Tuesday, September 22, 2009
It's not really a blog carnival in the traditional sense, it's really more of a link dump. Lot and lots of commentary and analysis of the Goldstone Report. All quality.
Elder of Ziyon continues mining gold: Goldstone report inaccuracies, part 11, part 12, part 13.
Nile Gardiner at Human Events: The U.N.'s Anti-Israel Crusade Continues: "...In effect, the U.N. establishes a dubious moral equivalence between the legitimate defensive measures of the Israeli security forces and the terrorist activities of groups such as Hamas who are deliberately targeting civilians..."
Carloline Glick writes about Our irredeemable international system: "...It isn't that they [international institutions] don't function. They function just fine. The problem is that through their regular functioning, they advance goals antithetical to those they were established to achieve. Instead of promoting global security, human rights, freedom and international peace, they facilitate war and aggression, human suffering and tyranny..."
In the NY Post, Jay Sekulow & Brett Joshpe note that Goldstone is just part of A drive to create 'Israeli war crimes': "IT'S September -- prime time for Israel-bashing as world leaders and dignitar ies convene at the United Nations..."
Great paragons of respect for international norms, Hamas is psyched about the report: Haniyeh: World must back Goldstone's Gaza report. Do you really need to know anything else?
Even David Landau, the former Haaretz editor who once infamously remarked to Condi Rice that the US should rape Israel for its own good, is apparently nonplussed at the UN taking a shot at the same prescription: The Gaza Report's Wasted Opportunity: "...By approaching the Gaza war, and his report, from this perspective, Judge Goldstone could have opened debate and prompted reflection in Israel. Instead, by accusing Israel -- its government, its army, its ethos -- of deliberately seeking out civilians, he has achieved the opposite effect."
At Volokh, David Bernstein posts an analysis by legal scholar Avi Bell: Avi Bell on the Goldstone Report: "...the Report never refers to Hamas as a terrorist group or even hints that there might be a legal question. When citing Israeli references to Hamas as terrorist, it includes scare quotes..."
The Obama Administration has said that the report was unfair.
UN Watch notes that Canada slams U.N.'s Goldstone report for "pre-emptively assuming Israel's culpability": "...he so-called fact-finding commission was the creation of one of the United Nation's most flawed bodies, the Human Rights Council, which includes some of the UN's least democratic states..."
Law Professor Paul Robinson writes in the Wall Street Journal about Israel and the Trouble With International Law - Many restrictions on the use of force against aggressors make no moral sense
Alan Dershowitz goes into detail on his JPost blog: The Goldstone report is a barrier to peace: "...The Goldstone report has made it virtually impossible for the Israeli army to protect its citizens against rocket attacks from territory that is no longer militarily occupied. It encourages Israel's enemies to provoke Israeli self-defense measures, which they know will produce condemnation of the Jewish state..."
Soccer Dad looks into the case of the al-Samouni family in The goldstone standard part ii
Sammy Benoit at American Thinker notes that sauce for Israel will be sauce for the United States as well: Dangerous omen: "...If we allow the UN to persecute one country, it can persecute everybody. If we let the United Nations get away with trumping up charges against the IDF and Israel, the will come after the United States and our heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan..."
Writing in Canada's National Post, George Jonas writes, Judge Goldstone -- "peace criminal": "Our generation hasn't injected more justice into politics than previous generations, but we've certainly injected more politics into justice. One pioneer in the lucrative field of politics in black robes has been Judge Richard Goldstone..."
Tom Gross has his own roundup, including, "Dachau survivor asks Goldstone: How dare you?", "Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the EU reject Goldstone report" and "Even Mary Robinson denounces Goldstone's report".
Maurice Ostroff has actually developed something of a correspondence with Richard Goldstone himself, see: Part 1 of an open response to the Goldstone report, Judge Goldstone's response to part 1.
Let's wind it up with a separate but highly related issue. Carl in Jerusalem lets off with another broadside at Human Rights Watch: HRW's lame evasion: "...In the 1940's, Soviet communism was criticized by both Nazis and Western democrats. Being criticized from both sides is not proof that HRW is doing things right. It's time for HRW to stop changing the subject and either answer its critics or accept their criticism."
Update: Jeremy Sharon writes at the LA Times: Goldstone report unfair to Israel: "...These details simply contravened the political agenda of the mission, and so the investigators either overlooked them, declared them to be irrelevant or found them to be inconclusive."
Netanyahu gives some good answers to Wolf Blitzer in Hamas and Human Shields: Is it a "human shield" if they're willing?, David Landau's Criticism of Goldstone: Even the Self-Absorbed See a Problem, and Leveling the Playing Field and the Retreat into Stupidity: george on Peretz on Goldstone.
How about this article
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-sharon18-2009sep18,0,3894245.story
Do you know the author? Heheh. Added.
;-) Vaguely, I hear he's an extremely erudite and dashing young man