Stones of gold; feet of clay

Recently, reports appearing the media contradicted assertions made by the Goldstone report. These go to the beliefs promoted by Judge Goldstone and his confederates that Israel’s restrictions imposed on Gaza constitute collective punishment, that Israel did not take adequate care to avoid civilians casuatties and members of the Hamas police force should not automatically be considered terrorists.

From the executive summary of the Goldstone report:

The Mission is concerned by declarations made by various Israeli officials who have indicated the intention of maintaining the blockade of the Gaza Strip until the release of Gilad Shalit. The Mission is of the opinion that this would constitute collective punishment of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

From Mitchel Prothero’s Under the gun in Gaza:

I ask him if that means the human rights situation was better under Israeli occupation that it is today for residents of both the West Bank and Gaza. “Why do you think I ask you not use my name? Yes, 100 percent yes,” he said. “At least the occupation had a positive effect of drawing the Palestinian people together instead of dividing them. I now fear that we’re seeing a systematic effort by Hamas and its religious backers to enter every component of society.”

From Peter Hitchens’ Lattes, beach barbecues (and dodging missiles) in the world’s biggest prison camp

Can anyone think of a siege in human history, from Syracuse to Leningrad, where the shops of the besieged city have been full of Snickers bars and Chinese motorbikes, and where European Union and other foreign aid projects pour streams of cash (often yours) into the pockets of thousands? Once again, the word conceals more than it reveals.
In Gaza’s trapped, unequal society, a wealthy and influential few live in magnificent villas with sea views and their own generators to escape the endless power cuts.
Gaza also possesses a reasonably well-off middle class, who spend their cash in a shopping mall – sited in Treasure Street in Gaza City, round the corner from another street that is almost entirely given over to shops displaying washing machines and refrigerators.
Siege? Not exactly. What about Gaza’s ‘refugee camps’. The expression is misleading. Most of those who live in them are not refugees, but the children and grandchildren of those who fled Israel in the war of 1948.
All the other refugees from that era – in India and Pakistan, the Germans driven from Poland and the Czech lands, not to mention the Jews expelled from the Arab world – were long ago resettled.

These and similar data lead Michael Horesh to conclude (h/t Barry Rubin):

Is Gaza rich? No. It still needs the tons of daily aid, which Israel facilitates. On the other hand, a utube video from an unknown source shows beyond doubt just what multiple resources are available in wide parts of the territory.

Again from the executive summary of the Goldstone report:

589. Even if the Israeli armed forces were under fire from anti-tank missiles from Palestinian armed groups at the time, all of the information referred to above indicates that the commanders in question did not take all feasible precautions in the choice of methods and means of warfare with a view to avoiding or, in any event, to minimizing incidental civilian casualties or civilian property damage.

The recent Wikileaks revelations about Iraq though give a much different perspective. Joshua Mitnick wrote in the Christian Science Monitor:

Gerald Steinberg, an Israeli-American professor of political science at Bar Ilan University, shares the view that the volume of international criticism of Israel is out of proportion, though he departs from Ben Ari when it comes to the case of the US.

“In the US, we already have a greater understanding. They know that they are vulnerable and they will be the next in line”‘ to be accused of wartime misconduct, says Mr. Steinberg, who also runs NGO Monitor, which has criticized non-profits that criticize Israel. “If this was a fair world and there were universal human rights, then Goldstone would open up an investigation, and the United Nations would meet to investigate the allegations… There would be more Wikileaks about violations in China and Saudi Arabia.”

Or to generalize and put it into numbers, as Evelyn Gordon did:

This elicits an obvious question: if civilians routinely account for 90 percent of all casualties in modern warfare, why is the world up in arms about the civilian casualty rate in last year’s Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — which, by even the most anti-Israel account, was markedly lower?

Then there’s the matter of the members of the Hamas police force. The Goldstone report found Israel’s striking of the graduation ceremony to be excessive:

To examine whether the attacks against the police were compatible with the principle of distinction between civilian and military objects and persons, the Mission analysed the institutional development of the Gaza police since Hamas took complete control of Gaza in July 2007 and merged the Gaza police with the “Executive Force” it had created after its election victory. The Mission finds that, while a great number of the Gaza policemen were recruited among Hamas supporters or members of Palestinian armed groups, the Gaza police were a civilian law-enforcement agency. The Mission also concludes that the policemen killed on 27 December 2008 cannot be said to have been taking a direct part in hostilities and thus did not lose their civilian immunity from direct attack as civilians on this basis. The Mission accepts that there may be individual members of the Gaza police that were at the same time members of Palestinian armed groups and thus combatants. It concludes, however, that the attacks against the police facilities on the first day of the armed operations failed to strike an acceptable balance between the direct military advantage anticipated (i.e. the killing of those policemen who may have been members of Palestinian armed groups) and the loss of civilian life (i.e. the other policemen killed and members of the public who would inevitably have been present or in the vicinity), and therefore violated international humanitarian law.

However it was recently reported that:

An admission by a militant named Abu Khaled, whose interview appeared in the Christian Science Monitor in its Nov. 1, 2010 edition, that “two thirds of Hamas policemen are police by day and Al Qassam by night” lends support to those who all along contended that the overwhelming majority of the police were Hamas militants. Al Qassam is the Hamas military formation which is also responsible for carrying out terrorist acts. Israel claims that at least 709 of 1166 Palestinian fatalities were combatants, approximately 61 percent. This figure includes the policemen as combatants. PCHR claims that only 236 of 1,417 fatalities were combatants, calculating 83 percent as civilians. Palestinian Policemen are described by PCHR as “non-combatants.”

More directly, those newly graduated police cadets are now acknowledged to have been terrorists.

And thought Goldstone actually makes a mention of the arbitrary killings of others by Hamas, Hamas’s procedures for executing rivals should make it clear that Goldstone’s expectation that Hamas could properly investigate itself, is bogus.

Richard Goldstone was set up as some sort of demigod. These latest details suggest that he was a hack whose main purpose was to convict and condemn Israel. It would be fair to say that Judge Goldstone’s feet are of clay.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.