Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, writing in The New Republic, says that the Goldstone Report "portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents--as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed."
This is crazy stuff, especially because it comes not from some rightwing crank but from Israel's highest ranking diplomat who serves in its most significant diplomatic post. Oren is also an intellectual, an author who is American born and educated.
Oren's take on the Goldstone report is ridiculous. In fact, nowhere in his piece does he dispute the report's finding that Israel (and Hamas) committed war crimes during the Gaza war.
Reading Oren, one would never know that 1,387 Palestinians (including 320 children) were killed compared to nine Israeli soldiers. Nowhere does he discuss the testimony of the Israeli soldiers who have told Goldstone, as well as Israeli groups investigating the conduct of the war, that the Israeli army repeatedly made no distinction between combatants and innocents.
No, all Oren wants to do is shoot the messenger - the distinguished South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, himself Jewish - for having produced a report that "goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves."
What, in heaven's name, does Goldstone have to do with Ahmadinejad? Nothing.
But Oren conflates them and then throws in anyone who advocates Israeli territorial compromise:
Ahmadinejad's genocidal rhetoric and the iniquity of the Goldstone Report notwithstanding, Israel will, of course, continue to defend its citizens. No amount of vitriol will compel Israel onto a course of self-destruction. ... Israelis, moreover, will not withdraw from any territory liable to become staging grounds for terrorist groups empowered by international agencies and convinced of their ability to murder Israelis with impunity.
Someone needs to tell the overwrought diplomat that invoking the Nazis regardless of the provocation is quickly becoming the last refuge of scoundrels. It is also ineffective (look at the US health care debate where the memory of Holocaust victims is debased by its use to prove or disprove almost any argument about anything).
Richard Goldstone would not strip Israel of its right, its obligation, to defend its citizens. Hardly. He has been involved in pro-Israel activities during his entire life. As for those who support the two-state solution, they are trying not to "compel Israel onto a course of self-destruction" but to help Israel avoid straying on to that course.
Doesn't Oren remember the late Yizhak Rabin? What would he think of this diatribe by an Israeli diplomat?
Stick to the facts, Ambassador.
Crossposted Media Matters Action Network
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Goldstone "interviews" came from the same discredited cranks the media rushed to embrace and who were all proven to have not seen what they claimed to (this number is in the small single digits).
This is in direct contrast to Hamas which OPENLY brags about their use of civilian shields going so far as to post videos about it!!
Please, cut the Orwellian recasting of this fiction and speak the truth.
WIthout there will never be peace.
When the Arabs put down their arms, recognize Israel and commit to creating a state, they will have one, IMMEDIATELY.
palestinians should honor goldstone for generations for the justice he has served to them...had this report been penned by some other person the i.sraeli spin machine would have shred it from day 0....
And here's poor old Mitchell, taking all kinds of abuse at the hands of Israelis, and being swatted about like a shuttlecock, and neither Obama or Clinton has a thing to say about it.
Obama is turning out to be an empty vessel. Does the man have ANY convictions at all?
Assuming that the hearings on Goldstone are resurrected it will be interesting to see if the US again steps in to protect Israel.
--Abbas refused to negotiate with Israel unless he had a total freeze of construction on all settlements with no exceptions despite Obama’s desperate efforts to get talks going.
--Arab states asked to make small confidence-building steps toward Israel to help the president said “No!”
Not only isn't international relations his forte, but also his discourse on the subject has always been the equivalent of a center-right "paint-by-number" - his speech in New York last year being a case in point.
As to Mr. Rosenberg - sir, you do know that you make a lot of sense a lot of the time, don't you? It must get quite lonely sometimes...
Keep up the good work.
And yes every time the holocost or black racial card is used unnecessarily or as a distraction to prevent legitimate discourse, it reduces the reciept of the empathy and understanding which each group seeks.
Since its founding in 1897, the Zionist Organization of America has been fighting for the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.
http://www.zoa.org/content/about_us.asp
We know that Israel deliberately massacred civilians from accounts such as the Zeitoun massacre. As this article shows http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html , Israeli militants even celebrate their atrocities by wearing t-shirts depicting their crimes. Are Israeli militant groups Nazis? No, for they represent another ideology and another time in history. But they certainly are a backwards people with no respect for human life who cannot be allowed to continue their reign of terror over the Palestinian people. They certainly cannot continue to be given the most advanced arms technology by the United States, yet this shameful chapter in American foreign policy repeats itself every day.
First of all, the IDF is not 'Israeli militants.' I don't know why you would say that.
Second, two units were the ones who made shirts like those. That's right, two. Out of the entire Israeli army. Is that enough to generalize all of them? you be the judge.
Third, if you look closely at the shirts you would see that most of the Palestinians depicted on them are holding weapons. In the article you cited, the pregnant woman on the shirt was holding an AK47. Bad taste? Duh. A "crime"? I'm not so sure.
Oh, and just in case someone gets the impression that I approve of the shirts, I don't. The soldiers who make and wear them are idiots.
Honestly, blaming the victim is perhaps what causes god this chasm of lonliness and despair that the world particularly, a certain part in the middle east is going througn.
Why is the report limited to the period of time when Israel attacked Gaza instead of looking back on the few last years which actually triggered Israel to respond?
You can read more here:
http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/c.hsJPK0PIJpH/b.5471279/k.A2D9/Timeline_of_IsraeliArab_Peace_Initiatives_since_1977_updated_Sept_18_2009.htm
nobody in the UN is calling hamass to stop the rockets , i think hamass is trying to provoke Israel into a postion where they will have to go into gaza.
Hamass is using the arab population as human sheilds to fire into Israel thats a war crime.
where is Goldston now ? The UN? .. their all waiting for Israel to respond so they can pounce.
Its time for Israel to shut off the Gas and power to the gaza strip and let eygpt to take care of their own.
But if you are going to investigate Hamas, then you have to investigate the blockade -- which IS an act of war, every bit as much as launching a rocket.
Even with the extreme threat that the Cuban Missle Crisis brought about (now THOSE were rockets which could cause catastrophic death and destruction) the US in its blockade of Cuba allowed ships to pass which did not contain OFFENSIVE nuclear weapons. Food and other necessities were allowed through.
Besides:
Israel keeps sending supplies to Gaza even under fire. In addition Gaza has a border with Egypt, so there is no such a thing, like "Israeli blockade".
Regarding the suffering of palestinian people - you can't declare a war (so called "resistance") on a powerful enemy and to expect, that it will be no response.
Other, if you are seeking for a victory in "Media/Public Opinion/Propaganda" war. Then the dead bodies of your children will become a powerful weapon. So, what can I say....the Goldstone Report is one more evidence, that such a war was won by Hamas.
Oren made his comments because the Goldstone Report said that Israel "had carried out direct intentional strikes against civilians" based on (let's be generous) questionable testimonies. Failing to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants? Sure, I'll buy that. Disproportionate force? I could see the argument.
But *intentionally killing civilians?* That's insane, and Israel has every right to be p.o'd at this accusation. Goldstone needed a much better investigative method before he is going to go around slinging this conclusion.
intentionally killing civilians. This is the viewpoint of most of the world community. Is Goldstone
a 'self-hating Jew' because he is striving for justice?
Nice strawman, btw. I didn't call Goldstone a 'self-hating Jew.' I don't think he is. But I don't think that he's "striving for justice," either. His mission was to find facts, not draw conclusions, though he did so anyway.
His call to sanity may just be insufficient at this juncture as the taste and curruption of power has become addictive and must be heeded.
You have to admit though that Israel has the intelligence, the practiced history in the use of warfare and the ability to use proportionate responses; that the customary disproportionate reponse is a matter of policy.
You must admit that if the Massad wants to kill only the instigator of the rocket launches that they could, without mindlessly killing approximately 1400 hundred Palestinians?
The killing of women, children, and the elderly was a direct result of this indiscriminate practice.
At the end of it all are you saying that a well honed war machine such as Israel’s could not have responded differently?
Considering what the lives of women and children mean in both jewish and arab culture - do you think it is easier to suffer the loss of approximately 1400 arabs than it is to suffer the loss of 9 jews?
Are you expecting many to buy this argument? In the end, very few of the actual perpetrators died.
Mostly the defenceless continue to die- can you imagine the shoe on the other foot? Does this not break your heart?