by Professor Jack Golbert
A friend of mine, who had been a prominent rabbi in South Africa before he emigrated to Israel, once went on a speaking tour in America. His subject was Israel but Jews in America besieged him with questions about the Apartheid regime in South Africa, then in its death throes. He was bemused. Of all the cruelty and injustice in the world, why should apartheid specifically have so riveted the passions of Jews?
And what does it have to do with the passion of Jews today to end “The Occupation” and with a Jewish judge, Richard Goldstone, heading an international commission of enquiry, which was really an inquisition from the beginning, conceived and commissioned to find Israel guilty?
To review the Goldstone matter, Richard Goldstone is a retired South African judge, and, for many years, a supporter of the State of Israel.
In 2008, following eight years during which Hamas fired more than eight thousand rockets into Israeli towns, principally Sderot, specifically targeting civilians, Israel launched a limited military incursion into the Gaza strip to hamper Hamas’ capability to do that and to deter the practice. In the course of the operation, Israeli forces encountered and documented Hamas firing rockets from schools and apartment buildings and even next to a UN installation, storing war materiel in mosques and apartment buildings and using ambulances to transport combatants and munitions. Hamas also maintained a command center underneath a hospital (which Israeli forces did not attack).
The Arabs accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the world threw an absolute hissy fit. Accusations against Israel are automatically believed, no matter how many times the accuser has lied to the world, no matter how many times it has been subsequently proven that they are lies, no matter how guilty the accuser is of the very crimes in question. Among the crimes the Arabs accused Israel of was “wanton and deliberate targeting of civilians.” Of course, that’s what the “Palestinians” did to Israelis and continue to do, but the crime is laid at Israel’s door.
The United Nations Human Rights Council decided to send a commission with the mandate,
... to investigate 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, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission. UN Resolution S-9/1
The resolution assumes a priori, Israeli guilt of aggression and violations of human rights. It also erroneously states that the Gaza Strip is occupied, when in fact, Israel vacated the Gaza Strip more than three years earlier and Hamas seized full control.
Judge Goldstone accepted the assignment, notwithstanding the inherent prejudice in the very creation of the mission and notwithstanding the fact that the members of the mission themselves had prejudged the question. He himself also followed methods and procedures that could only taint testimony given and degrade any real fact-finding potential of the mission. This is all detailed by Alan Dershowitz. (The case against the Goldstone Report: A study in evidentiary bias, http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/3593975)
What explains the Goldstone Syndrome? Why would a Jew decide to serve the enemies of the Jews, the very people whose most cherished goal is to destroy the State of Israel and massacre all the Jews in the world. This is not hyperbole. They say it themselves on their websites and in their media, their public meetings and in their mosques. The Hamas Charter itself (in Article Seven) says that Jews are the cause of all the world's problems and that the Judgment Day can come only by killing all the Jews.
I have two theories which interlock. First, I believe it is a function of a specifically Jewish sickness called Ma Yomru Hagoyim - freely translated, What will the World Think of Us -- a uniquely virulent form of the well-known psycho-sociological phenomenon called "Self-Hatred." In brief, the natural result of being universally reviled is to internalize the reaction that it is one's own fault, that if one (or, in this case, we Jews) behaved more acceptably to those who revile us, we would no longer be hated; or even more simply stated, Jews are the cause of anti-Semitism.
There is hardly a Jew alive who has not been told by bigots “You aren’t like the other Jews” meaning “You’re OK”... unlike the Other Jews; unlike Those Jews. The notion is implanted that “if all Jews were like me, there would not be anti-Semitism,” that the world hates us because we are different, because we believe we are special and "chosen", because we believe we are superior and above the rules of civilization and entitled to rule over others, etc. Therefore, the cure to anti-Semitism is for Jews to accept universal "enlightenment" and universality and to demolish particularisms, starting with our own, and be worldly, flexible and liberal.
Following this reasoning, the obstacle to peaceful relations with the non-Jewish world is Those Jews, the ones who refuse to assimilate. So the "good Jews", the enlightened Jews, the universalist Jews have to prove that not all Jews are like "Those Jews". The classic paradigm is the sheiner Yidden, in the language of an earlier generation, who believed that the Jews who learned Talmud and kept the Commandments caused anti-Semitism. Their solution was to petition government to outlaw learning of Talmud and otherwise suppress the practice of Orthodox Judaism.
The sheiner Yidden feel the need for Jews to be in the forefront of the struggle for abstract "justice" (as defined from time to time by the world at large), and champion all the causes currently popular among the nations of the world. Jews have to do so, even if the cause is inimical to Jewish interest, for that proves our sincerity and dedication to principle. In fact, if the cause is perfectly suicidal to Jewish interests, it presents a positive opportunity to prove our commitment to principle.
The issue, therefore, was never whether apartheid or “The Occupation” is the worst thing happening at any historical moment. Rather, it is merely that this is the cause which seems dearest to the world at the time, and therefore, is the cause which best enables us to endear ourselves to the hearts of the world by being in the vanguard. If we are the first and the best of what they think is good, how can they hate us? It is enough to command the massive allegiance of Jews that it is a popular cause for the world at large, especially for those who hate us the most.
How does a cause become endeared to the world? The "conscience of the world", whether that conscience is embodied in world organizations, such as the United Nations, non-governmental organizations or the international press corps, fully subscribes to the most powerful driving “principle” in international relations today; namely, Third World Can Do No Wrong.
The corollary is that Democratic West can do right only by full support of Third World causes, however one-sided or suicidal. The West too suffers from self-hatred, being so reviled for so long by their ex-colonies for their history of exploitation and so, it has abdicated moral leadership to the Third World and serves Third World goals dutifully.
Since the Third World is dominated by the countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, it is the richest and the most populous of the Islamic countries who determine what causes are most important. Since the Islamic countries despise Jews and cannot reconcile themselves to the loss of Islamic sovereignty, and certainly not to the lowly Jews, “The Occupation” is a source of acute embarrassment to the sheiner Yidden which has to be ended at all cost and the State of Israel even abolished or the world will not accept us.
Here two historic dynamics merge. The West is the exemplar of skill in "imagery"; presentation of urges as ideals, of consumerism as "progress", of technology as spiritual enlightenment, of bigotry as principle. (Remember “Manifest Destiny” and “White Man’s Burden”? Remember the sacred principles of "States' Rights" and "Neighborhood Schools"?) It is no accident that public relations is a Western invention.
The second historical dynamic is that the West has always used the Jew as the scapegoat to cleanse its own conscience by projecting its sins onto the Jew and then punishing the Jew. Thus, Europe can expiate the sin of Nazism by turning the Israelis into Nazis in their own minds and then "fighting Nazism" by attacking Israel. So important is it to them to do this that there is no distinction which cannot be obliterated in the process, even to the point of blind nihilism.
After evacuating Gaza and absorbing some 8,000 rockets from Hamas, specifically targeting civilians, Israel finally undertook a limited, pinpoint operation to inhibit the hostile activity and the world went into a rage, as mentioned. The world screamed “Genocide!” Seriously. The Israeli “occupation” has been called “fascistic,” “genocidal,” and even “worse than the Nazis.”
In fact, the population of Gaza has quadrupled under the “fascistic, genocidal, worse-than-the-Nazis, apartheid” Israeli “occupation.” Standard of living and life expectancy have increased similarly. At the same time, the rate of infant mortality has declined sharply. If the Jews had suffered such a fate in Europe, the word “genocide” would not have entered the vocabulary of the world. (Should we compare the rate of Jewish infant mortality in the Holocaust?)
But the European “peace camp” intones solemnly that “The real Holocaust is in Gaza.” That is so ludicrous that it should have the world rolling on the floor holding their sides in derisive laughter. But no, people take it seriously and entertain it as a valid opinion.
Fuel, food and medicine have been allowed into Gaza, even during Operation Cast Lead and even though they have been routinely commandeered by Hamas to its terrorists. Nevertheless, Gaza is compared to the Warsaw Ghetto, where Jews were confined and systematically undernourished, stressed and humiliated and denied medical attention and publicly executed for smuggling food and medicine.
How are they similar? Did the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rain rockets down on German cities and send suicide bombers to blow up German restaurants? Did they wage relentless war on Germany for generations, asserting their right to destroy Germany and turn the Baltic red with German blood? Unlike the Arabs of Gaza, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were completely innocent of any offense against Germany or anyone else and completely harmless.
Hamas, like all the other Arab terrorist organizations, fires from civilian locations, stores munitions in mosques and schools, uses ambulances to transport combatants and munitions, hides among civilians and otherwise uses Arab civilians as human shields. Those practices are war crimes, defined as “perfidy” by the Geneva Conventions. Civilian casualties that result when the enemy returns fire are the responsibility of the party guilty of perfidy. That is international law and also good morals.
None of that applies, however, when the enemy is Israel. In that case, responsibility for the civilian casualties is on the party whose munitions caused them, no matter what. The terrorists gain immunity from return fire by committing the war crime of using civilians as human shields.
The fact is that no one in the world is as careful of enemy civilian casualties as is Israel, which even exposes its own soldiers to mortal danger to spare enemy civilians, but that is not enough. Any casualties to anyone who can be presented as a civilian are deemed to be Israel’s fault and constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, even if they are human shields, even if, in fact, they are terrorists in civilian clothing, which is another war crime.
None of those militating against Israel over the fate of the “Palestinian” civilians, however, really cares at all about them. The proof is the total lack of interest in any massacres of Palestinian civilians by anyone not associated with Israel; not the Fatah people rounded up and thrown off roofs or otherwise massacred by Hamas; not the tens of thousands killed by King Hussein of Jordan back in 1970, when he put down a PLO uprising against his rule.
Nor do the parties screaming “genocide” really care at all about genocide. The proof is the lack of interest elicited by any of the real genocides taking place in the world, even as they scream about a totally fanciful Israeli “genocide” against the “Palestinians.” Sudan is committing, not one genocide but two; one against the people of Darfur and another, of longer duration, against the black Africans of the South of Sudan and the Conscience of the World could hardly care less. Who did anything for the Tutsis when they were being massacred by the hundreds of thousands? Who did anything about the Chinese genocide against the Tibetans or the Indonesian genocide in East Timor? Third World can do no wrong, even when the victim is another Third World people.
No one presents any of this as anti-Semitism, of course. What we are given to believe is that it is only Zionism that is reviled, certainly not Jews or Judaism. Of course, that is demonstrably nonsense. Why is Jewish nationalism, alone among the world’s nationalisms, illegitimate and “racist”? And why is anti-Zionism always accompanied by threats and intimidation against Jews? Why do defensive measures taken by everyone in the world become “disproportionate” and criminal when undertaken by Zionists?
If anti-Zionist is not anti-Jewish, then why are slogans like “Jews to the gas” heard at demonstrations all over Europe, North and South America and the Muslim world and it seems to be perfectly acceptable? And why is violence against Jews very generally not treated as a hate crime?
And once again, a powerful nation has decided that the world would be better off without Jews and the world seems willing to go along with the decision. Iran has declared “wiping Israel off the map” as part of its agenda and its proxies, Hezballah and Hamas, have openly declared their intention to kill every Jew in the world. And yet, the world regards them as “legitimate resistance” and is moving on all fronts to empower them as sovereigns over territory and engage them as part of the international community. No one even objects that nuking Israel would kill approximately eight million Arabs, including their precious “Palestinians.” No one objects to the intended double genocide, not even the “Palestinians.”
Forcing Israel into indefensible borders and tying its hands defensively is presented, still to this day, as part of a “peace process” as though the proponents really believe that Israeli surrender of territory and other strategically important concessions will actually result in peace with the Arabs. In fact, not many people are that stupid. Every Israeli concession has produced more war and death, not less. Anyone who advocates for the “peace process” is willfully trying to bring about the demise of Israel and the slaughter of the Jews.
There is now an American administration and a tame, well funded, ostensibly Jewish organization which insist that they are pro-Israel because they seek to force Israel into concessions “for peace” and isn’t peace in Israel’s interest? They know what the Road Map really is. They know the Road ends at Auschwitz Revisited.
Nevertheless, the effect on Jews, sensitized by self-hatred, is to stimulate the urge to out-do the world, to be better at their game than they. Once the direction the wind is blowing is clear, the urge is perfectly reflexive: to run to get there first, wherever it may be, in the expectation of being smothered in camaraderie. When the camaraderie is withheld, and they still experience self-consciousness at their own Jewishness, they naturally locate the cause as the "Other" Jews who did not run with them, and thus denied them the approval of the Jew-haters, which they so crave.
A great many Jews accept and internalize the hatred of the nations. They feel the need to justify our existence to a world which hates us, not for what we do, but simply for the fact of our existence. They do not see the futility of trying to justify the Jews’ existence by championing a cause which the West needs to pursue to expiate its own guilt, which historically requires The Jew as scapegoat, a cause which the Islamic nations pursue in order to do away with the anathema of a state of the despised Jews in the Middle East.
Subtly, the enemy becomes the "Other" Jews rather than the bigots who hate us and the remedy is to make common cause with the bigots against the "Other" Jews.
So the demand "Peace Now" has been directed toward the government of Israel alone, never toward the Arab parties, as if it were so clear that the Arabs sincerely want nothing but peace and the Israelis can have true peace any time they want it just by abandoning their aggressive ways; as if it were so clear that the Arab leaders who stood poised in 1967 to "drive the Jews into the sea" and "turn the Mediterranean red with Jewish blood" really want true peace if only Israel will put its neck on the block again by retreating to the 1949 Armistice lines, with a 9 mile waist at its population center, facing uphill toward the Arab armies.
Their hatred of the Other Jews has become ever more extreme. Expulsions of Jews from their homes and communities have been carried out by the Israeli government with exceptional violence and brutality. It was obviously planned, with malice aforethought, that resettlement and rehabilitation of those communities would be delayed indefinitely, simply to destroy the lives of Those Other Jews and render them powerless. In a word, they were pogroms.
In Israel and all over the world, there are Jews in the forefront of the efforts to delegitimate the State of Israel as a “fascist” and “apartheid” state and return the Jews there to minority status, to be ruled over by the tender mercies of the “Palestinians,” who make no secret of their intentions to slaughter Jews and reduce any survivors to dhimmi status. No one calls it “apartheid” or “racist.” University professors in Israel and all over the world call for the isolation of Israel, boycott of Israeli products and of the very universities whose faculties they sit on. The idea of a Jewish State is an embarrassment to them. They have taken every opportunity to proclaim that Israel is not a Jewish state, but rather, a state of all its citizens which happens to have a Jewish majority, for the time being.
In this environment, Jews have a choice.
They can go along with the tenor of the times and stand, as Richard Goldstone has done, shoulder to shoulder with the world’s elite, which has grown more openly and viciously anti-Semitic year by year. Obviously, acceptance and promotion in the world of the elite goes to those who serve the established Jew-hating order without reservation, just as it once depended on serving the Church in its persecution of Jews or the Communists in theirs. The price demanded for entrée into the community of the “enlightened” Jew-haters is total support of the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people. Their hostility to everything associated with Israel must be as vociferous as that of any of the bigots. They must become, in effect, “unJews.” In doing so, of course, they lend legitimacy to their benefactors’ bigotry. The first and the best, remember?
They will be amply rewarded. They will be praised and honored for their service to the forces of Jew-hatred who pose as defenders of human rights and the rights of beleaguered civilians. The organizations of the sheiner Yidden will receive copious financing from European governments and foundations that have for many years financed Arab terror organizations (in the name of “resistance,” of course). Richard Goldstone has opposed apartheid in its season and now devotes the full weight of his record and his prestige to the service of the world elite’s next great cause: the delegitimation of Israel and its eventual destruction. For service of such value, he could even become Secretary General of the United Nations.
Or a Jew can stand for truth against the Powers That Be, the “Conscience of the World” as embodied in august sounding titles, like United Nations Human Rights Council, which is dominated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference whose members in fact include some of the most egregious violators of human rights in the world. That is irrelevant to the world’s twisted morality, however. Third World Can Do No Wrong, after all, even when the victim is another Third World people. Will it be different if the victim is The Jew?
Apartheid is now a thing of the past and the new business on the world's agenda is not the real evils in the world but rather, delegitimation and destruction of Israel. And the sound we hear is the stampede of the sheiner Yidden, running to get there first.
The writer, a former professor of law in Los Angeles, practices law in Jerusalem, is one of the founders of Hashkem, http://www.hashkem.globaltensystems.com
See this at Israel Behind the News
Showing posts with label Richard Goldstone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Goldstone. Show all posts
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Goldstone’s Past: Look Who’s Talking
JERUSALEM - Judge Richard Goldstone gained notoriety in Israel over the past year when the U.N. human rights commission that he chaired made the determination that Israel committed war crimes and criticized the Israeli Defense Forces, which, he claimed, had violated basic human rights.
Judge Richard Goldstone forgot only one thing: to make any mention of his own sordid human rights record.
A special investigation by the Tel Aviv newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, which will be published in this weekend’s Yediot weekend magazine section, will spell out Richard Goldstone’s record as a judge during the apartheid era in South Africa.
It turns out that the judge who authored the U.N. report, which castigated Israel’s three-week incursion into Gaza, took an active part in enforcing the racist policy of one of the cruelest regimes of the 20th Century.
It turns out that when Judge Goldstone sat as a judge in the Court of Appeals in the 1980s and the 1990s, he sent dozens of black people to the gallows without mercy.
This stain on his past did not prevent him from speaking many times against the death penalty and directing sharp criticism at many countries that allowed executions to take place.
Never, it seems in any of his statements, did Judge Goldstone own up to his own actions.
The findings that Yediot Ahronot obtained indicate that Mr. Goldstone sentenced at least 28 black people to death.
In those days, he made sure to demonstrate his support for the policy of executions.
“The death penalty must reflect society’s demand to claim a price for crimes that people justly see as atrocious,” Mr. Goldstone wrote in a ruling that rejected the appeal of a black man convicted of murder.
In another sentencing, in which Judge Goldstone confirmed the death sentence for a black youth who had been convicted of murdering the white restaurant owner who fired him, Judge Goldstone wrote that “hanging was the only punishment that could deter in such cases.”
“Anger is a relevant factor in imposing appropriate punishment,” Judge Goldstone added.
It should be noted that the white members of the supreme, oppressive class demanded the maximum penalty of black people who were involved in acts of violence, while the black majority in South Africa consistently opposed the death penalty.
When he judged defendants for lesser crimes, Judge Goldstone always sided with the racist policy of the apartheid regime.
Among other things, he confirmed a sentence of flogging for four black men convicted of violence.
In another case, Judge Goldstone sentenced two black youths to prison for possessing a cassette containing the recording of a speech by Nelson Mandela.
Only in 1995, when Nelson Mandela’s party came to power, was the South African constitution amended and the death penalty abolished. Hundreds of death row inmates were saved from the gallows, including those whom Goldstone had sentenced to death.
“I always opposed the death penalty, but I was part of a system in which the death penalty existed,” Judge Goldstone commented in response to the details of the investigation, which were brought to his attention.
Judge Goldstone also claimed, in his defense, that as a judge during the apartheid era, he had to respect the laws of the country and could not find enough mitigating circumstances to save the defendants brought before him from the death penalty. Judge Goldstone claimed that he never discriminated against black defendants and that he did all he could to act fairly, but sometimes was compelled to uphold laws to which he was morally opposed.
“I was always committed to preserving equality and nondiscrimination, just as I was committed to upholding the law. Sometimes these two principles clashed in very complex ways,” he said.
View this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
View this story at Israel Behind the News
Judge Richard Goldstone forgot only one thing: to make any mention of his own sordid human rights record.
A special investigation by the Tel Aviv newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, which will be published in this weekend’s Yediot weekend magazine section, will spell out Richard Goldstone’s record as a judge during the apartheid era in South Africa.
It turns out that the judge who authored the U.N. report, which castigated Israel’s three-week incursion into Gaza, took an active part in enforcing the racist policy of one of the cruelest regimes of the 20th Century.
It turns out that when Judge Goldstone sat as a judge in the Court of Appeals in the 1980s and the 1990s, he sent dozens of black people to the gallows without mercy.
This stain on his past did not prevent him from speaking many times against the death penalty and directing sharp criticism at many countries that allowed executions to take place.
Never, it seems in any of his statements, did Judge Goldstone own up to his own actions.
The findings that Yediot Ahronot obtained indicate that Mr. Goldstone sentenced at least 28 black people to death.
In those days, he made sure to demonstrate his support for the policy of executions.
“The death penalty must reflect society’s demand to claim a price for crimes that people justly see as atrocious,” Mr. Goldstone wrote in a ruling that rejected the appeal of a black man convicted of murder.
In another sentencing, in which Judge Goldstone confirmed the death sentence for a black youth who had been convicted of murdering the white restaurant owner who fired him, Judge Goldstone wrote that “hanging was the only punishment that could deter in such cases.”
“Anger is a relevant factor in imposing appropriate punishment,” Judge Goldstone added.
It should be noted that the white members of the supreme, oppressive class demanded the maximum penalty of black people who were involved in acts of violence, while the black majority in South Africa consistently opposed the death penalty.
When he judged defendants for lesser crimes, Judge Goldstone always sided with the racist policy of the apartheid regime.
Among other things, he confirmed a sentence of flogging for four black men convicted of violence.
In another case, Judge Goldstone sentenced two black youths to prison for possessing a cassette containing the recording of a speech by Nelson Mandela.
Only in 1995, when Nelson Mandela’s party came to power, was the South African constitution amended and the death penalty abolished. Hundreds of death row inmates were saved from the gallows, including those whom Goldstone had sentenced to death.
“I always opposed the death penalty, but I was part of a system in which the death penalty existed,” Judge Goldstone commented in response to the details of the investigation, which were brought to his attention.
Judge Goldstone also claimed, in his defense, that as a judge during the apartheid era, he had to respect the laws of the country and could not find enough mitigating circumstances to save the defendants brought before him from the death penalty. Judge Goldstone claimed that he never discriminated against black defendants and that he did all he could to act fairly, but sometimes was compelled to uphold laws to which he was morally opposed.
“I was always committed to preserving equality and nondiscrimination, just as I was committed to upholding the law. Sometimes these two principles clashed in very complex ways,” he said.
View this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
View this story at Israel Behind the News
Friday, February 12, 2010
Endangering Lives to Sell Newspapers: Misrepresenting a Professional Critique of the Goldstone Report
by Professor Alan Dershowitz
Professor of Law, Harvard University
It all began with an innocent enough request for an interview about the Goldstone report and my 49 page response [1] to it. The Israeli Army radio station asked to interview me. The interview was conducted by an experienced host, Razi Barkai. Unbeknownst to me, Barkai had an agenda. He wanted to get me to say that I thought that Goldstone was a “moser.” He wanted me to use this Hebrew word, whose meaning I did not understand, because in Israel, this obscure theological term has taken on a meaning of its own. According to The Forward, “the term moser entered Israeli political discourse in 1995 in the wake of Rabin’s assassination by radical settler supporter Yigal Amir, when Amir cited some rabbis’ designation of Rabin as a moser as part of his justification for carrying out the murder.” The Forward quoted Michael Karpin, an Israeli journalist and the author of a book on Rabin’s assassination, as follows: “After the assassination, when Amir was interviewed by the police and he mentioned the term moser, people tried to find out what it is...Nobody used it here before the assassination.”
Unfortunately, I was totally unfamiliar with the “inside baseball”-or in this case “inside Israel”-use of this esoteric term.
Several times during the interview, Barkai tried to get me to agree that Goldstone was a moser, a word he pronounced with a thick accent. Since the interview was being conducted in English, I thought he was asking me to agree with him that Goldstone was a “monster.” I would never use the term “monster” since it suggests an inherent, even genetic, flaw in a person, without regard to what he has said or done. I was clear throughout my interview that I believed that Goldstone had exploited his Jewishness to lend illegitimate credibility to a false report [2]. In this respect, he had betrayed his people and deserved to be condemned in the marketplace of ideas. Accordingly, when Barkai asked me the following question, “Do you hint, Professor, that he is a moser, someone who betrays his own people?,” I focused on the part of the question I understood. Believing that he is someone who betrays his own people, I answered the question in the affirmative. Barkai had sprung the trap. Now he had me. He could send out press releases indicating that I had called Goldstone a moser, even though I never used the word and had no idea what it meant.
The story spread quickly around the world, and I was condemned, largely by the extreme left, for advocating Goldstone’s murder. As soon as I heard this, I immediately demanded a clarification from Barkai, which he ran on the air. I repeatedly emphasized, in subsequent interviews, that “I certainly did not mean to imply that any physical harm should come to Goldstone.” But this didn’t stop the incitement by those in the media more interested in sensationalism than truth.
M.J. Rosenberg, the former Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, wrote in his Palestine Note blog that I was “calling for Goldstone’s murder.” Even more insidiously, the Forward, a mainstream Jewish newspaper, ran a lengthy piece strongly implying that I must have known the theological (or “Halachic”) implications of “moser.” They went so far as to find an elementary school classmate at Etz Chayim Yeshiva in Boro Park who told them, quite erroneously, that I “must have heard it as a child.” (Another classmate wrote the Forward a letter confirming that he too had never heard it-and he was a good Yeshiva student!) The Forward then went on to quote another rabbi to the effect that “a moser can become a capital crime” under certain circumstances. At the very bottom of the article, so as not to detract from its sensationalism, the Forward included the following disclaimer:
“I do not want any harm to come to Richard Goldstone,” Dershowitz said. “I want him to be responded to in the marketplace of ideas.”
An article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Ron Kampares was even more irresponsible. It “reported” the following:
“Most recently, Alan Dershowitz likened him to a “moser”, a Jewish traitor deemed in some interpretations as worthy of a death sentence.”
This was written days after I had made it clear that I wanted no harm to befall Goldstone. A response to the JTA article by Debra DeLee, President and CEO of Americans For Peace Now, accused me-also days after I made my position clear-of calling Goldstone a “moser,” which she said is “a term reserved in traditional Jewish law for a Jewish traitor who should be killed.”
She also showed her ignorance of the fact that I had written a 49 page substantive response to the Goldstone report, by saying that I “could have-and should have-aired substantive disagreements about the report that Judge Goldstone authored following the Gaza War.”
Finally, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Bradley Burston) described me as “Kahane-sounding,” a reference for the radical rabbi who did in fact call for violence-as contrasted for my call for peace based on a two-state solution and the end of civilian settlements. But no matter, its sells newspapers.
It’s bad enough that there are some religious extremists on both sides who actually incite their followers to commit violence. But when elements of the mainstream Israeli and Jewish media twist the truth in the interest of sensationalism to imply-or state outright-that I am calling for the murder of Richard Goldstone, it is those irresponsible members of the media (and of Americans For Peace Now) who become the inciters.
See this article at Israel Behind the News
Professor of Law, Harvard University
It all began with an innocent enough request for an interview about the Goldstone report and my 49 page response [1] to it. The Israeli Army radio station asked to interview me. The interview was conducted by an experienced host, Razi Barkai. Unbeknownst to me, Barkai had an agenda. He wanted to get me to say that I thought that Goldstone was a “moser.” He wanted me to use this Hebrew word, whose meaning I did not understand, because in Israel, this obscure theological term has taken on a meaning of its own. According to The Forward, “the term moser entered Israeli political discourse in 1995 in the wake of Rabin’s assassination by radical settler supporter Yigal Amir, when Amir cited some rabbis’ designation of Rabin as a moser as part of his justification for carrying out the murder.” The Forward quoted Michael Karpin, an Israeli journalist and the author of a book on Rabin’s assassination, as follows: “After the assassination, when Amir was interviewed by the police and he mentioned the term moser, people tried to find out what it is...Nobody used it here before the assassination.”
Unfortunately, I was totally unfamiliar with the “inside baseball”-or in this case “inside Israel”-use of this esoteric term.
Several times during the interview, Barkai tried to get me to agree that Goldstone was a moser, a word he pronounced with a thick accent. Since the interview was being conducted in English, I thought he was asking me to agree with him that Goldstone was a “monster.” I would never use the term “monster” since it suggests an inherent, even genetic, flaw in a person, without regard to what he has said or done. I was clear throughout my interview that I believed that Goldstone had exploited his Jewishness to lend illegitimate credibility to a false report [2]. In this respect, he had betrayed his people and deserved to be condemned in the marketplace of ideas. Accordingly, when Barkai asked me the following question, “Do you hint, Professor, that he is a moser, someone who betrays his own people?,” I focused on the part of the question I understood. Believing that he is someone who betrays his own people, I answered the question in the affirmative. Barkai had sprung the trap. Now he had me. He could send out press releases indicating that I had called Goldstone a moser, even though I never used the word and had no idea what it meant.
The story spread quickly around the world, and I was condemned, largely by the extreme left, for advocating Goldstone’s murder. As soon as I heard this, I immediately demanded a clarification from Barkai, which he ran on the air. I repeatedly emphasized, in subsequent interviews, that “I certainly did not mean to imply that any physical harm should come to Goldstone.” But this didn’t stop the incitement by those in the media more interested in sensationalism than truth.
M.J. Rosenberg, the former Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, wrote in his Palestine Note blog that I was “calling for Goldstone’s murder.” Even more insidiously, the Forward, a mainstream Jewish newspaper, ran a lengthy piece strongly implying that I must have known the theological (or “Halachic”) implications of “moser.” They went so far as to find an elementary school classmate at Etz Chayim Yeshiva in Boro Park who told them, quite erroneously, that I “must have heard it as a child.” (Another classmate wrote the Forward a letter confirming that he too had never heard it-and he was a good Yeshiva student!) The Forward then went on to quote another rabbi to the effect that “a moser can become a capital crime” under certain circumstances. At the very bottom of the article, so as not to detract from its sensationalism, the Forward included the following disclaimer:
“I do not want any harm to come to Richard Goldstone,” Dershowitz said. “I want him to be responded to in the marketplace of ideas.”
An article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Ron Kampares was even more irresponsible. It “reported” the following:
“Most recently, Alan Dershowitz likened him to a “moser”, a Jewish traitor deemed in some interpretations as worthy of a death sentence.”
This was written days after I had made it clear that I wanted no harm to befall Goldstone. A response to the JTA article by Debra DeLee, President and CEO of Americans For Peace Now, accused me-also days after I made my position clear-of calling Goldstone a “moser,” which she said is “a term reserved in traditional Jewish law for a Jewish traitor who should be killed.”
She also showed her ignorance of the fact that I had written a 49 page substantive response to the Goldstone report, by saying that I “could have-and should have-aired substantive disagreements about the report that Judge Goldstone authored following the Gaza War.”
Finally, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Bradley Burston) described me as “Kahane-sounding,” a reference for the radical rabbi who did in fact call for violence-as contrasted for my call for peace based on a two-state solution and the end of civilian settlements. But no matter, its sells newspapers.
It’s bad enough that there are some religious extremists on both sides who actually incite their followers to commit violence. But when elements of the mainstream Israeli and Jewish media twist the truth in the interest of sensationalism to imply-or state outright-that I am calling for the murder of Richard Goldstone, it is those irresponsible members of the media (and of Americans For Peace Now) who become the inciters.
See this article at Israel Behind the News
Monday, February 8, 2010
How Hamas has Responded to Goldstone's Charges
by Jonathan Dahohah Halevi for Yediot Ahronot
Israel has recently delivered to the United Nations Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon its official response to the UN’s fact finding mission to Operation Cast Lead, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone. Hamas’ government is also preparing to submit its official response before the grace period of six months set to the parties by the Goldstone committee is overIn sharp contrast to the genuine fears expressed by Israel, Hamas does not seem to feel any threat in the legal arena. On the contrary, Hamas demonstrates self-confidence based on the understanding that the Goldstone committee strived only to incriminate Israel and all other limited references to the other side were just for lip service without any legal significance.
Musa Abu Marzouq, Hamas’ second in command, said in this regard in an interview to al-Mashahid al-Siyasi newspaper (December 8, 2009) that “All paragraphs in the Goldstone report convict Israel and totally exonerate Hamas from any misconduct... Likewise, the (Goldstone) report exonerated Hamas from all other accusations mentioned by Israel and even when the (Goldstone) report is dealing with the rockets which were launched from the Gaza Strip it speaks about military groups without naming Hamas.”
Hamas’ line of defense vis-à-vis the Goldstone report has been shaped by a group of Palestinian jurists headed by Diya Al-Din Muhsin Al-Madhoun, former legal adviser to Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas prime minister) and today chairman of the Tawtheeq (documentation) organization that was the key factor assigned by Hamas’ government, on which the Goldstone committee relied for sources of information in its fact finding mission. In series of interviews to the media, Madhoun elaborated as follows Hamas’ main legal arguments of its would-be response to the Goldstone report assumed to be delivered in the near future to the UN secretary general.
The armed struggle is legitimate
Madhoun asserts that all historic Palestine is an occupied land and that the international law legitimizes the right of self defense and resistance of the Palestinian people, who are living under 61 years of occupation. Therefore, Madhoun argues that “resistance operations conducted by the Palestinian resistance organizations, including launching rockets and mortar shells at the occupying Zionist forces, and all other military operations, are legitimate according the international law under the principle of defending our people and liberating our occupied land.”
Israel has no right to self defense
Madhoun entirely rebuts Israel’s claim for self defence, arguing that it constitutes a grave violation of the Palestinian people’s right for self defence as reflected in its armed struggle to liberate the land of Palestine. And in his words (translated from Arabic): “the war against Gaza was illegitimate... as the international law rules that there isn’t legitimate defence (of the occupier) against the legitimate defence (of the occupied) embodied in the defence through struggle.”
Hamas didn’t want to kill Israeli civilians
According to Madhoun, Hamas and the other “Palestinian resistance organizations” were systematically prudent in implementing the international law and avoided intentionally targeting Israeli civilians. Referring to the many hundreds of rockets which struck Israeli communities during the war, Madhoun explained that the Palestinian organizations launched the rockets only at “military targets,” such as tanks positions, military airports and concentrations of Israeli military forces on their way to invade the Gaza Strip. He finds evidence in the low number of Israeli fatalities totaling only three people who were killed by the “inaccurate rockets when they missed their original targets.” Furthermore, Madhoun stressed that Hamas spared the lives of Israeli civilians, claiming that if they were targeted dozens of them may have been killed.
Rockets were launched only at occupied territories
Madhoun argues that Israel’s claim that Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations launched rockets at its sovereign territory is groundless. Relying on UN resolution 181 (known as the Partition Plan for Palestine), but without accepting it, Madhoun said that all rockets targeted only areas which were designated to the “Arab state” by the UN resolution, and as Israel has no internationally recognized borders with the Palestinian territories, their areas are still under conflict. Consequently, he concludes that Israel violated the rights of the Israeli civilians for security in settling them illegally in this military disputed area and thus risking their life.
No legitimate targets in Gaza
Madhoun unconditionally negates justification for any Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip. In addition to the aforementioned arguments denying Israel’s right for self defence, Madhoun noted that t international law prohibits attacks on any target when there is a doubt whether it is combatant or civilian. “My stand is that all targets bombed in the Gaza Strip are under the category of doubt”, he said.
Goldstone’s accusations against Hamas are meaningless
Madhoun regards the Goldstone report as a one sided document against Israel, saying that more than 500 pages were dedicated to describing a myriad of widely documented accusations against Israel, while for the Palestinian side only 10 pages were allocated and even they didn’t include any evidence or documentation. Confidently, he asserts: “I can say as a jurist that all allegations mentioned in the (Goldstone) report do not mount to significant accusations of violating the humanitarian international law and the (Hamas) independent investigative committees will prove it.”
War criminals only in Israel
Madhoun boasted of Hamas’ cooperation with international jurists, human rights organizations, the Goldstone committee and UN delegates, which helped in establishing the argument that Israel committed war crimes. The next stage in Hamas’ strategy, according to Madhoun, is prosecuting Israeli “war criminals” worldwide and submitting lawsuits to the International Criminal Court against Israel.
Tawtheeq organization, headed by Madhoun, is backed by the Law Committee of the Palestinian parliament and its Hamas members include Dr. Yunis al-Astal who advocates the extinction of all the Jewish people, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabia, who urged suicide attacks in Jerusalem, and Jamila al-Shanti, who identifies with terrorist attacks against Israel.
The reality is illusive and strikes time and time again in our faces. A declared terrorist organization, which adheres to the Islamic law (sharia) as the only source of legitimacy and promotes ideology of genocide, receives legal support from human rights organizations and internationally respected jurists in its lawfare waged against a democratic state.
Even more peculiar is Judge Richard Goldstone’s decision to rely without reservations on Tawtheeq and its experts in preparing its report, while they publicly make a travesty of the international law and argue that Israel violated the Palestinians’ rights to kill Israelis in the armed struggle for the liberation of the land of Palestine and to destroy Israel.
Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi is a senior researcher of the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is a co-founder of the Orient Research Group Ltd. and is a former advisor to the Policy Planning Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Israel has recently delivered to the United Nations Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon its official response to the UN’s fact finding mission to Operation Cast Lead, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone. Hamas’ government is also preparing to submit its official response before the grace period of six months set to the parties by the Goldstone committee is overIn sharp contrast to the genuine fears expressed by Israel, Hamas does not seem to feel any threat in the legal arena. On the contrary, Hamas demonstrates self-confidence based on the understanding that the Goldstone committee strived only to incriminate Israel and all other limited references to the other side were just for lip service without any legal significance.
Musa Abu Marzouq, Hamas’ second in command, said in this regard in an interview to al-Mashahid al-Siyasi newspaper (December 8, 2009) that “All paragraphs in the Goldstone report convict Israel and totally exonerate Hamas from any misconduct... Likewise, the (Goldstone) report exonerated Hamas from all other accusations mentioned by Israel and even when the (Goldstone) report is dealing with the rockets which were launched from the Gaza Strip it speaks about military groups without naming Hamas.”
Hamas’ line of defense vis-à-vis the Goldstone report has been shaped by a group of Palestinian jurists headed by Diya Al-Din Muhsin Al-Madhoun, former legal adviser to Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas prime minister) and today chairman of the Tawtheeq (documentation) organization that was the key factor assigned by Hamas’ government, on which the Goldstone committee relied for sources of information in its fact finding mission. In series of interviews to the media, Madhoun elaborated as follows Hamas’ main legal arguments of its would-be response to the Goldstone report assumed to be delivered in the near future to the UN secretary general.
The armed struggle is legitimate
Madhoun asserts that all historic Palestine is an occupied land and that the international law legitimizes the right of self defense and resistance of the Palestinian people, who are living under 61 years of occupation. Therefore, Madhoun argues that “resistance operations conducted by the Palestinian resistance organizations, including launching rockets and mortar shells at the occupying Zionist forces, and all other military operations, are legitimate according the international law under the principle of defending our people and liberating our occupied land.”
Israel has no right to self defense
Madhoun entirely rebuts Israel’s claim for self defence, arguing that it constitutes a grave violation of the Palestinian people’s right for self defence as reflected in its armed struggle to liberate the land of Palestine. And in his words (translated from Arabic): “the war against Gaza was illegitimate... as the international law rules that there isn’t legitimate defence (of the occupier) against the legitimate defence (of the occupied) embodied in the defence through struggle.”
Hamas didn’t want to kill Israeli civilians
According to Madhoun, Hamas and the other “Palestinian resistance organizations” were systematically prudent in implementing the international law and avoided intentionally targeting Israeli civilians. Referring to the many hundreds of rockets which struck Israeli communities during the war, Madhoun explained that the Palestinian organizations launched the rockets only at “military targets,” such as tanks positions, military airports and concentrations of Israeli military forces on their way to invade the Gaza Strip. He finds evidence in the low number of Israeli fatalities totaling only three people who were killed by the “inaccurate rockets when they missed their original targets.” Furthermore, Madhoun stressed that Hamas spared the lives of Israeli civilians, claiming that if they were targeted dozens of them may have been killed.
Rockets were launched only at occupied territories
Madhoun argues that Israel’s claim that Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations launched rockets at its sovereign territory is groundless. Relying on UN resolution 181 (known as the Partition Plan for Palestine), but without accepting it, Madhoun said that all rockets targeted only areas which were designated to the “Arab state” by the UN resolution, and as Israel has no internationally recognized borders with the Palestinian territories, their areas are still under conflict. Consequently, he concludes that Israel violated the rights of the Israeli civilians for security in settling them illegally in this military disputed area and thus risking their life.
No legitimate targets in Gaza
Madhoun unconditionally negates justification for any Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip. In addition to the aforementioned arguments denying Israel’s right for self defence, Madhoun noted that t international law prohibits attacks on any target when there is a doubt whether it is combatant or civilian. “My stand is that all targets bombed in the Gaza Strip are under the category of doubt”, he said.
Goldstone’s accusations against Hamas are meaningless
Madhoun regards the Goldstone report as a one sided document against Israel, saying that more than 500 pages were dedicated to describing a myriad of widely documented accusations against Israel, while for the Palestinian side only 10 pages were allocated and even they didn’t include any evidence or documentation. Confidently, he asserts: “I can say as a jurist that all allegations mentioned in the (Goldstone) report do not mount to significant accusations of violating the humanitarian international law and the (Hamas) independent investigative committees will prove it.”
War criminals only in Israel
Madhoun boasted of Hamas’ cooperation with international jurists, human rights organizations, the Goldstone committee and UN delegates, which helped in establishing the argument that Israel committed war crimes. The next stage in Hamas’ strategy, according to Madhoun, is prosecuting Israeli “war criminals” worldwide and submitting lawsuits to the International Criminal Court against Israel.
Tawtheeq organization, headed by Madhoun, is backed by the Law Committee of the Palestinian parliament and its Hamas members include Dr. Yunis al-Astal who advocates the extinction of all the Jewish people, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabia, who urged suicide attacks in Jerusalem, and Jamila al-Shanti, who identifies with terrorist attacks against Israel.
The reality is illusive and strikes time and time again in our faces. A declared terrorist organization, which adheres to the Islamic law (sharia) as the only source of legitimacy and promotes ideology of genocide, receives legal support from human rights organizations and internationally respected jurists in its lawfare waged against a democratic state.
Even more peculiar is Judge Richard Goldstone’s decision to rely without reservations on Tawtheeq and its experts in preparing its report, while they publicly make a travesty of the international law and argue that Israel violated the Palestinians’ rights to kill Israelis in the armed struggle for the liberation of the land of Palestine and to destroy Israel.
Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi is a senior researcher of the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is a co-founder of the Orient Research Group Ltd. and is a former advisor to the Policy Planning Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Israel on Canadian college campuses; an up-hill battle
by Noam Bedein, Director of the Sderot Media Center, www.SderotMedia.org.il
Presenting the human side of Sderot, Israel and the western Negev would seem innocuous enough, as it is the only region in the western world where rockets and missiles target a civilian population. The people of southern Israel have their own story to share.
Yet after a 10-day visit to Canadian college campuses, organized by Hillel Canada and the CIJA umbrella organization of Canadian Jewry, I discovered that even Sderot residents must fight for their legitimate right to live in the land of Israel.
The purpose of this trip was to balance the after-effects of the “Gaza narrative”, exactly one year after Israel's 21-day Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.
On Canadian college campuses, the challenge became to justify the very existence of the city of Sderot.
This was best exemplified by an article published in a Winnipeg student newspaper, penned by a Palestinian-Canadian sociology student. This student amazingly attacked the credibility of another student for sharing her experiences visiting Sderot. This student had described her shock at the ’15 second’ alarm, known as the “Color Red,” which warns Sderot residents of only a few seconds to escape to safety from the time the missile is fired from Gaza to the time it explodes in Sderot.
The Palestinian student showed little sympathy for Sderot under fire:
“Sderot’ is actually a settlement on the Palestinian land of Najd, an illegally occupied territory stolen from Palestinians. It is a town created on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village....You want to talk about ‘terror’? Najd’s Palestinian villagers were expelled on May 13th, 1948 by Israeli forces before Israel was even declared a state.”
Here is a well-educated student born in Canada, with Palestinian descent, that calls the Israeli town of Sderot an illegitimate “settlement” constructed on the ruins of an Arab village abandoned during the 1948 war. Indeed this same student makes no acknowledgement of the historical fact that between 1951-1953, the Jews that settled in Sderot were from among the 850,000 Jews expelled in masses from Arab countries in the Middle East. During and after the 1948 war, 670,000 Palestinian Arab refugees were fled or forced from their homes.
Indeed, this Canadian-Palestinian college student is not the first to rationalize the thousands of aerial attacks and terrorizing of Sderot and southern Israel civilians.
“You know why Sderot is under rocket fire? Because there was an Arab village called Najd,” began a BBC reporter in an interview. I recall the reporter sitting in our Sderot Media Center office trying to find a ‘reasonable excuse’ to justify rocket fire against a civilian population.
Ironically, most Israelis/Jews do not even know that Palestinians and their leadership define Sderot as an illegal ‘settlement,’ while under international law it is undisputedly a city in the State of Israel.
Indeed, the first question I often ask student audiences during presentations is the following:
“If Sderot is a settlement and two miles northeast of Sderot lies the ruins of the Arab village called Najd, which the Palestinians say had a population of 30 families, who now live in the United Nations refugee camps in Gaza, what’s the justification for Jews to live in Sderot or anywhere else in Israel?”
The challenge today is to first actually ask these basic questions, before throwing around answers or solutions for the modern Arab-Israeli conflict.
“What is our right, as Jews and as Israelis, to this country in our homeland? Do we have any rights to this land at all?”
This is the way I was able to get across and present Israel’s perspective to Muslims, to pro-Palestinians, Israel critics and to the international press. By asking this basic question, we ask everyone to realize that Israel is the only independent country in the world whose legitimacy as a state is being questioned.
The leadership and governing bodies of the Palestinian side do not recognize Sderot's establishment in the first years of the creation of the Jewish state, while most Israelis/Jews have accepted a two- state solution.
As another Canadian-Palestinian student expressed himself during my presentation at Carleton University in Ottawa, quite matter of fact:
”You Jews dreamt to go back to your home land after 2,000 years... Why do you think we will stop teaching our children to dream to return to our homes in Al-Majdal (Ashkelon) only after 60 years?”
In other words, educated Canadian born Palestinian students living comfortably abroad, view Sderot quite simply as an illegal settlement and do not recognize the Jewish State of Israel. They do not accept my existence as an Israeli. So does the opposite apply to a Palestinian raised in a United Nations refugee camp, who has not been given any solution or hope for the past 60 years- (even though the UN has resettled more than 50 million refugees worldwide since World War II), will that Palestinian recognize my existence as an Israeli?
Instead, Palestinian education focuses on the preparation of the Palestinian people for the ‘right of return’ to homes and villages from 1948 in Israel which no longer exist. Homes and villages for example in and around cities like Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, and more which have all been under terrorist missile fire.
“So, what’s your solution to this reality?” asked students on each of the Canadian campuses that I visited. In the hundreds of presentations I have given in the past three years I always answer, “I’m not here to present you a solution, I’m here to present the problem.”
The answer to that logical question is that there may not be any instant “solution.” Yet that should not exempt students from knowing the reality of what people in Israel have to cope with - and, in the case of Sderot, that their unique miraculous rocket reality is like no other in the world right now. Rockets have become a daily routine of life in Israel, where one civilian population is being targeted by rockets, rocket-launchers take cover under another civilian population on the other side of the border.
Can this definition of terrorism be understood from a typical 5-second daily news broadcast in Israel in the past four years?
“Two rockets fell outside of Sderot today. No injuries, and no damages,” is how the typical broadcast or news update would read, followed by a weather report in Israel.
These five-second news reports have now tallied up to 311 attacks and including 20 different types of rockets, Iranian missiles and mortars fired from Gaza towards southern Israel, since the END of the military operation in Gaza on January 18, 2009.
If things were truly clear about our rights as Jews to live in Israel, I would not have found myself providing a testimony to a Jew, Judge Richard Goldstone in Geneva. I was allowed a 30-minute presentation where I described to the Goldstone Commission the eight-years of life under rocket fire and concluded by raising my hands in front of them:
“I do not have enough fingers on my hands to count the amount of times rockets exploded only 10 meters from a kindergarten packed with children...”
“Why do we have to wait until a kindergarten or classroom full of children suffers a direct hit by a rocket, in order for us Israel, to have the international support and sympathy to do what is right to protect our own citizens?”
This was the question I put forth to Judge Goldstone and the rest of the panel of UN judges, which was met only with stone silence.
The time has come to raise these questions to college students around the world, and to provide them with proper and accurate answers for them to stand up for Israel and for themselves as proud supporters of Israel.
By generating such awareness, we promote peace without instant solutions and we force the world of public opinion to acknowledge the real barriers for peace, beginning with the continuing refusal of the Arab world to recognize the legitimacy of Sderot and of Israel in their neighborhood.
Noam Bedein is the director of the Sderot Media Center.
Presenting the human side of Sderot, Israel and the western Negev would seem innocuous enough, as it is the only region in the western world where rockets and missiles target a civilian population. The people of southern Israel have their own story to share.
Yet after a 10-day visit to Canadian college campuses, organized by Hillel Canada and the CIJA umbrella organization of Canadian Jewry, I discovered that even Sderot residents must fight for their legitimate right to live in the land of Israel.
The purpose of this trip was to balance the after-effects of the “Gaza narrative”, exactly one year after Israel's 21-day Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.
On Canadian college campuses, the challenge became to justify the very existence of the city of Sderot.
This was best exemplified by an article published in a Winnipeg student newspaper, penned by a Palestinian-Canadian sociology student. This student amazingly attacked the credibility of another student for sharing her experiences visiting Sderot. This student had described her shock at the ’15 second’ alarm, known as the “Color Red,” which warns Sderot residents of only a few seconds to escape to safety from the time the missile is fired from Gaza to the time it explodes in Sderot.
The Palestinian student showed little sympathy for Sderot under fire:
“Sderot’ is actually a settlement on the Palestinian land of Najd, an illegally occupied territory stolen from Palestinians. It is a town created on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village....You want to talk about ‘terror’? Najd’s Palestinian villagers were expelled on May 13th, 1948 by Israeli forces before Israel was even declared a state.”
Here is a well-educated student born in Canada, with Palestinian descent, that calls the Israeli town of Sderot an illegitimate “settlement” constructed on the ruins of an Arab village abandoned during the 1948 war. Indeed this same student makes no acknowledgement of the historical fact that between 1951-1953, the Jews that settled in Sderot were from among the 850,000 Jews expelled in masses from Arab countries in the Middle East. During and after the 1948 war, 670,000 Palestinian Arab refugees were fled or forced from their homes.
Indeed, this Canadian-Palestinian college student is not the first to rationalize the thousands of aerial attacks and terrorizing of Sderot and southern Israel civilians.
“You know why Sderot is under rocket fire? Because there was an Arab village called Najd,” began a BBC reporter in an interview. I recall the reporter sitting in our Sderot Media Center office trying to find a ‘reasonable excuse’ to justify rocket fire against a civilian population.
Ironically, most Israelis/Jews do not even know that Palestinians and their leadership define Sderot as an illegal ‘settlement,’ while under international law it is undisputedly a city in the State of Israel.
Indeed, the first question I often ask student audiences during presentations is the following:
“If Sderot is a settlement and two miles northeast of Sderot lies the ruins of the Arab village called Najd, which the Palestinians say had a population of 30 families, who now live in the United Nations refugee camps in Gaza, what’s the justification for Jews to live in Sderot or anywhere else in Israel?”
The challenge today is to first actually ask these basic questions, before throwing around answers or solutions for the modern Arab-Israeli conflict.
“What is our right, as Jews and as Israelis, to this country in our homeland? Do we have any rights to this land at all?”
This is the way I was able to get across and present Israel’s perspective to Muslims, to pro-Palestinians, Israel critics and to the international press. By asking this basic question, we ask everyone to realize that Israel is the only independent country in the world whose legitimacy as a state is being questioned.
The leadership and governing bodies of the Palestinian side do not recognize Sderot's establishment in the first years of the creation of the Jewish state, while most Israelis/Jews have accepted a two- state solution.
As another Canadian-Palestinian student expressed himself during my presentation at Carleton University in Ottawa, quite matter of fact:
”You Jews dreamt to go back to your home land after 2,000 years... Why do you think we will stop teaching our children to dream to return to our homes in Al-Majdal (Ashkelon) only after 60 years?”
In other words, educated Canadian born Palestinian students living comfortably abroad, view Sderot quite simply as an illegal settlement and do not recognize the Jewish State of Israel. They do not accept my existence as an Israeli. So does the opposite apply to a Palestinian raised in a United Nations refugee camp, who has not been given any solution or hope for the past 60 years- (even though the UN has resettled more than 50 million refugees worldwide since World War II), will that Palestinian recognize my existence as an Israeli?
Instead, Palestinian education focuses on the preparation of the Palestinian people for the ‘right of return’ to homes and villages from 1948 in Israel which no longer exist. Homes and villages for example in and around cities like Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, and more which have all been under terrorist missile fire.
“So, what’s your solution to this reality?” asked students on each of the Canadian campuses that I visited. In the hundreds of presentations I have given in the past three years I always answer, “I’m not here to present you a solution, I’m here to present the problem.”
The answer to that logical question is that there may not be any instant “solution.” Yet that should not exempt students from knowing the reality of what people in Israel have to cope with - and, in the case of Sderot, that their unique miraculous rocket reality is like no other in the world right now. Rockets have become a daily routine of life in Israel, where one civilian population is being targeted by rockets, rocket-launchers take cover under another civilian population on the other side of the border.
Can this definition of terrorism be understood from a typical 5-second daily news broadcast in Israel in the past four years?
“Two rockets fell outside of Sderot today. No injuries, and no damages,” is how the typical broadcast or news update would read, followed by a weather report in Israel.
These five-second news reports have now tallied up to 311 attacks and including 20 different types of rockets, Iranian missiles and mortars fired from Gaza towards southern Israel, since the END of the military operation in Gaza on January 18, 2009.
If things were truly clear about our rights as Jews to live in Israel, I would not have found myself providing a testimony to a Jew, Judge Richard Goldstone in Geneva. I was allowed a 30-minute presentation where I described to the Goldstone Commission the eight-years of life under rocket fire and concluded by raising my hands in front of them:
“I do not have enough fingers on my hands to count the amount of times rockets exploded only 10 meters from a kindergarten packed with children...”
“Why do we have to wait until a kindergarten or classroom full of children suffers a direct hit by a rocket, in order for us Israel, to have the international support and sympathy to do what is right to protect our own citizens?”
This was the question I put forth to Judge Goldstone and the rest of the panel of UN judges, which was met only with stone silence.
The time has come to raise these questions to college students around the world, and to provide them with proper and accurate answers for them to stand up for Israel and for themselves as proud supporters of Israel.
By generating such awareness, we promote peace without instant solutions and we force the world of public opinion to acknowledge the real barriers for peace, beginning with the continuing refusal of the Arab world to recognize the legitimacy of Sderot and of Israel in their neighborhood.
Noam Bedein is the director of the Sderot Media Center.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Philadelphia Bulletin: Report Charges Israel with War Crimes
by David Bedein
Jerusalem - The Goldstone report, which accuses Israel of war crimes in the course of Operation Cast Lead, was raised Thursday for discussion at the UN Human Rights Council, at the request of the Palestinian Authority.
Ahead of the discussion and the subsequent vote that will decide if the report will be adopted by the UN, Israel is getting into high gear.
Despite the low chances of obtaining a majority in Israel’s favor in the vote, politicians and diplomats are trying to influence a few countries in order to recruit them to Israel’s side.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said last week that the Israeli battle against the report is very difficult because of the majority against Israel in the UN and in a number of UN committees.
He says that this battle will preoccupy Israel in the coming years.
High-ranking government sources said that as of now, the chances of the Goldstone report not being adopted are very low and it appears that the Palestinians will succeed in obtaining a majority.
At the moment, Israel is focusing its public relations activity in the countries belonging to the European Union, the African states, Asia and South America.
As part of the Israeli PR campaign, the work was divided between four people: President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Each of them received a list with a number of heads of state with whom they will talk and ask them not to support the report.
Israel will warn that adopting the Goldstone report means ending the peace process, because Israel will not agree to wage a legal-diplomatic battle along with conducting a peace process.
“The Goldstone report will be part of the international discourse for a long time yet and will be a heavy burden on Israel in the international arena,” said a high-ranking Israeli source.
“We can cope with its ramifications but the problem is that it turns Israel into the defendant and makes the state into a leper. It’s not good for Israel when it is spoken about as if it is a country that commits war crimes.”
What particularly irks Israel is that Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are now aligned. The UN secretary general expressed his support for discussing the report at the U.N. Human Rights Council.
View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin
Jerusalem - The Goldstone report, which accuses Israel of war crimes in the course of Operation Cast Lead, was raised Thursday for discussion at the UN Human Rights Council, at the request of the Palestinian Authority.
Ahead of the discussion and the subsequent vote that will decide if the report will be adopted by the UN, Israel is getting into high gear.
Despite the low chances of obtaining a majority in Israel’s favor in the vote, politicians and diplomats are trying to influence a few countries in order to recruit them to Israel’s side.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said last week that the Israeli battle against the report is very difficult because of the majority against Israel in the UN and in a number of UN committees.
He says that this battle will preoccupy Israel in the coming years.
High-ranking government sources said that as of now, the chances of the Goldstone report not being adopted are very low and it appears that the Palestinians will succeed in obtaining a majority.
At the moment, Israel is focusing its public relations activity in the countries belonging to the European Union, the African states, Asia and South America.
As part of the Israeli PR campaign, the work was divided between four people: President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Each of them received a list with a number of heads of state with whom they will talk and ask them not to support the report.
Israel will warn that adopting the Goldstone report means ending the peace process, because Israel will not agree to wage a legal-diplomatic battle along with conducting a peace process.
“The Goldstone report will be part of the international discourse for a long time yet and will be a heavy burden on Israel in the international arena,” said a high-ranking Israeli source.
“We can cope with its ramifications but the problem is that it turns Israel into the defendant and makes the state into a leper. It’s not good for Israel when it is spoken about as if it is a country that commits war crimes.”
What particularly irks Israel is that Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are now aligned. The UN secretary general expressed his support for discussing the report at the U.N. Human Rights Council.
View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Philadelphia Bulletin: Netanyahu Denounces the UN
by David Bedein
Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following remarks on Thursday to the media:
“In the next 24 hours, a vote will take place in Geneva in the framework of the council known as the United Nations Human Rights Council. I remind you that in recent years, this council has made more decisions against Israel than against all other 180 countries in the world.”
The Israeli Prime Minister threatened that “if it should decide to forward what is known as the Goldstone report, it will strike a severe blow to three things:
“First of all, it will strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism since it will afford total legitimization to terrorists who fire upon civilians and who hide behind civilians. To those who - from international platforms, and using international law - attack and condemn the victim who legitimately defends himself, this is a mortal blow to the war on terrorism.
“Secondly, it will strike a mortal blow to the stature of the United Nations. It will return it to its darkest days, in which it could make the most absurd decisions, which would empty it of all substance and significance.
“Thirdly, and perhaps the most immediate and obvious of all, forwarding the decision of what is known as the Goldstone report, would strike a fatal blow to the peace process because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied.”
The Israeli Prime Minister concluded his remarks by saying that “the decision on whether to forward this report which will impair both the struggle against terrorism and stature of the United Nations, and strike a mortal blow to the peace process.”
View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin
Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following remarks on Thursday to the media:
“In the next 24 hours, a vote will take place in Geneva in the framework of the council known as the United Nations Human Rights Council. I remind you that in recent years, this council has made more decisions against Israel than against all other 180 countries in the world.”
The Israeli Prime Minister threatened that “if it should decide to forward what is known as the Goldstone report, it will strike a severe blow to three things:
“First of all, it will strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism since it will afford total legitimization to terrorists who fire upon civilians and who hide behind civilians. To those who - from international platforms, and using international law - attack and condemn the victim who legitimately defends himself, this is a mortal blow to the war on terrorism.
“Secondly, it will strike a mortal blow to the stature of the United Nations. It will return it to its darkest days, in which it could make the most absurd decisions, which would empty it of all substance and significance.
“Thirdly, and perhaps the most immediate and obvious of all, forwarding the decision of what is known as the Goldstone report, would strike a fatal blow to the peace process because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied.”
The Israeli Prime Minister concluded his remarks by saying that “the decision on whether to forward this report which will impair both the struggle against terrorism and stature of the United Nations, and strike a mortal blow to the peace process.”
View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Philadelphia Bulletin: UN Report Outrages Israel
by David Bedein
Jerusalem - Officials in Jerusalem are mobilizing for battle in an attempt to undermine the standing of the UN report on "Israel's crimes in Gaza," with the hope that it will not come before the UN Security Council or the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
Despite a certain criticism of Hamas, the report deals mainly with "proof of significant violations of international human rights law that Israel committed in the Gaza war, and possibly crimes against humanity as well." Experts in Israel who examined the work of the commission and followed the recorded testimonies published on the UN web site, say that the commission members chose not to make things difficult for the witnesses.
"I listened closely to the testimonies, but also to the questions of the commission members," explained Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, "the commission members didn't try to confront them with other information that they held. They were asked questions that were irrelevant to clarifying the facts of whether war crimes were committed or not."
For example, Dahoah-Halevi relates, in the case of the attack on the mosque in the town Beit Lahiya, the commission members asked many questions on the prayer arrangements, but did not ask even a single question on the presence of armed men or weapons at the site. The Goldstone report admits that it identified "reluctance" by the witnesses to deliver information on the activity of terrorist elements within armed [sic] areas. The report states that it is unable to determine the reason for this "reluctance," but notes that it could not discount the possibility that "the interviewees' reluctance may have stemmed from a fear of reprisals."
The commission approached the Hamas government and requested details on the activity of the organization's activity in populated sites from which rockets were fired. The response of the Hamas government, however, was: We have no data. However, the report determines that the fire constitutes "a deliberate attack against the civilian population.
These actions would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity." This sparked great anger on the part of Hamas.
"Resistance is a legitimate right that is anchored in international law," said Hamas Spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
Israeli President Shimon Peres also rallied yesterday for the Israeli attack against the report.
"The Goldstone report makes a mockery of history, and fails to distinguish between aggressor and defender," the president said, attaacking the author of the report. "He would not have written this if his children lived in Sderot and experienced the terror of the rockets there." Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, "the report is a drumhead court martial, the outcome of which was known in advance, and it makes it difficult for democratic countries to fight terror."
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who is currently in New York, has already initiated talks with senior members of the US administration and Congress on the report, and is expected to meet with US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, with the aim of recruiting her to the battle against having the report reach the UN Security Council.
View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin
Jerusalem - Officials in Jerusalem are mobilizing for battle in an attempt to undermine the standing of the UN report on "Israel's crimes in Gaza," with the hope that it will not come before the UN Security Council or the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
Despite a certain criticism of Hamas, the report deals mainly with "proof of significant violations of international human rights law that Israel committed in the Gaza war, and possibly crimes against humanity as well." Experts in Israel who examined the work of the commission and followed the recorded testimonies published on the UN web site, say that the commission members chose not to make things difficult for the witnesses.
"I listened closely to the testimonies, but also to the questions of the commission members," explained Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, "the commission members didn't try to confront them with other information that they held. They were asked questions that were irrelevant to clarifying the facts of whether war crimes were committed or not."
For example, Dahoah-Halevi relates, in the case of the attack on the mosque in the town Beit Lahiya, the commission members asked many questions on the prayer arrangements, but did not ask even a single question on the presence of armed men or weapons at the site. The Goldstone report admits that it identified "reluctance" by the witnesses to deliver information on the activity of terrorist elements within armed [sic] areas. The report states that it is unable to determine the reason for this "reluctance," but notes that it could not discount the possibility that "the interviewees' reluctance may have stemmed from a fear of reprisals."
The commission approached the Hamas government and requested details on the activity of the organization's activity in populated sites from which rockets were fired. The response of the Hamas government, however, was: We have no data. However, the report determines that the fire constitutes "a deliberate attack against the civilian population.
These actions would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity." This sparked great anger on the part of Hamas.
"Resistance is a legitimate right that is anchored in international law," said Hamas Spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
Israeli President Shimon Peres also rallied yesterday for the Israeli attack against the report.
"The Goldstone report makes a mockery of history, and fails to distinguish between aggressor and defender," the president said, attaacking the author of the report. "He would not have written this if his children lived in Sderot and experienced the terror of the rockets there." Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, "the report is a drumhead court martial, the outcome of which was known in advance, and it makes it difficult for democratic countries to fight terror."
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who is currently in New York, has already initiated talks with senior members of the US administration and Congress on the report, and is expected to meet with US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, with the aim of recruiting her to the battle against having the report reach the UN Security Council.
View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Philadelphia Bulletin: Calls at the UN to Bring Israel to Trial
by David Bedein
Jerusalem - Tension is mounting in Israel as it awaits the publication of the Goldstone Commission’s report, which inquired into allegations directed against Israel relating to Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. The report is set to be published in the next few days.
The commission, headed by a South African judge, was established by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and is largely regarded as anti-Israel. Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission and argues that it has predicated much of its findings on false and biased information that it obtained from Hamas. There is concern that the findings will be quite harsh and serve as a basis for litigation against Israel for “war crimes”.
UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navanethen Pillay, the South African judge, who hosted the anti-Israel Durban 2 conference last April, has already made clear her hope that the UN will ask The Hague to begin proceedings against Israel.
Pillay’s position is based on the Darfur precedent, since Israel has not ratified the international court’s charter and is not a member of it. The UN Security Council is authorized to order the start of litigation against countries that are not members of the court, and in the case of Darfur, the council did indeed instruct the court to start procedures against senior Sudanese officials for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. She said she hoped that the UN Security Council would respond in kind if the Goldstone Commission found possible war crimes.
Meanwhile the current president of the UN Human Rights Council rejected the demand of the “UN Watch” that British jurist Christine Chinkin be disqualified from the Goldstone Commission. The group argued that statements and articles by Chinkin in which she accused Israel of war crimes even before the commission had begun its work, which indicated that she held a predetermined bias.
View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin
Jerusalem - Tension is mounting in Israel as it awaits the publication of the Goldstone Commission’s report, which inquired into allegations directed against Israel relating to Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. The report is set to be published in the next few days.
The commission, headed by a South African judge, was established by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and is largely regarded as anti-Israel. Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission and argues that it has predicated much of its findings on false and biased information that it obtained from Hamas. There is concern that the findings will be quite harsh and serve as a basis for litigation against Israel for “war crimes”.
UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navanethen Pillay, the South African judge, who hosted the anti-Israel Durban 2 conference last April, has already made clear her hope that the UN will ask The Hague to begin proceedings against Israel.
Pillay’s position is based on the Darfur precedent, since Israel has not ratified the international court’s charter and is not a member of it. The UN Security Council is authorized to order the start of litigation against countries that are not members of the court, and in the case of Darfur, the council did indeed instruct the court to start procedures against senior Sudanese officials for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. She said she hoped that the UN Security Council would respond in kind if the Goldstone Commission found possible war crimes.
Meanwhile the current president of the UN Human Rights Council rejected the demand of the “UN Watch” that British jurist Christine Chinkin be disqualified from the Goldstone Commission. The group argued that statements and articles by Chinkin in which she accused Israel of war crimes even before the commission had begun its work, which indicated that she held a predetermined bias.
View the original article in the Philadelphia Bulletin
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