Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Who is Goldstone to judge?

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/5457948/who-is-goldstone-to-judge.thtml
Who is Goldstone to judge?
Douglas Davis
24 October 2009
Why has Richard Goldstone, a self-professed Zionist, accused Israel of 
war crimes in Gaza? Douglas Davis suspects opportunism
When Israeli tanks and troops rolled into Gaza in December 2007, there 
was no doubt about the outcome of the conflict. Nor was there any doubt 
about who would be held responsible for using disproportionate force and 
deliberately harming civilians. Never mind that Israel was responding to 
years of rocket bombardments from Gaza on its civilian population; that 
it had long since pulled all its troops and settlers out of Gaza; that 
the ruling Hamas movement refused to recognise the Jewish state and was 
pledged to its destruction; and that Hamas was using its own population 
as human shields.
The United Nations Human Rights Council, which had remained steadfastly 
silent about the human rights of Israelis suffering rocket attacks, 
quickly swung into action. It strongly condemned Israel’s Operation Cast 
Lead, which it said ‘resulted in massive violations of human rights of 
the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of the Palestinian 
infrastructure’. Then it set up a commission to confirm its opinion.
Step forward Richard Goldstone, ‘a Jew who has supported Israel and its 
people all my life’, to head the commission. Last week, the Human Rights 
Council graciously accepted his findings that Israel committed war 
crimes and may have committed crimes against humanity. And, hey presto, 
the job was done.
Richard Goldstone will now be lionised from Pyongyang to Ouagadougou, 
and all points in between where the oppressed find succour. Streets will 
be named after him, university chairs will be endowed in his honour and 
state medals will be struck for this great class-struggler. But to 
senior legal colleagues in South Africa, he will always be Richard 
Richard Goldstone.
Richard Richard?
‘Oh yes,’ says a former senior colleague who was close to Goldstone for 
many years. ‘We believed he saw himself as a future secretary-general of 
the United Nations. At the time Boutros Boutros-Ghali held the post, so 
it seemed a logical progression for Goldstone to become Richard Richard.’
It might appear unkind to doubt the purity of Goldstone’s motives in 
joining the human rights industry, poignantly as Israel’s 
excoriator-in-chief. But he is, it seems, regarded by colleagues who 
knew him well as an opportunist. And the record suggests they might be 
right. There is nothing in Goldstone’s biography to imply he was 
destined to become a hero of the people, let alone a human rights 
champion. During his career he has executed some canny intellectual and 
ideological manoeuvres, leveraging past accomplishments to propel 
himself further up the pole of seniority and celebrity.
While many of his countrymen were fighting against apartheid, Goldstone 
was loftily administering South Africa’s laws from the bench of the 
Supreme Court. The impression that he was at least ‘friendly’ towards 
the Nationalists gained weight when he was elevated to the appellate 
division.
‘I’m not suggesting he was ever a paid-up member of the Nationalist 
party,’ says his former colleague, ‘but he was very friendly towards the 
regime. There were many more capable jurists who were never promoted, 
even if they had been prepared to accept such a position. The government 
just didn’t promote people to the bench if they were likely to prove an 
ideological embarrassment — particularly if they were, like Goldstone, Jews.
Then, just as apartheid was reaching tipping point, Goldstone jumped. He 
became chairman of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry 
Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, a position he used to 
publicise the evils of apartheid and promote a new African National 
Congress-friendly persona (he refused to investigate ‘public violence 
and intimidation’ by the ANC).
Goldstone was on the road to redemption. With Mandela in power, he slid 
seamlessly onto the bench of the new South Africa’s highest court. Yet 
this was still not the summit of his ambitions. He was ready to burst 
onto the international stage, and in August 1994, he was appointed chief 
prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for both the former 
Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He had become a global brand.
But all that was only to prepare him for an even bigger prize — head of 
the UN Human Rights Council’s inquiry into the Gaza conflict. And that 
is where it has all gone wrong. Goldstone was not invited to investigate 
the causes and consequences of the conflict but, in the language of the 
mandate, ‘to investigate all violations of international human rights 
law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power, Israel’.
There were two fatal flaws in this mandate: first, a blatant presumption 
of Israeli guilt; second, no mention of the role Hamas played in the 
conflict — the fact that the Israeli operation had been prompted by 
years of rocket attacks from Gaza (specifically after Israel ceased to 
be an occupying power).
Mary Robinson quickly spotted the problems when she turned down the job 
(five other candidates are said to have rejected it before it reached 
Goldstone). The former president of Ireland and UN high commissioner for 
human rights said she ‘felt strongly that the Council’s resolution was 
one-sided and did not permit a balanced approach to determining the 
situation on the ground’.
The thin veneer of legal respectability was blown apart by the evidence 
of Britain’s Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of the British 
forces in Afghanistan.
In a statement to the UN Human Rights Council, he declared: ‘Based on my 
knowledge and experience, I can say this: during Operation Cast Lead, 
the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians 
in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare… More 
than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’s way 
of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians… 
Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from 
attacking them with rockets.’
The Goldstone Commission could have seized the opportunity to examine 
the phenomenon of asymmetrical warfare and make a serious contribution 
to an issue that will provide a huge challenge for the West in the 
coming decades. Instead, it lapsed into clapped-out slogans.
Perhaps most distressing for Goldstone is not the ridicule he has 
attracted for accepting the mission, but the painful personal dimension 
of his actions. Just as he cut himself adrift from the apartheid regime 
when he considered it prudent, he seems to have cut himself off from his 
Jewish and Zionist roots in accepting the Gaza commission.
Warren Goldstein, the chief rabbi of South Africa who, incidentally, has 
a PhD in human rights law, described the mission as a ‘sham’ which 
demonstrated a ‘complete lack of integrity and fairness’. ‘It looks like 
law,’ he declared, ‘but it is not. It is just politics.’
Closer to home, a long-standing family friend of Goldstone wrote to him 
in blunt language: the report, she said, ‘did not arise from ignorance 
or naivety’. ‘I am trying so hard to resist the conclusion that your 
role and report might represent a self-serving desire to ingratiate 
yourself for a more senior position in the… United Nations. If true — 
and one hopes that this is not the case — at what price?’
That is a deeply troubling question. As Goldstone’s former colleague 
told me last weekend: ‘Richard has always exercised an exquisite sense 
of judgment — he has always known precisely what was in his own 
self-interest.’
Meanwhile, I am left with my own very personal question: where exactly 
was Richard Richard, paragon of human rights, when my human rights were 
being comprehensively trashed in an interrogation room at the Security 
Police headquarters in Pretoria? This was not Rwanda, Yugoslavia or even 
Gaza. My interrogation room was less than a minute’s walk from Judge 
Goldstone’s Supreme Court.

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