Monday, May 02, 2011

Will Goldstone’s Retraction Provoke Another Cast Lead?

Israeli officials believe Goldstone’s “koshering” of their military inquiries will lift the threat of Israeli politicians and soldiers being arrested on war crimes charges during trips overseas. Several Israeli government ministers are already calling for a Cast Lead 2, notes Jonathan Cook

Middle East Online, May 2, 2011

Richard Goldstone, the international jurist whose now-notorious report on Gaza tarred the Israeli army with war crimes, backtracked unexpectedly and very publicly on 2 April in the pages of the Washington Post.

For 18 months Goldstone had suffered a campaign of character assassination by Israel and its supporters as they sought to discredit his United Nations investigation into Israel’s attack on Gaza in winter 2008-09. Goldstone, a South Africa judge who made his name undermining the legal foundations of apartheid rule and later prosecuting war criminals from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was quickly cast as the self-hating Jew who had helped to author an anti-Semitic report. His professions of “love for Israel,” made as he defended his role, served only to further incense critics.

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