Goldstone Recants by Norman Finkelstein

Author:Norman Finkelstein [Finkelstein, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781935928485
Publisher: OR Books

Goldstone has excised all the evidence casting doubt on the new Israeli alibi. His depiction of the facts in his recantation might be appropriate if he were Israel’s defense attorney but it hardly befits the head of a Mission that was mandated to ferret out the truth.

GOLDSTONE JUSTIFIES his recantation on the grounds that “we know a lot more today.” It is unclear however what, if anything, “a lot more” consists of. He points to the findings of Israeli military investigations.

But what do “we know . . . today” about these in camera hearings except what Israel says about them? In fact Israel has furnished virtually no information on which to independently assess the evidence adduced or the fairness of these proceedings. It is not even known how many investigations are complete and how many still ongoing.

Although he claims to “know a lot more,” and bases his recantation on this “a lot more,” neither Goldstone nor anyone else could have independently assessed any of this purportedly new information before he recanted.

Even in the three investigations that resulted in criminal indictments, the proceedings were often inaccessible to the public (apart from the indicted soldiers’ supporters) and full transcripts of the proceedings were not made publicly available. And surely no information that came out of these criminal indictments—one soldier was convicted of stealing a credit card and two others were convicted of using a Palestinian child as a human shield—could have caused Goldstone to reverse himself.

The key example of revelatory new information Goldstone cites is the alleged misreading of a drone image which caused Israel to mistakenly target an extended family of civilians. If, as humanitarian and human rights organizations declared right after the al-Samouni killings, it was one of the “gravest” and “most shocking” incidents of the Israeli assault, and if, as Goldstone said, the al-Samouni killings were “the single most serious incident” in the Mission’s Report, it is odd that Israel did not rush to restore its bruised reputation after the Gaza invasion but instead waited 22 months before coming forth with such a simple explanation.

To defend Israel against the Mission’s findings, the report Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip reproduced numerous Israeli aerial photographs taken during the Gaza assault. Why has Israel still not made publicly available this drone image that allegedly exonerates it of criminal culpability for the most egregious incident of which it was accused?

It is also cause for wonder why Goldstone credits this new Israeli “evidence” sight unseen, yet ignores genuinely new evidence revealed by Amira Hass in Haaretz after his Report’s publication: that before the attack—the civilian deaths of which allegedly surprised the Givati brigade commander who ordered it—“a Givati force set up outposts and bases in at least six houses in the Samouni compound.”

Didn’t the Givati commander check with these soldiers on the ground before launching the murderous attack to make sure they were out of harm’s way? Didn’t he ask them whether they saw men carrying rocket launchers and didn’t they reply no?

Israel might be able to furnish plausible answers in its defense.

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