Judge Goldstone is hopefully not too upset at being out of the limelight for a few days. 

One would have hoped it would have given him some time to respond to a letter from Ricky Hollander from CAMERA.   Hollander asks some very specific questions, including some related to assertions made by Goldstone during his recent appearance at Brandeis University. 

The respectful but clear letter, which is reproduced here, is worth reading - in particular related to the supposed deliberate attack on a flour mill and mosque.

So how did the good Judge respond, remembering that he has complained that no one has disputed his claims, and instead have used personal attacks?

As CAMERA notes

Yaacov Lozowick’s book “Right to Exist” provides one of the best insights into the Middle East conflict, and Israel’s efforts to be both secure and moral, in a hostile sea of undemocratic regimes and post-modernist thought.

In a recent item in his blog, Lozowick provides an assessment of the Goldstone Report that also delves into potential motivations behind Goldstone and his report colleagues.

For instance, Lozowick writes :

“Perhaps something more fundamental is going on: the Report is serving as a cognitive litmus test, a philosophical fork in the road where people part and lose the ability to understand each other. There are three levels of this mutual inability to communicate: 1.  Incompatible and incomprehensible narratives of Mideast history; 2. Unacceptable methodology for understanding the battlefield; 3. Contradictory concepts of democracy, freedom, and human rights.”

“The authors of the report complain endlessly that the Israeli authorities didn’t cooperate. Whatever one’s opinion about this, it left the investigators with no way of knowing what the Israeli intentions had been, and the only intellectually honest response would have been to admit it. Their insistence in dozens of cases to compensate for what they couldn’t know by inventing damning assumptions from whole cloth, is breathtaking. This intellectual dishonesty alone proves the Israeli authorities were right when they refused to cooperate: if Goldstone and his colleagues are capable of inventing things they have no way of knowing, how much more could they be relied on to twist whatever evidence Israel might have supplied into the mold they wished it to have.”

Lozowick’s report is well worth reading; it also includes links to various sources, including the recent Goldstone-Gold debate at Brandeis University. 

Although there is a tendency to think that the biases and viewpoints about Israel are unique,  it was interesting to recently hear on the radio a Sydney academic complaining how the difference between fact and opinion is increasingly blurred on campus. 

To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail;  and that has been reinforced when one examines who responds how to the Fort Hood killers in the U.S. by Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan.  The Wall St Journal has a good take on it.

Since Richard Goldstone announced his team Gaza report with great fanfare, he has been ubiquitous, popping up everywhere on radio and TV, and writing articles with great frequency - a global star. 

While listening to an internet broadcast of him answering questions on a telephone hook-up with 50-100 U.S. Rabbis (you can find it on the internet), it struck me how pompous, ponderous and utterly sure of himself he is.  Although distortions, inaccuracies and weaknesses of the report and its compilers have been pointed out repeatedly, they count for nothing against Goldstone’s supreme self-confidence.  And the damage that his distorted report has done to Israel in the hands of the usual Israel-haters, is just water off Goldstone’s back.

Fortunately, Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish has relevant insights to the problem.  This is what he has to say  …

Mench (Mensh) From German, Mensch “person”

1. A human being. “After all, he is a mensh, not an animal” … (that first definition is fairly broad and non-specific, let’s not go that far.)

2. An upright, honorable, decent person. “Come on, act like a mensh!”

3. Someone of consequence; someone to admire and emulate; someone of noble character. “Now there is a real mensh!”

It is hard to convey the special sense of respect, dignity, approbation, that can be conveyed by calling someone “a real mensh!”

As a child, I often heard it said: “The finest thing you can say about a man is that he is a mensh! Jewish children often hear the admonition: “Behave like a mensh!” or “Be a mensh!”  This use of the word is uniquely Yiddish in its overtones.

The most withering comment one might make on someone’s character or conduct is: “He is not (did not act like) a mensh.”

To be a mensh has nothing to do with success, wealth, status.  A judge can be a zhlob; a millionaire can be a momzer; a professor can be a shlemiel, a doctor a klutz, a lawyer a bulvon.  The key to being “a real mensh” is nothing less than - character: rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous.  Many a poor man, many an ignorant man, is a mensh.”

………..

Well put, Leo Rosten… and with shades of a Lloyd Bentsen put down of Dan Quayle ….

“Richard Goldstone, you’re no Mensh! 

… Wouldn’t a placard saying just that be a nice touch at one of his no-doubt numerous upcoming performances.. not for Goldstone’s benefit, but for others to ponder.

A good article by a former Justice Minister of Israel, showing the deficiencies of the Goldstone process.

The English newspaper, the Guardian, features a web-based column CiF (Comment is free) that is best known for its troll list of Israel-haters.  

So in the same way that a pink dolphin rarely appears,

 CiF has managed to come up with an excellent article from Sir Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times and Times.

The article, entitled A Moral Atrocity, blasts Goldstone, the Goldstone Report and its hypocritical promoters, and the anaemic British Government for being AWOL when voting was taking place.

The subheading “Judge Golstone has been suckered into letting war criminals use his name to pillory Israel”  is followed by an equally powerful first sentence “Aren’t the British sickened by the moral confusion of their Government”.

Read on and feel good that this British newspaperman has such clarity.  Even the Israel-haters trying to criticise him are at a loss - Shame! 

So who is Sir Harold Evans??  What about this from the Guardian itself.

In 2002, readers of the Press Gazette and the British Journalism Review voted Evans the greatest newspaper editor of all time; in 2004 he received a knighthood for services to journalism. He currently lives in New York with his wife, Tina Brown, former editor of Tatler, Talk, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker.

So a man voted the greatest newspaper editor of all time stands squarely in support of Israel. 

Now that sure is cause for panic stations by the anti-Israel brigade - so out they trot with the good Rabbi Michael Lerner for a protective anti-Israel piece.  

Lerner obliges although his opening line of “The global choir of ethical cretins who condemn Goldstone’s Gaza report do Israel no favours” .. sounds like ad hominem abuse and his follow-up of “I recently met a leading representative of the foreign ministry of Israel who acknowledged to me “off the record” that Israel had made a tremendous blunder in refusing to cooperate with the UN Commission”  -  sounds a bit shrill!

Melanie Phillips praises Sir Harold Evans’ article while the CiF watch website follows the flying fur.

In a previous blog item, we referenced Sir Harold Evans’ quote that “Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them”

. .. now that’s a good quote to remember.  Here is an earlier wide ranging interview with Evans on the media in general.

Anyone for a pink elephant.

Earlier this week, Mark Regev, Israeli spokesman and former Mount Scopus student, was interviewed by Phillip Adams on Late Night Live.

The main topic of the conversation was Gaza and the Goldstone Report.  Mark expressed himself well, and is a great credit to Israel and the Jewish people.  Hopefully, Australians will better appreciate the biases and difficulties Israel has to face. 

The radio interview can be found here.

There have been some excellent responses to the Goldstone Report which are listed

Edwin Bennatan, Alan Dershowitz, Grappling with Goldstone - how Israel should respond, Caroline Glick

It is worthy to note that the daily presses don’t seem to have made a big deal of it and the US has criticised the report. We can only hope enought sensible individuals realise what a “piece of work” it is.