper but also on almost every page of every newspaper for making UPA Government to accept his demand to draft Lok Pal   »

A flirting Modern Day Nero and submissive Modern Day Gandhi

 

  News Pick

Hazare's poster boy Nitish Kumar may face trouble over graft charges

A petition filed in the Patna High Court for re-hearing a public suit on alleged financial   »

Shocked activists urge Hazare to retract statement endorsing Modi

Assembly Elections: 70 million hold key in three states Wednesday

Nearly 70 million people will be eligible to vote Wednesday in assembly elections in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry where ruling parties are facing a stiff  »

Two sisters stay locked up for 7 months, rescued

Two sisters, who locked themselves up in their home for seven months after falling into deep depression following the death of their father, were rescued Tuesday in a state of acute starvation, police said. The women, left to fend  »

Indian Maharajah's Rolls-Royce up for sale at 850,000 pounds

A Rolls-Royce with gull-wing doors owned by an Indian Maharajah has gone on sale for a hopping 850,000 pounds, a media report said Tuesday. The super car, with the number plate 'Cexi', was customised from a 2005 Rolls-Royce. The four  »

Bhopal Tragedy: Hearing on harsher charges begins Wednesday

The Supreme Court will Wednesday hear petitions of the CBI and the central government for restoration of stringent charges against the then head of Union Carbide India Keshub Mahindra and   »

 

Picture of the Day

Farooq Naikwadi, a counselor for Civil Services exams, addressing a workshop on the topic at Abdullah Ash Shae Auditorium, Mansoora in Malegaon April 09, 2011

(Photo: ummid.com)

 

 
 
 
 
 

RSS  |  Contact us

| Quick links

News

 

Subscribe to

Ummid Assistant

 

National

Religion

RSS

Scholarships

About us

International

Culture

Twitter

Government Schemes

Feedback

Regional

History

Facebook

Education

Register

Politics

Opinion

Newsletter

 

Contact us

Business

Career

     

Education

       

 

 

Ummid.com: Disclaimer | Terms of Use | Advertise with us | Link Exchange

Ummid.com is part of the Awaz Multimedia & Publications providing World News, News Analysis and Feature Articles on Education, Health. Politics, Technology, Sports, Entertainment, Industry etc. The articles or the views displayed on this website are for public information and in no way describe the editorial views. The users are entitled to use this site subject to the terms and conditions mentioned.

© 2010 Awaz Multimedia & Publications. All rights reserved.