Judge Richard Goldstone’s condemnatory report on Israel’s actions in Gaza has been dismissed as hopelessly one-sided by neutral observers — The Economist, for example, denounced the report’s “wilful blindness”.Goldstone’s “thimbleful of poison” has, it says, made the peace process all the harder.
Many Jews outside Israel ask how Goldstone, himself a Jew, could lend himself to such an obviously biased mission mandated by the notorious United Nations human rights council, itself full of human rights violators.
Goldstone’s behaviour will not surprise those who have followed his career.
As a student in South Africa he took the anti-apartheid side and many expected him to do the same as a lawyer, for a small cadre of liberal lawyers were crucial to the defence of the regime’s political opponents.
Instead, Goldstone kept his head down and avoided annoying the apartheid government, devoting himself to commercial cases. Then, as the political situation changed, so did Goldstone.
Entrusted by President de Klerk with a commission to investigate the causes of violence, Goldstone turned up damning evidence against the apartheid regime but refused to investigate the ANC’s armed wing.
When the ANC won its first election Goldstone was given a seat in the Constitutional Court.
Heedless of the fact that the doctrine of collective guilt has been the basis of anti-Semitic campaigns down the ages, Goldstone urged all whites to apologise for their collective guilt.
The court showed itself extremely deferential to the new ANC government so that when millions of voters (mainly from minorities supporting the opposition) were excluded from the franchise by a technical change in ID documents, the court took the government’s side.
Goldstone’s fame as an icon of political correctness led to his appointment as prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Source: Times Online
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