Torrents of criticism have rained down upon the Goldstone Report. Some are by enthusiastic bloggers and journalists; others by law professors; even some of them expert on international law.
What's a fair-minded individual, who is no expert in international law, to think?
Well, I suggest that we judge the critics of the Goldstone Report by using the same methodology that NGO Monitor uses to judge the reports of the human rights NGO's. That is to say, we examine the authors of the criticisms, find out their ideological leanings, and, without actually analyzing the content of their criticism, dismiss them as hopelessly biased.
What follows is a partial list of the critics, according to a list provided by NGO Monitor here.
Ed Morgan, Yisrael Medad, Aharon Leshno Ya'ar, Alan Dershowitz, Benjamin Pogrund, Ben-Dror Yemini, E. B. Solomon, Harold Evans, Melanie Phillips, Robert O. Freedman, John Bolton, Haviv Rettig Gur, RW Johnson, Yisrael Harel, Irwin Cotler, Hillel Neuer
Almost all Jews, almost all Zionists, almost all center right, and in some cases, famous for having moved to the right. Centrist Zionists like Cotler and Pogrund have increasingly been spending their time defending Israel and avoiding criticism. Why can't they be like Michael Walzer, another liberal Zionist, and avoid the fray?
Is this Charles Manekin who uses the alias of Jeremiah Haber?
Posts
6 comments:
No, it is NGO Monitor that targeted you as a critic.
what was your point?
Well, since my name is mentioned, I think the post was equally referring to me personally. After all, if Dick Goldstone can claim ad honimen attacks, why can't I?
That was my point. Was it too difficult?
Try this
Look, did you read what you printed? If you feel that you were mentioned unfairly as a critic of Goldstone, talk to Gerald Steinberg about it -- he was the one who did it., not me.
Perhaps you were upset with my characterisation of the group as
"Almost all Jews, almost all Zionists, almost all center right, and in some cases, famous for having moved to the right. Centrist Zionists like Cotler and Pogrund have increasingly been spending their time defending Israel and avoiding criticism. Why can't they be like Michael Walzer, another liberal Zionist, and avoid the fray?"
So exactly where is the ad hominem attack? Including you with centrist and center-right Zionists. All right, I apologize for that. You are neither centrist nor center-right. But I did say "almost all".
Yisrael I have been reading your stuff for years (mostly letters to Haaretz) and find it a very good articulation of an intelligent right position. So this is surprising to me.
By the way, add to the list of critics Moshe Halbertal and Shimon Peres, both centrist Zionists. Moishe thinks he is "Left" but nobody on the Left does.
Did you read the WashPost editorial:
the Goldstone commission proceeded to make a mockery of impartiality with its judgment of facts. It concluded, on scant evidence, that "disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy" by Israel. At the same time it pronounced itself unable to confirm that Hamas hid its fighters among civilians, used human shields, fired mortars and rockets from outside schools, stored weapons in mosques, and used a hospital for its headquarters, despite abundant available evidence.
By pretending it did not know whether Hamas employed such tactics and by claiming that Israel's actions were driven by a motivation to kill civilians on purpose, rather than to defeat Hamas, the panel dodged the hard issues it should have tackled. It did not seriously attempt to balance civilian deaths against the threats Israel was targeting or to understand the real motivations for the destruction in areas from which rockets were launched at Israeli cities.
As it happens, Israel is ahead of most other nations in managing these issues. In Gaza its forces used thousands of e-mails, phone calls and even non-lethal explosives to warn civilians away from airstrike targets. Its army's criminal division is investigating 45 complaints of abuses.
Post a Comment