Conclusions Faulted

Judge Richard Goldstone was the right man to be appointed by the United Nations to hold an enquiry into the decision by Israel to dispatch the IDF into Gaza to put an end to the incessant rocket attacks across the border. Judge Goldstone, after all, a South African judge, knew all about apartheid, could recognize it when he saw it. He would be neutral, he would discover, through assiduous research, what occurred, and then apportion blame.

Could the United Nations conceivably have found a more impressive candidate for this mission than Judge Goldstone? A Jew, a seasoned jurist, an avowed Zionist. He loved Israel, he once said, which was why he felt it was his mission to point out, honestly and without favour, where she had diverted from her social conscience to commit a historical moral blot. That kind of 'tough love' is sometimes needed to enable those who should know better, that they have behaved badly.

This kind of sanctimonious righteousness does not however, fully explain why Judge Goldstone barely made mention of the provocations that Israel suffered well in advance of finally deciding it could no longer countenance them. Deciding to act in the very same manner in which other sovereign nations would, to protect their territory, their people, their integrity. For it took integrity to acknowledge that Hamas was using its own dense-neighbourhood centres as covers from which to attack Israel.

Judge Goldstone's characterization of Hamas as a non-state entity which must nonetheless be held to the same standard of moral and ethical behaviour as a state actor does not quite stand upto close scrutiny since effectively Hamas thinks of itself and seeks to comports itself as the political head of a state, governing Gaza with its 'political' wing and imposing its standards, values and priorities upon the population as such.

But Judge Goldstone has had a change of heart. He now expresses reservations and some remorse at his conclusions that have had the effect of casting Israel and its population and its government as an outcast in world opinion. Thanks to the infamous Goldstone Report, those who consider Israel to be a human-rights-denier for the Palestinian people, feel fully vindicated in continuing to portray Israel as an apartheid state.

Thanks to the Goldstone Report, those who passionately espouse the views of the Palestinians as victims to the heartless Israelis, will evermore point at the conclusions that Judge Goldstone reached and was obliged and felt obligated to present as truth incarnate. This will support the schemes to continue de-legitimizing Israel, to boycott its academics, its products, investment in the country, and the constant barrage of left-wing and union-led criticisms.

It will inspire greater efforts at slandering Israel, it will continue to support the left-leaning academic and student movements that make common cause with the Palestinians with their yearly "Israeli Apartheid Week", and the intentions of groups to lease ships and fill them with "humanitarian" supplies and passionate volunteers to make more well-advertised runs to challenge the blockade of Gaza.

It will empower the world's anti-Semites who owe Judge Goldstone a huge hug of appreciation for his complicity in their agenda. For it was he and he alone who is responsible for tarnishing Israel with the brush of deliberately targeting innocent Palestinian civilians. When he should have known and likely did know that Israel's military went to great lengths to attempt to avoid such civilian disasters.

And that when civilians did die under suspicious circumstances those events were investigated and those held responsible lawfully penalized.

"If I had known then what I know now, The Goldstone Report would have been a different document" may soothe the conscience of Judge Goldstone as he now laments what is history. But we know all too well that the charges as originally laid are the ones that stick. Remediation and reconsideration after the fact have never been known to invalidate the original charges.

His mea culpa is not without some self-exculpation. He holds Israel to blame for not fully co-operating with his mission to discover it to be lop-sidedly to blame for the defensive attack on Gaza, for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. His own slender references to terrorist attacks from Gaza on Israel, the stricken Jewish population, the proclivity of Hamas to seek shelter behind the shields of their own population, all given short shrift.

Impressions are indelible when issued from respectable sources. That which has been accepted cannot readily be set aside and honour restored. Neither his nor those whom his conclusion slurred.