Israeli leaders can legitimately pop the Champaign cork and drink on the graves of the 1400 Palestinian martyrs who were massacred during the “Cast Lead” attack against the Gaza Strip population from December 2008 to January 2009.
The retired South African judge Richard Goldstone, who, at the request of the UN Council on Human Rights, had directed the commission investigating the events, which had concluded that war crimes, even crimes against humanity had been committed, had, in the end, retracted those conclusions.
As a Jew, and self-declared Zionist, Goldstone had thought that he would be safe from accusations of partiality or worse, anti-Semitism on the part of Israeli leaders when he submitted his report in September 2009.
He was wrong. On the strength of their impunity (because Goldstone’s report was not followed up by the UN or any of the powers which direct that organization, no pressure, much less sanctions, had been applied), Israeli leaders and their allies in the “Jewish communities” around the world launched fatwa after fatwa against Goldstone and banished him from the tribe as a “Jewish traitor.”
The pressure went as far as the inner circle of Goldstone’s family, for example refusing him the right to attend the Bar Mitzvah (religious ceremony marking the passage of a boy to adulthood) of one of his own grandsons.
At the same time, the Israeli propaganda machine had the impudence to accuse Goidstone of having served the South African Apartheid regime during the 1970s and 1980s ; a shameful lie. Goldstone had been one of the rare South African judges to publicly oppose the racist regime. And that during an epoch when Israel had been the number one ally of the White power structure !
So, the menaces and the slanders of Israeli propaganda have been rewarded today. In an article published on Saturday by the US daily Washington Post, Goldstone completely retracted himself and suggested that the report be thrown in the trash.
(To read Goldstone’s piece, in English, click on : <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini…) In that piece the old judge of lost honor said, in essence, that with “Cast Lead” Israel had only exercised her inalienable right to legitimate self-defense. Certainly Goldstone could not totally ignore the hundreds of civilian men, women and children massacred during the three weeks of horror. It was regrettable, he said, but Israel did not do it intentionally, and, as everyone knows, all wars have their inevitable technical errors and collateral damage. “It’s just bad luck !” In the end, if those responsible must be identified, for Goldstone that leaves only Hamas, accused of blindly firing home made rockets in the direction of Israeli territory, the damage from which was derisory compared to the death and destruction spread by one of the most powerful armies on the planet. In phase with the Israeli agenda and its propaganda in his exercise of the “repentant Jew” (and hailed as such since Saturday by Israeli politicians and Zionist commentators), Goldstone pushes the ignominy to the point of accusing Hamas of another, more recent crime (for which he has neither personal competence nor professional jurisdiction) ; the assassination of 5 members of the same family, including a 3 month old baby, in the Jewish settlement of Itamar in the West Bank. Responsibility for the Itamar slaughter during which the Fogel couple and their three children were stabbed to death in their sleep last month, has never been claimed, and has been denounced as a monstrous crime by all Palestinian parties, including militarized entities, such as the Ezzedine al Quassam Brigades, Al Qods and the Martyrs of Al Agsa. Three weeks after the events, the police inquiry, surrounded by secrecy, did not produce any charges, in spite of the terror (blockades, mass arrests) imposed on the Palestinian population surviving in the neighborhood of the Itamar settlement. Rumors about the interrogation of a Thai family working for the Fogels (Palestinian workers being prohibited form entering the Itama settlement, even as beasts of burden) continue to circulate without being either denied or confirmed on the Israeli side, where, on the contrary, there is talk of ADN tests on dozens of rounded up Palestinians. And for want of having found the real guilty parties, Israel is certainly capable of accusing others, preferably, of course, Palestinians. It would not be the first time that the grand Israeli diplomacy engaged in that type of exploit. When one sees how Israel succeeded in making Salah Hamouri plead guilty, when he had committed no crime, and inflicting 7 years on prison on the young Franco-Palestinian to teach him to renounce all ideas of resistance, one has no worries about the Israeli government’s capacity to find guilty parties… and even to stir up crimes in order to counter any menace of peace. Candidate for redemption, the Inspector Goldstone has, for his part, already found the guilty one. CAPJPO-EuroPalestine”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini…)
In that piece the old judge of lost honor said, in essence, that with “Cast Lead” Israel had only exercised her inalienable right to legitimate self-defense.
Certainly Goldstone could not totally ignore the hundreds of civilian men, women and children massacred during the three weeks of horror. It was regrettable, he said, but Israel did not do it intentionally, and, as everyone knows, all wars have their inevitable technical errors and collateral damage. “It’s just bad luck !”
In the end, if those responsible must be identified, for Goldstone that leaves only Hamas, accused of blindly firing home made rockets in the direction of Israeli territory, the damage from which was derisory compared to the death and destruction spread by one of the most powerful armies on the planet.
In phase with the Israeli agenda and its propaganda in his exercise of the “repentant Jew” (and hailed as such since Saturday by Israeli politicians and Zionist commentators), Goldstone pushes the ignominy to the point of accusing Hamas of another, more recent crime (for which he has neither personal competence nor professional jurisdiction) ; the assassination of 5 members of the same family, including a 3 month old baby, in the Jewish settlement of Itamar in the West Bank.
Responsibility for the Itamar slaughter during which the Fogel couple and their three children were stabbed to death in their sleep last month, has never been claimed, and has been denounced as a monstrous crime by all Palestinian parties, including militarized entities, such as the Ezzedine al Quassam Brigades, Al Qods and the Martyrs of Al Agsa.
Three weeks after the events, the police inquiry, surrounded by secrecy, did not produce any charges, in spite of the terror (blockades, mass arrests) imposed on the Palestinian population surviving in the neighborhood of the Itamar settlement.
Rumors about the interrogation of a Thai family working for the Fogels (Palestinian workers being prohibited form entering the Itama settlement, even as beasts of burden) continue to circulate without being either denied or confirmed on the Israeli side, where, on the contrary, there is talk of ADN tests on dozens of rounded up Palestinians. And for want of having found the real guilty parties, Israel is certainly capable of accusing others, preferably, of course, Palestinians. It would not be the first time that the grand Israeli diplomacy engaged in that type of exploit.
When one sees how Israel succeeded in making Salah Hamouri plead guilty, when he had committed no crime, and inflicting 7 years on prison on the young Franco-Palestinian to teach him to renounce all ideas of resistance, one has no worries about the Israeli government’s capacity to find guilty parties… and even to stir up crimes in order to counter any menace of peace.
Candidate for redemption, the Inspector Goldstone has, for his part, already found the guilty one.
CAPJPO-EuroPalestine
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