The lowest blow and the worst canard contained in this lie-laden report is that the Israeli judicial system is incapable of conducting investigations and bringing about compliance with international law. It claims the Israeli judicial system “has major structural flaws that make the system inconsistent with international standards” and that “there is little potential for accountability for serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law through domestic institutions in Israel.”
This is a direct attack on the Israeli Supreme Court by a lawyer who knows full well there is no country in the world that has a judicial system that demands more accountability than the Israeli system does. There is no judicial system in the world – not in the United States, not in Great Britain, not in South Africa, not in France – that takes more seriously its responsibility to bring its military into compliance with international law.
The long-term president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Professor Aharon Barak, opened the court to all claims of law violation. Cases that would be rejected by the courts of other nations have been pursued by the Israeli Supreme Court. This part of the report literally turns black to white and white to black, condemning the most responsive judicial system in the world without even bothering to compare it to other systems.
Another Orwellian “newspeak” conclusion is that “the international community has been largely silent” about alleged Israeli abuses in the Gaza and the West Bank. Didn’t the investigators even read the reports of the Human Rights Council, as well as those of so many other organizations of the international community, that obsess over Israeli imperfections to the exclusion of other real human rights abusers?
No country in the world has been subjected to more criticism than Israel. Yet on Planet Goldstone “the international community has been largely silent” about Israel. This statement could only have been written by a variation of the three monkeys with hands covering eyes and ears, but not mouths or pens.
Every serious student of human rights should be appalled at this anti-human rights and highly politicized report. Judge Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself. In an apparent effort to curry favor with the international anti-Israel establishment, and perhaps with the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, he has abandoned all principles of objectivity and neutral human rights. He has done more to destroy the credibility and objectivity of human rights than any credible human rights personage in modern times.
If the methodology and conclusions of this report were ever applied generally to democracies seeking to combat terrorists who hide behind civilians – as in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq – it would constitute a great victory for terrorism and a defeat for democracy. But not to worry. The report is not intended to establish general principles of international law, applicable to all nations. It is directed at one nation and one nation only: the Jew among nations – Israel. For shame.