I love Dershowitz.

It takes time and mental effort to analyse and critique any lengthy doocument from a lawyer's point of view. A lawyer offering a critique must always have in their mind that what they say is supportable in law and in logic; this is not as easy as it seems.

I will re read the critique at my leasure; but as a fellow lawyer I admire Dershowitz's diligence and forensic gifts.

Oh, and he's right too.

PS Goldstone is nothing more than a pass student. Dershowitz would have failed all his essays if they were as shoddy as his report.

Still re reading the critique.

Goldstone will not be able to read this. It evicerates his report; and him as the lead author.

Read it as a lawyer Goldstone. You are toast - hung out to dry by a great lawyer - you are worse than pedestrian - you lack legal ability and credibility.

You are pathetic.

Thank you for being an excellent source of information! I wrote a post in my Russian-language blog based on this (and another Solomonia post).

youcancallmemeyer,

Anthea Jeffrey of the South African Institute of Race Relations wrote a book
People's War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa in which she discusses Goldstone's 1994 Commission to get to the facts about the violence in the years preceding the elections for Independence.

It seems that one comes across the same behaviour relating to facts, evidence and witnesses.

Cynic,

Thanks for putting me on to Anthea Jeffery. The link below (at page 10) contains an excellent article by her.

From the article:

"What few seem to realise, however,
is that the Goldstone Report
on Gaza is reminiscent of what
the Goldstone Commission did in
South Africa in the early 1990s.
The Commission was chaired by
Goldstone and mandated to
probe the upsurge in political
killings that began with political
liberalisation in 1990 and cost the
lives of 15 000 people, mostly
black civilians, between then and
the April 1994 general election."

and

"As in the Gaza report,
Goldstone seemed willing to use
his judicial office to give credibility
to unsubstantiated allegations
which endorsed the perspective
of one party to conflict
and undermined its opponent.
Whether he intended to benefit
the ANC is largely immaterial,
for he must have foreseen that
this would be the outcome of his
flawed report."

I'm not surprised.

http://www.sajewishreport.co.za/pdf/2009/nov/27-november-2009.pdf

Goldstone reminds me of our very own Marcus Einfeld. A poor lawyer who rose way beyond his ability on the back of the "human rights" lobby.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/jail-completes-marcus-einfelds-fall/story-0-1225689975873

Forcing people to testify on TV/video was probably a mistake in this instance - the fear factor is real I think (in Gaza) and may have influenced what people said.

That in itself makes the whole document suspect.

It's kind of like Roger Cohen's earlier columns about the Jews in Iran - when he saw the violent crackdown after the "election" he changed his tone about the regime.

Dershowitz is a legend. He's done an outstanding job yet again.

youcancallmemeyer,

Googling one can find some comments about Goldstone during the apartheid days when he accepted the role of judge and applied the laws while other lawyers refused to do so because of their opposition to the discrimination.
Then suddenly he becomes "cleansed" and marches arm in arm with Tutu and Ronnie Kasrils in S.A. and the UN bunch.

Well I don't like Dershowitz. Come to that I don't like anyone that wants to legalize torture - they are all fascists in my book i.e. cruel, despotic (Concise Oxford Dictionary).

But on a point of fact Dershie has gone off at length on Goldstone's accusations of Israeli policies of "killing as many Palestinian civilians as possible," "of deliberately targeting innocent civilians for mass murder" and that Israel’s policy was to "maximize the deaths of civilians." Dershe also mentions the word "genocide". My only problem with this is that Goldstone didn't write any of it, not nowhere, nohow. He did write for example that the policy was "directed, at least in part at…the people of Gaza as a whole" [ paragraph 1680] and of"punishing the Gazan population…for its apparent support for Hamas." [paragraph 1681. But all of that is a long way short of what Dershowitz's critique is rabitting on about. The man's a rabid idiot.

And to put it on a personal note I have had a guided tour of a Red Crescent ambulance station in Gaza where I saw the walls riddled with sniper bullet holes that went 100mm into the concrete blocks (I measured them), and the holes nearly as big as my head that had been made by tank shells, and the evidence of the fire where white phosphorus had hit. I have stood outside al_Quds hospital and seen the smoke blackened walls from the fire that was started when the hospital was attacked without warning by white phosphorus shells. I listened while an eye witness to the event, a native English speaker, described that night when they had to get 50 bed ridden patients out of the burning hospital and they didn't know whether the IDF would attack them as they wheeled them up the road to the UNRWA compound which itself had previously been attacked by white phosphorus.

So a question: just what is your complaint when a UN appointed judge says that if the accused parties won't conduct a valid investigation that the matter should be referred to the ICJ? We're not talking about a punch up in school playground here we're talking about barbarism. Even Al Capone didn't incinerate babes in arms or attack medical facilities. Just look at yourselves and what you are defending and ask yourselves if you have any concept of what constitutes civilized behaviour.

Richard Lightbrown (I guess it depends on what you ate the night before),

1) What uniform do "palestinian" "militants", (the ones who carry rockets and AK-47's) wear to distinguish themselves from REAL CIVILIANS?

2) Have you ever read the Hamass Charter, of 1988, the same year that Pan Am 103 was bombed? Have you read the depictions of Jews as animals? What does hamass have to say about Freemasons, Lions and Rotarians?

3) How long has it been since the convicted bomber of Pan Am 103 was released from prison by scotland on "compassionate grounds" due to the bombers near death due to an illness? More than 3 months he was given before he was predicted to succumb? Did you see the flag of scotland waving to welcome the murder of 200+ passengers, back to his home in libya?

Oh yes, http://www.boycottscotland.com

4) Were thousands of rockets being fired from gaza into Israel? Did Israel give hamass an ultimatum to stop the attacks or Israel take action to stop the rocket attacks?

5) If gazans are starving to death, where are the pictures of emaciated gazans?

6) Do the hamass leadership purposely use human shields, children?

7) Did hamass use hospitals as firing positions?

8) Did hamass use mosques as weapons caches?

9) Did hamass use ambulances to ferry fighters and weapons - and NOT to transport wounded?