person:richard goldstone

Judge Richard Goldstone suffered for turning his back on Gaza – but not as much as the Palestinians he betrayed | The Independent

by Robert Fisk

▻https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-gaza-war-judge-richard-goldstone-palestinian-conflict-a8709211
▻https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2010/02/02/00/310761.bin

When a hero lets you down, the betrayal lasts forever. I’m not alone, I know, when I say that Richard Goldstone was a hero of mine – a most formidable, brilliant and brave judge who finally spoke truth to power in the Middle East. And then recanted like a frightened political prisoner, with protestations of love for the nation whose war crimes he so courageously exposed.

Now, after years of virtual silence, the man who confronted Israel and Hamas with their unforgivable violence after the 2008-09 Gaza war has found a defender in a little known but eloquent academic. Judge Goldstone, a Jewish South African, was denounced by Israelis and their supporters as “evil” and a “quisling” after he listed the evidence of Israel’s brutality against the Palestinians of Gaza (around 1,300 dead, most of them civilians), and of Hamas’ numerically fewer crimes (13 Israeli dead, three of them civilians, plus a number of Palestinian “informer” executions).
Professor Daniel Terris, a Brandeis University scholar admired for his work on law and ethics, calls his new book The Trials of Richard Goldstone. Good title, but no cigar. ​

Terris is eminently fair. Perhaps he is too fair. He treats far too gently the column that Goldstone wrote for the Washington Post, in which the judge effectively undermined the research and conclusions of his own report that he and three others wrote about the Gaza war. The book recalls how Richard Falk, a Princeton law professor and former UN rapporteur on human rights in Gaza and the West Bank, described Goldstone’s retraction as “a personal tragedy for such a distinguished international civil servant”. I think Falk was right.

This Duck Is an Apartheid Duck
►http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/22/this-duck-is-an-apartheid-duck.html

Richard Goldstone and others who argue against the Apartheid designation try to separate Israel from the West Bank. But anyone who has traveled through Israel and the West Bank knows that the green line exists on paper only. In every other sense, between the river and the sea, there is one state, there is one regime, and that is the Israeli regime. The policies of perpetual occupation, soon entering its 45th year, effectively result in the Israeli regime’s total domination of the territory, its borders, its resources, the use of force within them and the continued colonization of that territory.

Across the entirety of the territory ruled by the Israelis there are 12 million people. Half of these people are Palestinian and 1.7 million of them are relegated to second-class citizenship through a system of direct and indirect discrimination. Another 4.3 million living in the West Bank and Gaza have no right to vote for the ruling regime at all. Further, the Israeli government refuses the human rights of approximately 4.6 million Palestinian refugees—many in refugee camps just across the border—to return to their lands.

And why is that? Why doesn’t Israel grant voting rights to all the Palestinians it rules? Why does Israel systematically prevent Palestinian refugees from exercising their human right to return?

Former Israeli prime ministers agree on the answer. Ehud Olmert explained that voting rights for Palestinians would mean that “the State of Israel is finished.” Ehud Barak said, “The simple truth is, if there is one state, it would have to be either binational or undemocratic.”

Les désarrois du juge Goldstone | Denis Sieffert (Politis)
►http://www.politis.fr/spip.php?page=article&id_article=13763

On se souvient de Richard Goldstone. Ce juge sud-africain avait présidé une mission d’enquête diligentée par les Nations unies au lendemain de (...)

Goldstone’s Shameful U-turn | Ilan Pappe (Relevé sur le net)
►http://www.countercurrents.org/pappe050411.htm

“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document.” Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone’s much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: “If I had known then that the report would turn me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all.” And if that wasn’t the original sentence, it is certainly the subtext of Goldstone’s article. (...)

Goldstone to AP: ‘I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time’ (Mondoweiss)
►http://mondoweiss.net/2011/04/goldstone-to-ap-i-have-no-reason-to-believe-any-part-of-the-report-needs

Richard Goldstone has finally broken his silence over his Washington Post op-ed. He granted an interview to the AP to rebut the erroneous report that we picked up on yesterday saying he was considering trying to nullify the report within

Richard Goldstone vous fait savoir qu’il est heureux que son petit compliment ait été apprécié à sa juste valeur.

►http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/middleeast/06goldstone.html

Mr. Goldstone said in a short statement released on Tuesday night that Mr. Yishai had “informed me that he and the government of Israel were appreciative of the article I wrote.” He said Mr. Yishai had invited him to Israel “to see conditions there with my own eyes. I said I would like to do so.”

“I ended the conversation by expressing my love for Israel,” Mr. Goldstone said.

Tout cet amour, ça pique les yeux.

#israël #gaza

Israel calls on UN to bury Gaza crimes report - Al Jazeera English
►http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/04/201142231017418.html

Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who led the UN investigation, said in a Washington Post column published on Friday that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,” and likely less critical of Israel.

Responding to Goldstone’’s piece on Saturday, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’’s prime minister, urged the world body to “nullify” the report, saying it “must be thrown into the dustbin of history”.

[...]

Goldstone indicated in his Friday essay that had Israel cooperated with him at the time, it could have shown civilians were not deliberately targeted “as a matter of policy”.

Israeli military investigations into cases of misconduct later shed light on civilian killings, Goldstone said.

“I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes,” Goldstone said.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesperson, dismissed Goldstone’’s remarks saying that “his retreat does not change the fact war crimes had been committed against 1.5 million people in Gaza,” and noted that the group cooperated fully with the fact finding mission.

#Israël #Goldstone #Gaza #Palestine