Friday, November 6, 2009
I watched the live feed from Brandeis last night. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have seen my tweets while the event was ongoing. Overall, I thought Dore Gold did a superb job. You can always second guess these things, but if you are like me, watching Gold respond was extremely satisfying. I'll reproduce some of my tweets below.
One Jerusalem has video of the entire event here. The audio is ambient, but good enough to hear. Brandeis is supposed to have their own video up by Monday and I'll update this post with a link to it at that time. I expect the quality should be good.
Carl in Jerusalem was in Waltham and has several good posts up: Richard Goldstone v. Dore Gold Liveblog, What would you do?, and Goldstone v. Gold, the videos and more. One of Carl's commenters notes:
I was at the debate tonight too. The students who stood up were wearing signs with quotes from Spinoza, Chomsky, and a few others. Their black t-shirts were from Democracy Now.
Whenever anybody where I was sitting (front right) clapped for Dore Gold, the leftists began making hissing sounds as loud as they could. This stopped after one of the police officers came over and cursed out the middle-aged man behind me for doing it.
The minute I walked up and got in line, some schmuck named Alan looked at my kipah, asked if I supported Israel, and then informed me that "Hitler taught you Jews well about the master race.
The Boston Globe reports here: Goldstone defends UN report on Gaza
Soccer Dad has a number of comments here: Goldstone's telling remark
Meryl Yourish dishes here: Richard Goldstone: Utterly clueless
UN Watch comments on Goldstone's poor justification for Christine Chinkin, here: Brandeis debate: Did Goldstone admit UN colleague Chinkin was biased?
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (Dore Gold's outfit) has posted all of the devastating a/v material Gold used in his presentation online: The Challenge of the UN Gaza Report
Here are some of my tweets from last night which might provide a fun and quick way of seeing some of my impressions. My comments added now are in brackets and I've alternately run things together and broken them into paragraphs to facilitate reading. Let's see how it goes:
Goldstone says he agrees that UNHRC is unfairly focused on Israel, but has done some good things...Also says media doesn't pay enough attention to human rights issues elsewhere...Says the accusation of bias in original mandate is not true - says mandate was changed. Going on at length on this...Describes writing out the new mandate himself and handing it to HRC chair. That's it? Absurd! [In fact, his mandate was never officially changed.]
...Goldstone says didn't question use of military force..question was how they used it. Israel has absolute right to defend citizens...Goldstone says rockets on Israel were terrorism, war crimes, possible crimes against humanity - complains a lot abt Israel's noncooperation [Given the history of the UNHRC, the member states and the mandate, there's absolutely no reason that Israel should have been required to cooperate in their own lynching.]...Goldstone takes press reports of random Isr. gov members as definitive evidence of criminal intent [This is a Chomsky-like tendency on Goldstone's part. Find a quote from a random government person, expressing a personal opinion, and repeat it as though it were definitive in some way.]
...Goldstone finished. Bring on Dore Gold! Gold's introducer already doing a job on Goldstone before gold speaks! [Ilan Troen was surprisingly, almost inappropriately aggressive toward Goldstone himself. I loved it.]...Gold: Report is most serious and vicious indictment of Israel since UNGA adopted Zionism is racism,.amounts to an assault on Israeli society...Gold: IDF is not what appears in this report. First disruption...audio interrupted. Can't see what happened...Gold on extended description of IDF concern and risk taken to protect innocent lives up to present day (shifa hospital was hamas hq)...
...Dore Gold is blistering. talks about Chinkin's prejudgement..plays video of sderot school kids running for cover and qassam explosion...Gold: THere is no question as to who committed aggression on whom...Gold shows sat photo w/Hamas positions marked. Intentionally placed with civilians. What to do? 3 choices:...1: Russians in Chenya (level it) 2. Do nothing and let the terrorists kill you 3. Separate fighters from civilians as best you can [and that's what Israel did]...Gold talks about leafleting, phone call warnings to civilians...shows video of cynical hamas use of warnings to bring human shields...Gold concludes playing video testimony of Richard Kemp...presentation a tour de force...
...Palestinian Arab girl gets up to ask "question" with signs taped to her...complains about no palestinian view represented [Gold asks who they should have gotten, Hamas or Fatah? Turns out this girl, according to Carl, is an Arab Israeli]...Goldstone says he had a nice time in Gaza. Treated well. Good grief. [Truly shocking. The guy had a nice time and now the implication is that it's all a big misunderstanding. Unfortunately, not all Jews get the guided tour.]...
...Goldstone complained Gold's video evidence wasn't presented to panel. Next time google it. [In fact, nothing Gold presented was a state secret. Had Goldstone been truly interested in justice and not in behaving like a jilted lover still walking about in a fit of pique, he could have found it all out on his own, no Israelis necessary.]...Gold points out that Hamas the ones responsible for conditions and war. [This is one of Gold's most effective elements. Fuller comment below.]...Goldstone's repeated regretful complaint that Hamas practices "capital punishment" is the definition of maudlin [The fact that Hamas has the death penalty is hardly their most hand-wringing worthy characteristic.]...grt pnt by Gold: Israel is a minority in the UN. Watch how they are treated there. (Israel has no obligation to cooperate with its accusers)...
/end tweets
Dore Gold's overall approach was a smart one. He pointed out that this was a war, not a war the Israelis wanted, that Hamas intentionally hid among and jeopardized civilians (and he presented convincing evidence)...in short, that this was war, and a dirty one. By widening out the frame in this way, when Goldstone came in with accusations over individual incidents it came out sounding almost petty. There's just no way you can be prepared to address every individual incident ("On a Friday afternoon, at the corner of 3rd and Martyr Abu Moomoo Way, third house down on the left, a missile came in the door..."), but by adjusting the frame you keep it all in (appropriate) perspective.
On the whole it was a good day for the Goldstone critics, with someone of substance finally on the record against the man himself.
Don't forget to check the excellent web site that collects all manner of material on the case: Understanding the Goldstone Report.
Related, a must-read by Moshe Halbertal at The New Republic: What the U.N. report gets wrong about Gaza--and war
In 2000, I was asked by the Israel Defense Forces to join a group of philosophers, lawyers, and generals for the purpose of drafting the army's ethics code. Since then, I have been deeply involved in the analysis of the moral issues that Israel faces in its war on terrorism. I have spent many hours in discussions with soldiers and officers in order to better grasp the dilemmas that they tackle in the field, and in an attempt to help facilitate the internalization of the code of ethics in war. It was no wonder that, when the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war was published, I was keen to read it, with some hope of getting a perspective on Israeli successes or failures in this effort to comprehend war, and to fight it, morally. Unlike many who responded to the report, in praise or in blame, I gave this immensely long document a careful reading...
Somehow the point about this being a war gets lost in the shuffle.
It's framed as an attack on innocent people a la the Warsaw Ghetto instead of a war that's been going on since before WWII.
In fact it's hard for me not to see this as a continuation of WWII.
At what point did the war against the Jewish people actually stop? Didn't it just change locales?
PS I am very grateful for America. When I read the attitudes from Europe - yikes -
Sophia: You nailed it:
"At what point did the war against the Jewish people actually stop? Didn't it just change locales?"
Sophia,
but given the political support over the years from at least the time of Baker whose State Department basically imposed Arafat on Israel as the only person they could negotiate with, and the financial support from Oslo onwards to pick up the PA everytime they were knocked down by Israel in bloody skirmishes one can honestly come to the conclusion that the US along with Europe is using the Arabs as a grind stone.
Of course one should also look at the blind eye of the US to initial smuggling of arms across the Egyptian/Gaza border. So much for Egypt's "peace whatever" they signed with Israel that they permitted a build up of arms that took Hamas a week to truck into Gaza when the frontier was breeched the in 2005.
Anyway the US paid heavily with lost lives in Iraq from IEDs that were developed in Gaza by Hezbollah operatives using the tunnels as a conduit, who experimented on Israeli tanks before turning their successful results over to Iran.
Basically Western Foreign Policy has been at the expense of Israelis.
Sophia,
Here's an article by Eric Hoffer in which he says:
......
Had Nasser triumphed last June [1967], he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on.
..........
The Jews are alone in the world.
.....
If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. and Jewish resources.
ISRAEL'S PECULIAR POSITION...by Eric Hoffer - LA Times 5/26/68
Please don't be put off by the name of the blog and read the article in full.
"It's framed as an attack on innocent people a la the Warsaw Ghetto instead of a war that's been going on since before WWII."
Operation Cast Lead was an attack on a criminal, racist, Jew hating, fascist entity,
a la the bombing of 1945 Berlin.
Cynic, yep, that's a wonderful column by the late Eric Hoffer.
arnold toynbee exemplifies the vile, superior, imperialist british mindset.
I bet that when the british retreated from "palestine" in 1948, they expected the Jews of Israel to be slaughtered by arab nazis, as they were in WW2.
I hope the vile british choked on their warm beer with the realization that their expectations of more dead Jews went unfulfilled.
Thank you Cynic. I got chills reading that piece.
I have to read more about Toynbee.
He actually said that??????
No wonder there's so much anti-Israel sentiment in Britain, it isn't hard to trace back to the 1930's even or before.
Of course back then it was pure and simple antisemitism, with a long and obnoxious history.
Now, people excuse it as "anti-Zionism" of course and on top of that claim the moral high ground.
:(
About Baker.
Some people actually claim he is a friend of Israel.
Don´t you understand that this is a tug off war between the dark forces and the forces of true democracy. Actually you don’t need to be an Einstein to understand. Look at history: Who acted with the apartheid government in South Africa? It is the same that act to prevent the Goldstone report to give a guideline to how to protect your country. Most people don’t care what is right in the bottom of their hearts; they try to win an argument. I am totally confident that the Good side will win, it has won before. The Berlin wall fell, the apartheid regime fell, and democracy (real) is winning grounds with internet broadcastings of Real News. People in Iran will not stand tyranny fore much long and so on.