Understanding the Goldstone Report
Richard Landes, Boston University
On September 15, 2009, Judge Richard Goldstone and his Mission presented their 575-page Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict to its mandating authority, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). From the beginning, observers raised serious questions about the Mission’s propriety. These involved the sponsoring body’s domination by authoritarian regimes that regularly abuse human rights in their own countries, if not (like Sudan) committing genocide against their ethnic minorities, the Mission’s mandate and terms of reference, the biases and prejudices of members of the Mission itself. And yet, whatever its flaws, the report will play a key role in the effort to specifically target Israeli troops in both boycott movements and lawfare attacks, and more broadly to establish a reigning paradigm of international law as applied to 21st century asymmetrical conflicts that empowers terror.
Those of us who have constructed Understanding the Goldstone Report , have been following the claims under contention since the events themselves almost a year ago, and have read the report in detail. We offer a wide range of analysis, from careful examination of specific incidents and controversies to broader legal and conceptual issues. In so doing, we have come to the following conclusions:
· The report violates international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact-finding, replicating earlier UNHRC biased statements.
· The Mission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case.
· The Mission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; the report reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies.
· At the same time, the Mission inexplicably downplayed or ignored substantial evidence of Hamas’ commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of terror, including specifically its victimization of the Palestinian population by its use of human shields, civilian dress for combatants, and combat use of protected objects like ambulances, hospitals and mosques.
· The Mission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.
· The report contains numerous gratuitous digressions into issues beyond the purview of a fact-finding Mission that are inaccurate and profoundly hostile to Israel and Jews.
· The Mission distorted legal standards, imposing on Israel standards that reverse their generally understood and applied meaning, while ignoring important rules of international law that put the onus of responsibility on an organization as base, by Goldstone’s own standards, as Hamas.
In all our analyses and conclusions, we have adhered to principles of empirical evidence and consistent reasoning. Since the skeptical reader might well accuse us of making up our mind in advance, we emphasize that one should not agree or disagree with us because of how one feels about Israel or the Palestinians, but because of the evidence. We invite readers to examine our arguments without prejudice, make up their own minds and, where they see problems, challenge our arguments. Sweeping and inflammatory rhetoric not welcome.
If you find even a portion of what we argue to have merit, you may be interested in some further questions that these observations raise:
· How could a Judge with Goldstone’s reputation have presided over such a Mission ?
· What are the long-term consequences of such judgments on the containment or encouragement of future war crimes in asymmetrical wars like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
· What are the mediated paths by which we receive our information about the Arab-Israeli conflict?
· If Goldstone’s approach is misguided, how should people of good will, concerned for both justice and humanity, proceed in dealing with asymmetrical warfare ?
We welcome both considered and reasoned comment and submissions of essays to the discussion. It is our belief that the most interesting discussions of Goldstone will take place in cyberspace, in the new and raucus “City of Letters” – the blogosphere.
Richard Landes, Site Author
Understanding the Goldstone Report
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The Foundation for the Goldstone Inquiry and Report[1]
by
Howard Adelman
I Introduction
In a previous paper I undertook an analysis of an artillery attack by Israel on the Gaza Strip which resulted in the loss of 18 lives from a single extended family. The analysis suggested that although Israel did not intend to kill the civilians, there are grounds for an investigation of a war crime on the basis of gross negligence.[2] That paper dealt with the issue of discrimination re the protection of civilians in combat, one of two fundamental ius in bello moral principles. In a second paper I explored the principle of proportionality in the conduct of the violence in Gaza in the period between 2006 and 2009 that culminated in the Gaza War.[3] Proportionality is the second fundamental ius in bello moral principle concerning belligerent conduct. The first paper focused on the analysis of single case while the second looked at an overall pattern of events.
This paper introduces the analysis of the Goldstone Commission, the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, by exploring the background of the international agency that set it up, how it was set up, what mandate it was given and how it was expected to conduct its work. A paper that I will present in Haikaddo University in November 2009 looks at the ius ad bellum aspect of the report, in particular the analysis of whether the strategy adopted by Israel in invading Gaza in December of 2008 conformed to just war norms. It analyzes the Goldstone report’s dissection of the issue. A subsequent paper for presentation at the United Nations University in Tokyo returns to ius in bello norms and takes up the powerful charges of the Goldstone report that Israel was guilty of gross violations of humanitarian law by directly and deliberately targeting civilians and by using disproportionate force. In January 2010, my paper at a San Diego conference on military ethics on, “Asymmetrical War and the Goldstone Report on the Gaza War” puts the whole dispute on the merits of the Goldstone Report within a much larger debate.
In a paper planned for the International Studies Association in New Orleans in February 2010, the various papers are brought together. I delve much deeper into the exploration of the meaning of norms of conduct in providing boundary conditions to combatants and in determining how wars can be fought within an even larger ethical frame that sets rights theory against the tradition of just war ethics. This last paper in the series thus delves into the politics of just war and human rights commissions, not simply as ways of fighting wars by other means, but as an expression of a philosophical war between those who uphold the supremacy of human rights above all other norms and those who see sets of norms operating like tectonic plates, overlapping and shoving against one another rather than organized into a hierarchy governed by one set of norms as supreme. In the international arena there are conflicts within any one set of norms and competition as well as synergies amongst different value sets. It is a war between the catholicism of rights and those who uphold the reality of a pluralism of normative sets. In the latter view, rights norms may be preeminent but they are still only one set among others. In doing so I also hope to explain why such a justly eminent individual as Richard Goldman risked, and I believe, sacrificed his reputation to head a commission which was indeed deeply flawed. The conclusion of this paper briefly adumbrates that discussion.
[1] The full title of the report is: “Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” Human Rights Council, 15 September 2009, A/HRC/12/48. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf
[2] Howard Adelman (2009) “Intent: Ius In Bello Norms in Just War Theory,” for the panel, “Utility in Ethics: Past Precedents and Future Reforms re: ius in bello,” International Studies Association, New York, 15 February.The paper can be found online at https://spme.org/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=5135, 1 February.
[3] Howard Adelman (2009) “Research on the Ethics of War in the Context of Violence, The Gaza Experience,” presented originally at an International Conference on Research with the Disadvantaged in Times of War and Peace, Montreal, 29-30 May 2009 and forthcoming in the Journal of Academic Ethics.
For the remainder of this article, please go to: www.yorku.ca/crs/Publications/adelman.htm
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Mendes Asks Goldberg and Makdisi to Address Issue of Extremism on Both Sides
David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi (Tikkun Sept/October 2009) argue that an aggressive and well-funded pro-Israel lobby attempts to silence alternative views on American campuses. This may be true in some cases, but it is also only one part of the story.
In Australia (and almost certainly in most Western countries including the USA) there is a well-organized pro-Palestinian lobby which argues for the destruction of the existing State of Israel, and its replacement by an Arab State of Greater Palestine. This lobby has achieved virtual hegemony in key sections of the academic and intellectual Left, and actively seeks to silence two state advocates who attempt to present a balanced view of the Middle East conflict that supports moderates and attacks extremists on both sides. This lobby, which sadly includes some so-called left-wing Jews, uses all the obnoxious tactics described by Goldberg and Makdisi including the use of poison letters to universities in an attempt to intimidate their critics.
Goldberg and Makdisi’s contribution would have far more useful if they had exposed extremists on both sides of the debate.
Philip Mendes
Monash University
Australia
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Judea Pearl on Goldberg and Makdisi
The Sweet Victimhood of Israel’s Maligners
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A shorter version of this response was posted on Oct. 29 on JFR: the Jewish Faculty Roundtable ————————-
David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, in a recent Tikkun article (Sept.-Oct. 2009)], accuse me of “mis-characterization and fabrication” of the now-famous Gaza Symposium at UCLA [in my essay, “Dust Over Campus Life: UCLA at a Crossroad,” LA Jewish Journal, February 18, 2009]. Let me state categorically that, before writing that article, I personally interviewed five witnesses who attended that event — two students and three visitors — and I have a record of their testimonies.
One of the students documented her traumatic experience in a letter to UCLA Chancellor, and wrote:
“…when a Jew came up to ask a question at the “Human rights and Gaza” symposium, one of the speakers, Lisa Hajjar, spewed out the racist comment “I think that Zionist hat of yours might be screwed on too tight”. By the end, hundreds of people were chanting “Zionism is Nazism”, and “Israeli’s are murderers”.
At this point, the Symposium was not a “Civil discourse essential to the intellectual climate at UCLA”. It was not respectful, but for the first time in my life made me fear for my safety, because I am Israeli. I was sitting in the back of the room, yet I was surrounded with people showing so much hate that I truly believed they wouldn’t bat an eye if someone killed me on the spot. This symposium made me feel more unsafe than I
have ever felt in my life, and it was held on the UCLA campus.
…. Have you ever been in a room filled with people that chanted to your demise? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even the people in that room. [This shouting took place in the QA session which,understandably, was not included in the podcasts]
One of the visitors was a senior European diplomat who described the symposium as “the dirtiest Israel-bashing and indeed full-fledged anti-Semitic hate-fest I have experienced in my two and a half years in this city.”
Remarkably, this same event is characterized by Goldberg and Makdisi as an academic symposium “meant to restore a sense of intellectual balance and historical context.” Seeking the shelter
of victimhood, they further write: “insinuation, accusation, and defamation have become the weapons of first resort to respond to argument and criticism directed at Israeli policies.”
The UCLA symposium, I hold, barely discussed “Israeli policies” in the conventional sense of the word. It focused instead on the sins of Israel’s birth, and on the irredeemable qualities of a monstrous, blood thirsty “white settler colonialist power” obsessed with one and only one aim — the destruction of the Palestinian people and of Palestinian lives.
The intellectual honesty of Goldberg and Makdisi shines through the way they try to convince Tikkun readers that the UCLA panel was “intellectually balanced and historically honest.” Their proof: “three of the five participants were Jewish, and one an Israeli.” Perhaps even more revealing is their use of the saintly phrase
“criticism directed at Israeli policies,” which is repeated 17 times in their article, without once mentioning
the obvious reason why Israel maligners are resented and disrespected by people of conscience and activists for coexistence. The reason of course is their consistent dehumanization of Israel’s character, persistent deligitimization of a people’s homeland, and relentless advocacy for its demise. (e.g., Makdisi: “Forget the Two State Solution – LA Times May 11, 2008. Goldberg: Racial Palestinianization (2008))”
This key reason is meticulously and craftily avoided or covered up in a 12-page long article that pretends to invite honest discourse.
As to the issue of “balance” and “outside interference” [the main theme of the Tikkun article (Sept.-Oct. 2009)], my essay did not advocate legislating a balance in every academic meeting. Instead, it called for
exposing dishonest behavior.
I am not against excluding pro-coexistence speakers from one meeting or another. I am against excluding such speakers as a matter of consistent policy by an academic unit calling itself “Center for
Near East Studies.”
Students, parents, faculty, alumni, donors and the community at large have the right to know whether the Center of Near East Studies is the same center that they have known for years, namely, a meeting
place for ideas of all players in the Middle East, or whether it has been turned into a politicized propaganda center for anti-coexistence forces.
Communities do have this right to know, and this goes for hijacked centers on all campuses, because the community has an investment in such centers, an investment in resources, tradition, expectations and reputation.
It is not surprising that the betrayers of these expectations would be alarmed by recent exposures,
but victimhood cannot hide their aims or the damage they already caused to academic life.
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Judea Pearl is a professor of computer science at
UCLA, and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation.
www.danielpearlmusicdays.org/events.php
He writes frequently on campus life,
the Israel-Palestinian peace prospects and Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
http://www.danielpearl.org/news_and_press/articles/Op-Eds.pdf
Kenneth Waltzer: Goldberg and Makdisi’s Assumptions Cannot Be Taken “Seriously…”
David Theo Goldberg’s and Saree Makdisi’s “The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics” in Tikkun projects interference with the “niceties of intellectual exchange and academic process” on campus onto the critics of their views and wraps themselves in the banner of “reason” and “balance” regarding how the Israel-Palestine conflict is and should be addressed on campus. The pose is less than serious.
Their argument is that, absent outside intervention by a juggernaut of pro-Israeli Jewish organizations, including the ADL and the Israel on Campus Coalition, the campus would be a balanced playing field for reasoned exploration of the enduring Middle Eastern conflict. Their argument is that, because of such outside intervention, academic careers are being threatened and tenure is being denied. Neither proposition can withstand close scrutiny.
Goldberg and Makdisi hold up the one-sided panel put together by Susan Slymovics at UCLA as a standard for reasoned “intellectual exchange.” They offer no inside information about the construction of the panel or any candid assessment of its balance; they rightly deplore mischaracterization by others in the press of the event as a beer hall “rally.” But the event was podcast in the public domain and it is available for anyone to listen to — if this is the standard for how the Middle East conflict is to be addressed and debated, a standard set by Richard Falk, author of “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” friends of the university are in great difficulty indeed.
Goldberg and Makdisi also hold up the case of Nadia Abu el-Haj at Barnard as one of the examples of how careers are threatened. But outside charges against her work did not prevail and, assisted by sympathetic reviews from fellow scholars, including at least one on the UCLA panel, she was awarded tenure. It is similar with the case of Bill Robinson at UC Santa Barbara. After a stupid teaching intervention by email by which he inflicted his flawed and demonstrably false perspective that the Israeli attack on Gaza was akin to the Nazi attack on the Warsaw ghetto on his students, Robinson’s action was investigated. It should have been investigated. Academic freedom is not a defense of mis-education. Faculty members have responsibilities not to inflict their political views on students under their authority. But here too nothing happened: no job was lost, no sanction was issued.
The real agenda of the authors, it seems, is rather to sidestep the call for balance, which is characterized as unbalanced or out of balance. Goldberg and Makdisi do not truly desire real “intellectual exchange.” They call for Tikkun to sponsor forums to promote civil, respectful, critical engagement across political divides.
But why is there a need for Tikkun to do this? Why do not such forums happen on campuses by the autonomous actions of the faculty themselves? Why do so many Middle East Studies departments simply fail to do this? Why are Israel Studies programs being set up separately from such departments or as part of Jewish Studies programs? What is it that provokes outside intervention and misguided calls for hasbara?
I share the authors’ stated interest in the idea of a university as a real place of intellectual exchange. But their analysis is so skewed and one-sided, involving no serious look whatsoever into the behaviors of those who share their point of view, that it is difficult to take them seriously.
Kenneth Waltzer
Director, Jewish Studies
Michigan State University
Amos Guiora and Mustafa Barghouti on The Goldstone Report on YouTube
