The AP has published an analysis of the unintended consequences of the Goldstone report on the Israeli peace process. About halfway through, the analysis declares that this is a main reason the report is creating an uproar in Israel:
One of the reasons the report has caused such an uproar in Israel is its author’s background. Goldstone is Jewish and has supported a number of Israeli causes, including serving as a trustee of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The narrative continues. It isn’t the report’s many inaccuracies. It isn’t the refusal of the Goldstone Commission to take Israeli information into account. It isn’t the Goldstone Commission’s ignoring evidence that counters Palestinian “eyewitness” claims (many of these “eyewitnesses” were actually members of Hamas, certainly not unbiased in any way) about war crimes. It even refuses to take photographic evidence into account. The report may very well bring war crimes trials of Israelis to the Hague, but that’s not the main reason why Israel is in an uproar. No. It’s because Goldstone is Jewish, and pro-Israel.
I told you just two days ago that this meme is going to catch on. The AP is working it to death. Other media apparatuses will as well. It’s the reverse of saying that critics of Israel’s critics (that would be people like me) jump too quickly on the anti-Semite accusation. Because if you can say, “See, a Jew led the commission that wrote this report, therefore, it has to be true and right, because he’s not anti-Israel,” what you have done is what the magician calls “misdirection”: Watch my left hand as my right hand palms the handkerchief. As long as the media can proclaim falsely that the report must be true because a Jew wrote it, and ignore the many factual errors and outright lies, the report will steamroller its way to the ICC.
Step one is tomorrow, at the UN Security Council debate. We shall see if the Obama administration intends to keep the words he spoke in front of AIPAC while he was a candidate, and veto any resolution against Israel over this flawed, biased, anti-Israel atrocity of a report.
“We shall see if the Obama administration intends to keep the words he spoke in front of AIPAC while he was a candidate, and veto any resolution against Israel over this flawed, biased, anti-Israel atrocity of a report.”
I won’t hold my breath waiting for it. Obama seems determined to sell out our allies to suck up to our adversaries and enemies.
Goldstone may still be Jewish but he is hardly pro-Israel to found an accusatory report on lies and hearsay. He’s buying his way to safety from the barbarians. They will double-cross him, and he will deserve the betrayal, as the result of his own betrayal.
Goldstone is just a fig leaf and a lightning rode; the focus on the counter effort has to be the report itself, our criticism must bypass Goldstone.
No way will the US under Obama veto this. We might abstain rather than voting for it. That kind of gutless coward’s way out is characteristic of BO, whose accomplishtments prior to last November consisted mostly of voting “present”.
What conversion to Christianity was to European Jews in the nineteenth century–a means of entry into a desired larger society and a means of proving that one is not trammeled by the archaic bonds of Judaism–progressivism is to modern day Jews. Goldstone is not doing anything new.
This is, I think, what motivates J Street. They want to be part of the great progressive wave but aren’t quite willing yet to discard their old-fashioned and outdated loyalties, so they claim they are pro-Israel while proving to their fellows on the left that they, too, are fully, truly progressive.
In another context Lezlek Kolakowski said something that I echo: “If that is left then hell, no, I am not left and do not wish to be.”
Why not? Tina Fey dressed up as Sarah Palin and declared, “I can see Russia from my house!” and everyone now believes Palin herself said it. Rush Limbaugh is now a racist, due entirely to fabricated quotes posted by a guy on Wikipedia who calls himself “Cobra.”
Lies are now considered as valid as the truth, because you’re not allowed to discriminate against them just because they’re lies. If someone believes a lie, then rejecting it is discrimination against the people who believe, and soon that will be a prosecutable offense in Obama’s Brave New World.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the Brave New World begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
– “Gods of the Copybook Headings,” Rudyard Kipling