Goldstone Retracts Part of His Own Report

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, South African Judge Richard Goldstone says the commission he headed came to the wrong conclusion regarding the intentionality of Israel's attacks on Gazan civilians during Operation Cast Lead two years ago. Based on information he now has, including from IDF internal investigations, he now says there was no policy of targeting civilians. Civilian deaths were mostly unintentional, perhaps with a few exceptions, where a commander on the ground was to blame.

Goldstone claims that had Israel cooperated with his commission, its conclusions would have been starkly different. That might be true, and if it is, it means any report the commission would have produced, with or without Israeli cooperation, would have been problematic. If they base their conclusions mainly on the two sides' official accounts, and don't do much independent investigating of their own, the report isn't worth much. It would have been much cheaper for the UN to post the official accounts on-line, side by side, and let the general public decide. But the public doesn't have the tools to find out which claims are true and which are false, you say? Well, apparently, the Goldstone Commission didn't either!

Im Tirtzu's Attack on the New Israel Fund

Im Tirtzu, a right-wing student organization who for some reason insists on calling itself a centrist movement, has started a campaign against the New Israel Fund and its chairwoman, former MK Prof. Naomi Chazan. In ads in newspapers and online, Im Tirtzu claims that 92 percent of the negative claims against Israel and the IDF in the Goldstone Report whose source is Israeli, came from organizations funded by the NIF. They invite people to read a report they prepared, and I assume they hope people won't actually read the report. I read it, and checked out some of their refrences to the Goldstone Report.

They're careful to say it is 92% of negatives claims against Israel made by Israeli organizations, but most people who read it would think it is a whopping 92% of all claims, which isn't the case. Remember, that NIF sources are less than 14% of the whole sources of the Goldstone Report. The Palestinians' claims would still be there even if it weren't for NIF-funded organizations.

Now, how did they get to the exact 92% figure. They took 191 references to NIF sources (including "New Profile", which Naomi Chazan has already said is not affiliated with the NIF), plus 56 references to non-NIF Israeli organizations. At this stage, the NIF is responsible for only 77% of the references. That isn't bad enough, so Im Tirtzu needed to increase the percentage. What did they do? They split the 56 non-NIF references to those who are either supportive of Israel or neutral (40) and those who criticize it (16). So those critical of Israel are now 191 NIF sources (92%) and 16 non-NIF sources (8%). But wait, why didn't they perform a similar split between NIF sources criticizing Israel and those supporting it? I noticed that at least a few of the NIF sources they listed actually talk about life under the threat of the Qassams. If I had the time to go over all the references, I'm sure I'd be able to find more NIF sources in the Goldstone Report that are either supportive of Israel or neutral.

I have to say that I'm not too thrilled with the organizations that did give the Goldstone Commission certain one-sided information, but it's their right to give the Commission information as they see it. This McCarthyist campaign by Im Tirtzu is disgusting.

The New Israel Fund has many great programs in Israel, most of them not related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would hate to see them lose contributions because of this slanted report.