GOLDSTONE's U-TURN

101. For excerpts from the Goldstone report go to Post 79.

Goldstone's sudden U-turn from the findings of a four men U.N. fact-findings mission in response to the 2008 Israel/Gaza conflict,  as were published in what is known as "the Goldstone report'  has surprised many.
Goldstone is reported to have said that :(quote): 'If I had known what I know now the report would have been quite different' . His shift is apparently attributed to the findings of a follow up report by a United Nations Committee of independent experts chaired by Mary McGowen Davis, a former New York judge and what is 'recognized' therein about Israeli military investigations. McGowen Davis is in fact deeply critical of those investigations - their leniency, lack of transparency and flawed structure. Her report - stymied by lack of access to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank - contains no new information that might buttress a change of heart. On the core issue of intentionality, it declares (quote): 'There is no indication that Israel has opened investigations into actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation cast Lead(Israel's code name for their onslaught of Gaza). It (Israel) has not adequately answered the Goldstone report's allegations about the 'design and implementation of the Gaza operations' or its 'objectives and targets'. Victims on both side McGowen maintains, cannot expect genuine accountability and no justice. In short there is a mystery here. Goldstone has moved but the evidence has not. That raises the issue of whether Goldstone has buckled under pressure so unrelenting it almost got him barred from his grandson's bar Mitzvah in South Africa.Is this more a  matter of judicial cojones than coherence ? Goldstone has been relentlessly targeted and vilified by Israel and the Zionist lobbies over the last year or so as a self-hating Jew, hypocrite, traitor and despicable. He is declining media-interviews. Goldstone expresses 'confidence'  that that the Israeli officer responsible for the killing of 29 members of a Palestinian family will be properly punished. Yet McGowen Davis report is critical of this investigation and notes that no decision had been made as to whether or not the officer would stand trila. It also notes that more than a third of the 36 Gaza incidents identified in the Goldsone report are 'still unresolved or unclear'.  There have just been two convictions - and the one for the credit card theft brought a more severe sentence then the use of a Palestinian child as a human shield. Israel is now celebrating what it calls a vindication. It has now invited Goldstone to come to Israel and is demanding nullification of the report, even though Goldstone is only one of the four authors. But the facts remain: 1400 plus Palestinians dead, 13 Israelis killed, the wholesale devastation of houses, schools and hospitals in Gaza.
Commnent from The New York Times

MOST MORAL ARMY IN THE WORLD ?

100. Netanyahu was recently reported to have said that Israel's army is the most 'moral army' in the world. Lets have a look a its record:
During the 1967 war an Israeli reporter for Yediot Aharanot reported the following during Israel's Sinai campaign in Egypt:
It occurred at the El Arish airport, where Israel Tal's division - Yehoshua Bar-Dayan ur it - had set up its headquarters. Some 150 POW prisoners were held in an aircraft hanger surrounded with sandbags. They had huddled on the ground with their hands at the backs of their necks. Not far away was a desk where two men in IDF uniform were sitting. They wore steel helmets and their faces were hidden by dust goggles and khaki bandannas. Every so often the military police would pick out a prisoner from the holding
pen and lead him to the desk. Brunn could not hear the brief exchange, but he saw that when it was finished, the prisoner was led about a hundred yards behind the hanger and handed a shovel.
I watched the man dig a large pit for about fifteen minutes. Then the officer told him to throw away the shovel and one of them aimed an Uzi submachine gun and fired two short bursts at the man, three to four bullets each. The prisoner fell dead. Then more prisoners were brought out and shot. Brunn saw roughly ten such executions. An officer whose identity Brunn could not recall the explained to the horrified reservists that military intelligence had identified some Palestine terrorists among the POW in the holding pen, men who had killed Jews. They had disguised themselves as Egyptian soldiers and fled the Gaza strip."
These stories were also corroborated by historian  Arieh Yitzhaki, who quoted a soldier Kobi Rabinowitz writing to his girlfriend: "We turned the the Sinai Peninsula into a valley of death, into one big cemetery. Unarmed men, prisoners with their hand above their heads, cut down against orders. He finished his letter with the following words: Apparently it doesn't take years of Nazi education to turn people into animals".

ei: Goldstone's shameful U-turn

99. ei: Goldstone's shameful U-turn