Ethiopians protest against racism in Israel

This reminds me of a joke I heard a long time ago about the Israeli Education Ministry ordering teachers to honour the legacy of the late Rahavam Ze'evi, an open advocate of the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine.  A teacher told the her class how courageous Ze'evi had been in advocating the, ahem, "Transfer" of the Palestinian population. A child said, "that's wonderful, Miss, when can we do that to the Ethiopians." The teacher said "don't be so racist in my class!"

Anyway, a couple of days ago Ha'aretz reported on a demo by Ethiopians and "representatives of various groups who feel weak in Israeli society."

"The phenomenon of racism harms us all, and it is impossible to separate the discrimination of Ethiopians in Israel from the discrimination of Arab residents or Russian-speakers," said Rabia Elsagir, a resident of Shfaram and member of The Coalition Against Racism in Israel, who attended the protest with a handful of people from the Arab sector.

There are of course many examples of racism in Israel but two more occurred just recently. One was the water throwing incident in the Knesset just the other day:




For a comment on this see Magnes Zionist.


The other is a further degeneration of the State of Israel into an explicitly apartheid situation within Israel itself and not simply between Israel and the occupied territories.  The Israeli High Court has now effectively ratified Israel's so-called Citizenship Law which spells out a crucial difference between the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Israel within the pre-67 boundaries.  Again here is Ha'aretz:

Israel’s High Court rejected on Wednesday petitions against the Citizenship Law, which prevents Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs from receiving Israeli citizenship or residency. Six judges voted to reject the petitions, while five voted to accept them.

Israel generally grants citizenship to spouses of Israelis in a gradual process. In the spirit of this process, a similar process was instituted for the naturalization of spouses of permanent residents, though the process is a little longer. A 2002 temporary order excluded Palestinian spouses from these processes and barred them from becoming Israeli citizens.

 And again Magnes Zionist has a scathing comment:

Yesterday, the State of Israel became the first western state whose High Court ruled that some citizens have fewer fundamental rights than other citizens based on their ethnicity. Actually, it had done so before, but yesterday it rejected  the most sustained challenge to the “Citizenship Law,” which bars the non-Israeli spouses of Israeli Palestinians from becoming citizens. So while an Israeli Jew from Brooklyn has the right of marrying anybody she likes, and having her spouse naturalized, a native Palestinian Israeli citizen cannot marry  a distant relative who lives in a town five minutes from her house – unless that relative was a Palestinian collaborator, working for the Israelis, and then, only by special approval of the Minister of Interior.

Yet another answer to Goldstone and all those who try to make out that Israel isn't an apartheid state.

Ask a man who knows: De Klerk answers Goldstone

I was sent this BBC Radio 4 programme recently. It actually went out on 29 December 2011. It has De Klerk, the last white president of South Africa, explaining why apartheid had no future, not in South Africa anyway.

What I supported as a younger politician was exactly what the whole world now supports for Israel and Palestine, namely separate nation states will be the solution. In our case we failed. There were three main reasons. We failed because the whites wanted too much land for themselves. We failed because the majority of blacks said this is not how we want our political rights. And we failed because we became economically totally integrated. We became an economic omelet and you can never again divide an omelet into the white and the yellow of the egg. And we realized in the early eighties we had landed in a place which has become morally unjustified.

Goldstone denied the apartheid analogy here.

Messengers shoot the self-shot messenger

Phew, this is getting confusing. First there was the Goldstone Report produced by Judge Goldstone, Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers. Then Goldstone distanced himself from the report but in a way that was so disingenuous, only the most staunch of Israel advocates could take any satisfaction from his re"think". Now his co-reporters have gone on record in The Guardian (and presumably elsewhere) to say that the original report still stands:

In recent days some articles and comments appearing in the press with respect to the report of the United Nations (UN) fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2008-2009 have misrepresented facts in an attempt to delegitimise the findings of this report and to cast doubts on its credibility. 

The mission that comprised four members, including Justice Richard Goldstone as its chair, came to an end when it presented its report to the UN human rights council in September 2009. The report of the mission is now an official UN document and all actions taken pursuant to its findings and recommendations fall solely within the purview of the United Nationsgeneral assembly which, along with the human rights council, reviewed and endorsed it at the end of 2009.

Aspersions cast on the findings of the report, nevertheless, cannot be left unchallenged. Members of the mission, signatories to this statement, find it necessary to dispel any impression that subsequent developments have rendered any part of the mission's report unsubstantiated, erroneous or inaccurate.

We concur in our view that there is no justification for any demand or expectation for reconsideration of the report as nothing of substance has appeared that would in any way change the context, findings or conclusions of that report with respect to any of the parties to the Gaza conflict.

So what was Goldstone on about?

This is how The Guardian is now reporting the statement from Goldstone's co-reporters:

Though they do not mention Goldstone by name, they shoot down several of the main contentions in his article and imply that he has bowed to intense political pressure.

So again, what was Goldstone on about?

Video of Goldstone debate at Stanford University

This is from Victor Kattan's website:

You can watch the Goldstone debate at Stanford University, which took place in the Law School on 28 March here. In addition to my participation in the debate, Noura Erakat from Georgetown University, spoke alongside me arguing in favour of the findings of the report. Avi Bell from San Diego University and Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution argued against it. 

The debate attracted some attention in the press because Goldstone commented on the report before and after the debate. Roger Cohen writing in The New York Times described the debate as 'bruising'. In Foreign Policy, Bell thought that the debate might have had an impact on Goldstone's infamous 'retraction' in the Washington Post. Personally I don't think the debate had any discernable impact on Goldstone's opinion of his report as he defended it well in the face of fierce criticism. 

But you can judge for yourself by watching the debate here. Continue Reading... 

So hot a clip it is that it isn't even on youtube yet but watch this space...

Humiliation of Goldstone reaches US Congress again

From Ha'aretz but with links added by me:

The controversy over Richard Goldstone's Washington Post opinion piece has reached the floor of the United States Congress, with new legislation calling on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone Report on the 2009 Gaza war....

Goldstone's report on Israel's 2009 war with Gaza angered many with its accusation that Israel had committed war crimes and intentionally targeted civilians. In a recent op-ed piece for the Washington Post, the judge wrote that Israel had investigated many of the allegations brought forth by the report, while Hamas had not done the same.

"If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document," Goldstone wrote.

This is not the first time the Goldstone report has come up in the U.S. congress. In 2009, the House passed a resolution calling on the president and secretary of state to ignore the report.

Did they ignore it? If so, have they read it now that Goldstone has jumped through hoops to distance himself from it? If not, how can they call for the rescission of something they haven't read? Only in America....

The more I think about Goldstone, and I think about it/him a lot, the more it all reminds me of the Dreyfus case.  Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason, apparently because he was Jewish.  Goldstone too has been accused of treason because he is Jewish.  The fact that it was antisemites accusing Dreyfus and zionists accusing Goldstone is yet another example of the close relationship between antisemitism and zionism.

Messenger shoots himself

Another article on Goldstone, this time The Guardian editorial titled, Goldstone: the unanswered questions:

It is difficult, in this digital world of instant claim and rebuttal, to say that you were wrong. But Richard Goldstone's retraction of one of the claims of the report that he chaired – that Israel targeted civilians in the war onGaza as a matter of policy – is one such instance. Mr Goldstone deserves credit for honesty.

I doubt if there'll be a whole lot of credit for his "honesty" from hasbara quarters. But has he been honest?

The retracted allegation refers to the attack which killed 22 members of the Samouni family, who, following instructions from Israeli soldiers, were sheltering in a house in Zeitoun. But there are 35 other incidents that Goldstone's team investigated. It found seven cases where civilians were shot leaving their homes waving white flags; a direct and intentional attack on a hospital which may amount to a war crime; numerous incidents where ambulances were prevented from attending to the severely injured; nine attacks on civilian infrastructure with no military significance, such as flour mills, chickens farms, sewage works and water wells – all part of a campaign to deprive civilians of basic necessities. The key paragraph of the report states: "The Mission finds that the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility." On the Samouni killings it states that even if it amounted to an operational error and the mission concludes that a mistake was made, "state responsibility of Israel for an internationally wrongful act" would remain. 

It seems that Goldstone, given his professed zionism, which in his case is unambiguously expressed as a love of the State of Israel, was a bad choice for the task at hand.  See the Magnes Zionist blog for how he openly sought to distance himself from the report that his panel produced.

At appearances following the report, Judge Goldstone showed his discomfort and displeasure with those who wanted to use the Goldstone Report to "delegitimize Israel." He was deeply offended by those who questioned his love of Israel. One incident is particularly telling. At Yale, a banner was unfolded with listed the Dreyfuss Affair, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the Goldstone Report. Now imagine if that had happened to Norm Finkelstein. Finkelstein would have known how to react and what to say; he would be eminently non-plussed. But the act not only flustered Judge Goldstone; he virtually lost his composure. After that speech, the judge was accosted by the Chabad rabbi, Rabbi Shmuely Hecht, who asked him, "What are you going to do when the facts are unraveled and the evidence is clear that Goldstone report was a sham and not credible based on video and audio coverage of the war?" The judge replied, much to the puzzlement of the rabbi, "Should that occur, I will rejoice." (Read about ithere.) 

Poor guy.  It's put a terrible strain on his family.  But then look what happened to far bigger and poorer families in Gaza.  But Goldstone does appear to have tried to undermine the report of the panel he chaired.  Magnes Zionist gets into answering why but this Guardian editorial deals with the if.

Clear to one side the superheated flak of the debate today. It arises from Israel's current international isolation, of which the Gaza operation formed only a part. It is now said that the Goldstone report became the cornerstone of a campaign to delegitimise Israel. None of this is relevant to what happened in Gaza between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, events which led to the deaths of 1,396 Palestinians, 763 of whom, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, were not taking part in hostilities when they were killed. The report did not in fact claim that Israel set out deliberately to murder civilians. It said that Operation Cast Lead was "deliberately disproportionate" and intended to "punish, humiliate and terrorise". That charge stands unanswered. Indiscriminate warfare, as opposed to deliberate killing, was undoubtedly state policy. Shooting the messenger is always easier than dealing with the message itself. This time, the messenger had the grace to shoot himself. It does not change what happened in Gaza, nor what will happen the next time war breaks out.

So The Guardian is claiming that Goldstone's disclaiming doesn't change anything but that it does amount to shooting himself. Again I say, poor guy. Of course the toll taken on his family has been immense but it is nothing up against what the Palestinians have been suffering, certainly considering cast lead but look what his zionist sympathies and fellow zionists have made him do to his own credibility.

And still the hasbaraniks aren't happy. On the subject of "delegitimisation" of Israel, Engage has the Washington Post article tagged with "anti-zionism". Bizarre!

Finally, I was going to note how Goldstone had hawked his op-ed around the American media. Well, that he had offered the piece to the New York Times anyway but got rejected.  Ernie Halfdram made a comment to this effect linking to Angry Arab News Service which in turn linked to YNET.  Well the YNET link is now broken and the report is now denied by the NYT, on YNET thus:

In an official response to the claims, NYT's Elaine Murphy said that Goldstone had indeed submitted an opinion piece to the newspaper on March 22, which was rejected. Nevertheless, she stressed, the piece did not resemble the one published by the Washington Post.

Still, the New York Times refused to subject the original pieces sent by Goldstone to any comparison with the one published by the Washington Post; claiming they had no right to forward an unpublished submission to a third party. [typos corrected]

What to make of it all?

Why is Goldstone now covering for Israel?

I'm revisiting this Goldstone affair because it's so troubling:

If you see Goldstone's op-ed piece in the Washington Post about his report and how it would be different if only the Israelis had co-operated and if he knew then what he knows now, the immediate issue is that he wrote the op-ed on his own and without any reference to his colleagues on the original report team.  Why was that?  Who authorised him to do this?  If he simply woke up one morning and phoned the Post and asked if he could jot down a quick and implausible mea culpa that would be weird in itself.  But how did it happen that the Washington Post was prepared to allow an eminent judge, Goldstone, to write such a ludicrous article and hammer a nail into the coffin of his career or at least his credibility as a judge of international conduct?

So the mere fact that he has written the article, no matter what it was saying, is both bizarre and plain morally, and possibly legally wrong.  But his logic is bizarre too. In my previous post on this I took issue with his focus on one case to the exclusion of others. But let's look again at how Goldstone tries to exonerate Israel this time around:

the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.

But if Goldstone is telling the truth now, then second guessing is precisely what he was doing then. Poor old Israel thought that there was some kind of weaponry in a house that happened to have 29 civilians inside. Poor old Israel responded in the only way a responsible state could respond. Of course, it could have been negligent in which case, Goldstone is confident it will "respond accordingly". But when a suspect exercises their right to silence, judges usually direct juries to refrain from presumptions of guilt, don't they? If what Goldstone is saying now is true, then he presumed Israel guilty. But let's take a look at how the 29 members of the al-Samouni family died. Here's the Washington Post from the time:

Just before dawn on Jan. 4, a sledgehammer crashed through the living-room wall of the home of Almaz al-Samuni in this southern enclave of Gaza City, pounding a hole wide enough for someone to poke a rifle through while shouting in a language she didn't understand.

"Get out of the house now," an Israeli soldier ordered, this time in accented Arabic, she recalled. Almaz, small for her age of 13, and her family quickly did as they were told, heading for her uncle Wael's house nearby, where by daybreak 92 family members had packed in thigh-to-thigh. It was a week into Israel's 22-day war with Hamas.

So some al-Samouni's were ordered into the house of another al-Samouni. I mention that because Goldstone didn't.

At least 29 members of the Samuni family died over the next two weeks -- including Almaz's mother and two brothers. Sixteen or more were killed Jan. 5 when at least two Israeli shells smashed Wael al-Samuni's crowded house. 

So it took two weeks for Israel's possible negligence, over which it will "respond accordingly", to result in the killing of 29 members of the same family. Again, I mention this because from reading the Goldstone re-report you would never know that. And there's more:

At least six others wounded in that attack died more slowly, over more than three days when the Israeli army kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood, according to another teenager who had been stranded and later rescued from the house.

So Israel "kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood". Negligence? Is Goldstone calling the witnesses liars? Just a little caveat here:

This account of the Zaytoun attack and its aftermath was taken primarily from interviews with a dozen members of the Samuni family who survived the assault, as well as statements and patient logs from Gaza City's Shifa and al-Quds hospitals. The information largely parallels an earlier account given by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which concluded that by thwarting rescue efforts for four days Israel had "failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law."

It's that absence of Israeli testimony again but Goldstone has severely glossed over the case of 29 members of the same family as if they were killed in one erroneous shelling when it took two weeks for them all to be killed and many appear to have died specifically because the Israeli army denied them emergency medical attention.

Well, in fairness, Judge Goldstone was only writing an op-ed for the Washington Post. He wasn't rewriting his entire report. Otherwise he might have mentioned the complaints of Israel using blindfolded civilians as human shields.  But somehow he managed to mention the recent murders at Itamar. He doesn't mention Itamar by name but see this:

the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

Now why should the Human Rights Council condemn a straightfoward, admittedly heinous, case of murder? Is Judge Goldstone accusing a political or state actor of these murders? If so, he has one up on the Israeli authorities who appear to be as clueless now about the atrocity that took place under their own jurisdiction in a very secure settlement from which Palestinians are barred as they were at the time.  Is he doing again what he is basically accusing himself of doing in his original report? Assuming guilt by accusation? And who is he accusing? Will he now involve himself in unsolved murders the world over? I'm guessing not.

So where does this leave us? Goldstone has pretty much shredded his credibility which means he has in many ways shredded the original report. We can speculate as to why he wrote such a ludicrous article but the result is to undermine his credibility on just about anything, certainly anything involving Israel or any other pet project of the west.

I should point out that there is a certain amount of hedging in the op-ed.  There are ifs and buts blaming Israel for not co-operating and little hints that there were individual cases if wrong-doing but the negation of a general policy of war criminality  whilst hurling tabloid style abuse at Hamas does shows the general thrust of the op-ed to be an apology to Israel and an apologetic for Israel.

The best zionist approach to this would be to simply leave well alone now but many want a feed frenzy as  Conal Urquhart reports on the op-ed in The Guardian.

Israeli media responded to Goldstone's article with jubilation. The columnists of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper offered a conciliatory tone to the judge for having the courage to question his initial findings, while Ma'ariv writers were unforgiving.

One wrote: "He is undeserving of either forgiveness or mercy" and had perpetrated "a despicable and shameful act".

Urquhart picks up, uncritically, the story of the 29 members of the al-Samouni family. I think that says as much about Urquhart as it does about the harm that Goldstone has now done whatever the latter's motive.

We can speculate as to why so eminent a judge has made himself look so ludicrous and in so widely read a newspaper. People will say that he simply couldn't take the pressure, I think we can rule out bribery.  He could have been directly threatened or had members of his family threatened but all of that speculation would miss the point that Goldstone has written an utterly ludicrous article in order to cover for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel.

Reconsidering Goldstone?

Judge Richard Goldstone produced a report on Israel's "cast lead" attack on Gaza back in 2008/9.  Here's a small piece from the Washington Post:

In a 574-page report, the four-member panel accused Israel of targeting civilians in mosques and schools, as well as destroying crops and factories, including the only flour factory in Gaza City. The panel also said Israeli soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian civilians and, at gunpoint, used them as human shields to enter unsecured homes.

"There is strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law . . . were committed by the Israel Defense Forces," Goldstone said at a news conference in New York. "The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes and possibly in some respect crimes against humanity were committed by the Israel Defense Forces."

Goldstone said there was no question that the Palestinian firing of missiles and mortar shells into Israel "was deliberate and calculated to cause loss of life and injury to civilians and damage to civilian infrastructure." The mission "found that these actions also amounted to serious war crimes and also possibly crimes against humanity."

Now, writing in the same Washington Post Judge Goldstone has had a change of view:

We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly.

So the worse that Goldstone is now accusing Israel of is "negligence" and he is confident that Israel will "respond accordingly" if it finds that negligence was indeed the case. But what negligence could have led to "Israeli soldiers blindfold[ing] and handcuff[ing] Palestinian civilians and, at gunpoint, us[ing] them as human shields to enter unsecured homes"?

Well I'm sure we'll find out as soon as Israel "responds accordingly".

UPDATE: The date of the Washington Post article by Goldstone is April 1st.  Could it be an April fool?  I don't think it can be because it is in the name of Richard Goldstone himself.  Goldstone wouldn't joke about something that nearly cost him his place at his grandson's bar mitzvah and surely the Washington Post wouldn't take in vain the name of so august a personage as Judge Goldstone.  Nope, I don't think it can be an April fool but it is bizarre.  The only example he gives of something he described as an Israeli war crime is now explained away by Israeli negligence.  And yet examples of crimes in the report of the report that he linked to cannot possibly have been negligence.  Goldstone's about turn is bizarre but I don't think it's a joke.  I will however keep in mind the possibility that someone thought it might make a funny April fool.

Victims of Goldstone?

Goldstone was a hanging judge but the people hanged when he could have maybe intervened are not the victims here. No, the victims are the Israeli soldiers who are now facing war crime type charges over offences committed that were incidental to the slaughter of around 1,400 mostly civilians in Cast Lead in 2008/9. Here's France 24:

An Israeli military court on Sunday convicted two soldiers of using a Palestinian child as a human shield by forcing him to check for booby traps during the 2008-2009 Gaza war.

A transcript of the court decision made available by the army said the infantry sergeants were found guilty of "exceeding their authority to the point of endangering life," and "conduct unbecoming," for ordering a nine-year-old boy to search bags confiscated from arrested Palestinians.

The court acknowledged however that at the time of the incident, January 15, 2009, the troops had been under "difficult and dangerous combat conditions" and had gone several nights without sleep.

Sentencing is to be decided at a later date, the military said.

Israel's Supreme Court has banned such actions, saying they amount to using a civilian as a human shield.

According to testimony released when the two soldiers went on trial in March, the child, identified as Majd R., said he feared for his life.

"I thought they would kill me. I became very scared and wet my pants," he said in an affidavit to Defence for Children International, a Geneva-based group.

"There were two bags in front of me," the boy said. "I grabbed the first one as he (the soldier) stood one-and-a-half metres (yards) away. I opened the bag as he pointed his weapon directly at me. I emptied the bag on the floor. It contained money and papers. I looked at him and he was laughing."

Army radio said several of the two soldiers' comrades attended the hearing wearing shirts saying, "We are the victims of Goldstone," referring to a UN Human Rights Council probe of the war by South African jurist Richard Goldstone that accused Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes.

The report said there was evidence that both sides committed crimes against humanity during the 22-day conflict and recommended that the International Criminal Court examine its findings in the absence of "credible investigations" on both sides.

Israel vehemently rejected the report as "biased."

Yes, biased in favour of humanity.

Shell shock!

Here's a curious cartoon from the Jewish Daily Forward website:



What do you think?

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that Ron Cohen, one of the mods at the Just Peace UK list, posted the link to the Forward. I mention that because Mike Cushman has now posted a link to the "whole archive".

Mazel tov to Goldstone from lots of rabbis

Just seen this on Mondoweiss. A remarkable open letter - I think it's open - from quite a few rabbis to Judge Goldstone to wish him mazel tov on his grandson's bar mitzvah and to praise his report on Israel's slaughter of 1,400 or so people in Gaza in Operation Cast Lead, 2008/9:

Dear Judge Goldstone,

As rabbis from diverse traditions and locations, we want to extend our warmest mazel tov to you as an elder in our community upon the bar mitzvah of your grandson. Bar and Bat Mitzvah is a call to conscience, a call to be responsible for the welfare of others, a call to fulfill the covenant of peace and justice articulated in our tradition.

As rabbis, we note the religious implications of the report you authored. We are reminded of Shimon Ben Gamliel's quote, "The world stands on three things: justice, truth, and peace as it says ‘Execute the judgment of truth, and justice and peace will be established in your gates’ (Zekharya 8:16)." We affirm the truth of the report that bears your name.

We are deeply saddened by the controversy that has grown up around the issuing of the report. We affirm your findings and believe you set up an impeccable standard that provides strong evidence that Israel engaged in war crimes during the assault on Gaza that reveal a pattern of continuous and systematic assault against Palestinian people and land that has very little to do with Israel's claim of security. Your report made clear the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructures such as hospitals, schools, agricultural properties, water and sewage treatment centers and civilians themselves with deadly weapons that are illegal when used in civilian
centers.

This is the ugly truth that is so hard for many Jewish people to face. Anyone who spends a day in Palestinian territories sees this truth immediately.

Judge Goldstone, we want to offer you our deepest thanks for upholding the principles of justice, compassion and truth that are the heart of Jewish religion and without which our claims to Jewishness are empty of meaning. We regret that your findings have led to controversy and caused you not to feel welcome at your own grandson's Bar Mitzvah. We believe your report is a clarion call to Israel and the Jewish people to awaken from the slumber of denial and return to the path of peace.

Rabbi Everett Gendler
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Rabbi Brant Rosen
Rabbi Brian Walt
Rabbi Haim Beliak
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Rabbi Michael Feinberg
Rabbi Shai Gluskin
Rabbi David Shneyer
Rabbi David Mivassair
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman
Rabbi Douglas Krantz
Rabbi Margaret Holub
Rabbi Rebecca Alpert
Rabbi Mordecai Liebling
Rabbi Phyllis Berman
Rabbi Zev-Hayyim Feyer
Rabbi Eyal Levinson
Rabbi Doron Isaacs

More names added:

Rabbi Gershon Steinberg-Caudill
Rabbi Erin Hirsh
Rabbi Michael Rothbaum
Rabbi Benjamin Barnett
Rabbi Julie Greenberg
Rabbi Linda Holtzman
Rabbi Ayelet S.Cohen
Rabbi Jeffrey Marker
Rabbi Nina H.Mandel
Rabbi Victor Reinstein

As Mooser says in the comments beneath the post:

I am completely speechless. Wow, they laid it on the line, too. Gobsmacked. I’m sure I don’t see everything, or a tiny fraction of it, but this is completely different in tone, no equivocating, no equivalency canard.

Yup, quite a departure from the usual mainstream rabbinical fare.

Goldstone Meeting

What better way to celebrate St Patrick's Day than to go to the House of Lords to hear about the Goldstone Report from a retired officer from the army of the Irish Republic; not to be confused with....oh never mind?

Here's the notice from Jews for Justice for Palestinians:

Israel’s offensive on Gaza and the Goldstone report – Wednesday, 17 March, 6:30 pm – 8 pm, Houses of Parliament

Israel’s offensive on Gaza and the Goldstone report: Colonel Desmond Travers & Professor Iain Scobbie

Wednesday, 17 March, 6:30 pm – 8 pm

Desmond Travers, a retired colonel in the Irish army, was the only member of the Goldstone Commission with a military background. He is hugely experienced, having commanded troops in Lebanon, the Balkans and Cyprus as part of EU and UN peace support missions. He is now on the Board of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations, (IICI) based in The Hague. Colonel Travers will speak on the conduct of the offensive, and particularly on the consequences that are still with us relating to the weapons used, the military operations and the continuing blockade, and the effect of all that on the environment in Gaza.

Professor Iain Scobbie (SOAS) will speak on issues of international law raised by the hostilities and on the Goldstone Report. Professor Scobbie is the Sir Joseph Hotung Research Professor in Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He specialises in public international law, particularly relating to the Israeli-Palestinian situation.

Committee room 4, House of Lords. Please use St. Stephen’s Entrance, (the main visitors entrance, down a large ramp) & allow up to 20 minutes to clear security.

Nearest tube: Westminster: Jubilee, Circle & District lines. buses: 3, 12, 24, 77a, 88, 159, 211, 453
Places are limited, so please RSVP to JFJFPag@blueyonder.co.uk to confirm your attendance.