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The infamous Goldstone Report of a few years ago was so typical of UN/Euro treatment of Israel it passed without notice in these pages. Now Mr. Goldstone has decided to recant and becomes of interest. Jonathan Tobin begins a few comments.
In what must be considered as shocking a turnaround as any we have seen in recent years, Richard Goldstone, the chair of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s fact-finding commission about the conflict in Gaza, has retracted his claim that Israel deliberately sought to target and kill Palestinian civilians.
A product of the Human Rights Council, an organization that is singularly dedicated to besmirching and attacking Israel while ignoring serious crimes elsewhere (including those committed by the nations that makes up its membership), the Goldstone Report was widely criticized for its one-sided nature and the inaccuracy of its claims. But with Goldstone, who is a prominent South African Jew, as its front man, the report became the centerpiece of a new round of efforts aimed at both delegitimizing the Jewish state and its right of self-defense. His claims were taken up by anti-Zionists across the globe and in particular by those American left-wingers such as the J Street lobby and Michael Lerner’s Tikkun, which have both sought to establish themselves as Jewish critics of Israel and its defenders in this country.
But in an op-ed penned by Goldstone that was first published by the Washington Post on Friday night, the former judge admitted that his report was wrong. …
Nobody in recent memory has given the world such a startling example of the useful idiot as Richard Goldstone, the former South African judge who wrote a report for the U.N. Human Rights Council on the events in the Gaza Strip beginning in December 2008. Nothing in today’s public life quite matches his performance for credulity and ignorance.
Over the years, Hamas had acquired the habit of firing rockets and mortar shells by the thousand from Gaza across the border into Israel. Enough was enough, and Israeli armored columns put an end to it. For Hamas and its ally, the Human Rights Council, any attempt on the part of Israel to defend itself is aggression, and they do whatever they can to spread this smear in order to damage and delegitimize Israel. Here was a chance to enlarge their campaign, and Goldstone was the man to lead it.
So Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who fronted the U.N. report bearing his name that alleged massive Israeli war crimes in the Gaza war of 2008-2009, has taken to the pages of the Washington Post to say, in effect, “never mind”: …
… He was then, and is now, an entirely despicable public figure—and so is his op-ed, by the way, which continues to act as though it is appropriate to draw parallel inferences about Hamas and the state of Israel. It would be right for world Jewry that his name be hereafter summoned as we summon Benedict Arnold’s, or Tokyo Rose’s.
… We would welcome this apologia if we didn’t think a jurist of Mr. Goldstone’s stature should have known the difference between a democracy like Israel with a history of investigating its own failings under the rule of law, and a self-avowed terrorist state like the one Hamas runs in Gaza. “Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel,” Mr. Goldstone now concedes in stating the obvious, which at least proves he wants to retain a shred of his former reputation.
As our friends at the New York Sun note, Mr. Goldstone should now have the decency to retire from public life.
… Even in confessional mode, Richard Goldstone blames the victim — Israel brought this all on itself by not giving him information. In all his glorious ignorance he therefore had no qualms about accusing Israel of war crimes. You see, he had no choice. (There is a theme running through his career, isn’t there? Playing the role of hanging judge in South Africa wasn’t his idea, mind you.)
I have no idea what motivated Goldstone’s reversal. I leave to others whether he can atone for actions as despicable as his by merely saying, “Never mind. And not my fault.” I do however agree entirely with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who observes, “Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to retract a blood libel, once it has been broadcast across the world.” Maybe Goldstone will enlighten us on how he will try to undo the damage he has caused.
But what now? There is a fleet of nongovernmental organizations that has used the Goldstone report for fodder in the campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. Will these groups recant? ( J Street helped pen Goldstone’s defense and showed him around Capitol Hill, so it seems that group has a special obligation to recant its role in popularizing the Goldstone libel.) …
Volokh Conspiracy has more in “Richard Goldstone; Chief Kangaroo.”
… Goldstone apparently is starting to regret his role in the whole fiasco, and it’s certainly amusing to read various anti-Israel blogs that formerly lauded Goldstone as a hero for speaking truth to power now worrying about the “damage” he is doing to their cause. The key lines in his op-ed: while “the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional,” “civilians were not intentionally targeted [by Israel] as a matter of policy.”
But Goldstone agreed to lead a kangaroo court appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which includes such human rights stalwarts as China, Cuba, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Penance is always welcome, but Goldstone will go down in history as the head kangaroo. …
Speaking of “nevermind”, the president and attorney general have decided to cancel KSM’s trial in Manhattan. Ed Morrissey does the honors.
… For Holder and Barack Obama, however, the decision to send KSM back to a military commission is an unmitigated political defeat. Obama stopped the commission’s trial of KSM immediately upon taking office even though KSM had indicated he’d plead guilty. Now that process has to start over, wasting more time and resources for nothing more than two years of grandstanding. In the end, Obama not only didn’t close Gitmo, he actually showed how necessary it is for dealing with terrorists captured abroad by our military and intelligence assets. …
George Will columns on one of the latest clients of The Institute for Justice.
A dialectic of judicial deference and political arrogance is on display in St. Louis. When excessively deferential courts permit governmental arrogance, additional arrogance results as government explores the limits of judicial deference. As Jim Roos knows.
He formed a nonprofit housing and community development corporation that provides residences for people with low incomes. Several times its properties have been seized by the city government, using “blight” as an excuse for transferring property to developers who can pay more taxes to the seizing government.
The Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision legitimized this. It permits governments to cite “blight” — a notoriously elastic concept, sometimes denoting nothing more than chipped paint or cracked sidewalks — to justify seizing property for the “public use” of enriching those governments.
Roos responded by painting on the side of one of his buildings a large mural — a slash through a red circle containing the words “End Eminent Domain Abuse.” The government that had provoked him declared his sign “illegal” and demanded that he seek a permit for it. He did. Then the government denied the permit. …
More about IJ’s interests from its president, Chip Mellor in Forbes.
If Americans want to see how to create jobs, they should stop looking to Washington, D.C. for answers and turn their attention southward to Florida. There, as a means of reducing the state’s higher-than-national-average unemployment rate, Gov. Rick Scott has proposed eliminating job-killing licensing requirements in 20 occupations, ranging from auto repair shops to ballroom dance studios and hair braiders.
But businesses that have long benefited from government-enforced cartels in these occupations aren’t giving up without a fight. The most vocal of those seeking to maintain their protected status are interior designers. Florida is one of only three states that regulates the practice of interior design; the other two are Louisiana and Nevada. Even though no less than the Florida Attorney General’s office has admitted there is no evidence that interior design licensing has benefited the public in any way, the designers’ cartel has hired a high-powered lobbyist to wage an aggressive PR campaign to remove interior design from the should-be deregulated industries.
Among other efforts, the cartel bused in interior design students to Tallahassee from across the state to tell legislators that their degrees would become “worthless” if other people could freely practice interior design in Florida the way they can in 47 other states. One designer claimed that allowing just anyone to practice interior design would contribute to 88,000 deaths annually because of poor fabric selection. …
Joe Nocera writes on the troubles at Berkshire Hathaway.
Whenever the world’s greatest investor gets in a tight squeeze, he straps on his angel wings, readjusts his halo, and leans on his reputation for avuncular straight talk to make the problem go away.
Warren Buffett did it in the early-1990s, when one of his holdings at the time, Salomon Brothers, was caught in a Treasury bond scandal. He did it in the mid-2000s, when executives at General Re, owned by Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, were prosecuted for concocting a phony transaction with A.I.G.
Now he’s doing it again as he attempts to gloss over the actions of a close associate that look suspiciously like insider trading. The deputy, David Sokol, resigned earlier this week, claiming he wanted to concentrate on his “philanthropic interests.” (That’s what they all say.) The resignation, said Buffett, came as a “total surprise.” (They all say that, too.) …