Peres was quoted Wednesday as calling Goldstone “a small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence,” who was “on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel.”

Goldstone’s response:

Goldstone also said he had anticipated that the report would engender considerable criticism. “After all, no one likes to be accused of committing serious war crimes. However, I was surprised at the many nasty attacks made against me personally. In my view, it was a classic case of attacking the messenger rather than addressing the message.”

His report’s “message” has been addressed, many times, by many sources—factually—and Goldstone’s response, over and over again, is that people can’t attack him on the facts so they attack him personally. He sticks to this defense even in when he is confronted with evidence that directly contradicts his report, seeming shocked that such evidence exists. So Goldstone is either utterly disingenuous, if not outright lying—and he’s been doing this dance since the beginning. The martyr role is getting tiresome.

Goldstone also rejected the claim that the fact that he is Jewish was exploited to make it more difficult for Israelis to challenge his conclusions. “I was approached because of my experience with regard to the investigation of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”

Let’s take a look at the AP boilerplate that ran with every article on the Goldstone Commission, shall we?

However, Goldstone’s strong credentials as a respected South African jurist, his Jewish faith and past support for Israeli causes have made it hard for Israel to dismiss the claims.

It’s there. And here. Oh, and here’s another media outlet touting Goldstone’s Jewish faith as a great reason for the report’s accountability. And while I haven’t heard back from the AP regarding my letter (I never do), let’s face it—they don’t have to point out that Goldstone’s Jewish faith make it any harder for Israel to dismiss his report. It’s what people do when they set Jews to investigate Jews. The intent of the UNHRC, by choosing Goldstone, was to count on exactly the response they’ve got—with the extra added bonus that Goldstone is actually not a very good friend to Israel, else why would he continue to insist that his report is fair and evenhanded, ignoring all evidence to the contrary?

And now, Goldstone goes on his world breast-beating tour, blithely ignoring real criticism, and pretending that no one can disprove his report, anymore than they can show evidence that his Jewish faith has been used all along to try to muffle Israel’s understandable reaction to an anti-Israel report. Let’s see. It worked for Walt & Mearsheimer. It worked for Jimmy Carter. And now it’s working for Goldstone.

He seems particularly unable to understand why everyone doesn’t just see that he changed the original mandate (the one that ordered only investigation into “Israeli war crimes,” and the one that was never officially adopted by the Human Rights Council), that the Goldstone Report is not biased against Israel, and that he implicated Hamas as much as he blamed Israel for the civilian deaths in Gaza. When confronted with facts that contradict this worldview, he insists that he did everything right, he is being slandered by people who don’t like the report, and all Israel had to do was take part in the Goldstone Commission’s investigation, and then everything would have been all right.

Last night he repeated the same allegations against Israel made in his report, because Goldstone reiterates the same major points at every stop: The report did condemn Hamas, the 36 incidents cited were proof of Israel deliberately targeting civilians, and the proof of that is the destruction that was wreaked, especially of infrastructure.

Point number one: The report never actually condemns Hamas. Not once. It does, however, keep mentioning “Palestinian armed groups” as responsible for some of the crimes (for example, the rocket launching). There is a reason, Dore Gold said, why Hamas accepted the report. Because it didn’t implicate them at all.

Point numbers two and three: Those 36 incidents were incidents that Goldstone said proved Israel was guilty of deliberately targeting civilians. But the report could find “no evidence” of Hamas booby-trapping buildings or using human shields. The report quoted Palestinian eyewitnesses, but did not interview anyone in the IDF. One of the student questioners asked Goldstone how the report could possibly be unbiased when it did not interview a single soldier. He insisted that it was unbiased. You know, when I was a child, the “Because it is” defense never really worked with my mother.

The IDF found plenty of evidence of Hamas war crimes. Dore Gold brought videos and evidence of booby-trapped houses to the debate, and Goldstone seemed flabbergasted. But that didn’t stop him from continuing with his usual points.

That’s a theme with Goldstone. All evidence brought to the contrary appears to astound him. But then he recovers and starts accusing Israel of war crimes again.

Why destroy the infrastructure if not to collectively punish? Etc., etc., yadda yadda, QED, there’s your proof. He did not interview the commanders who made the decisions to fire on those areas, but he knows they did it for collective punishment. His report found no evidence of human shields and booby-trapped houses, but he knows that the IDF destroyed all of those homes deliberately and for no military reason. He touched on the IDF’s military bulldozers destroying Palestinian farmland. That would be because the roads into Gaza were booby-trapped, so the IDF made its own roads into Gaza, destroying whatever was in its path to prevent the deaths of soldiers. That, according to Goldstone, was a war crime. According to the rules of war, it’s damned good strategy.

Goldstone utterly disregards charges of bias. But when asked by a student how the report could possibly be unbiased when Christine Chinkin, member of the Commission, signed a letter accusing Israel of war crimes in the first week of the Gaza operation, he insisted that was not relevant. He said that if it had been a judicial investigation, then yes, she should have recused herself, but that since the commission was not judicial, it didn’t effect the investigation. The fact that he sees absolutely no cognitive dissonance in admitting that she was biased enough to be thrown off a judiciary investigation, but not a UN investigation, seems astonishing—but not when you consider that Richard Goldstone will brook absolutely no criticism of his efforts. He is right, Israel is wrong, and we are wrong for not accepting uncritically the Goldstone Report.

The hubris of this man is unbelievable. And the damage his report has done is yet to be seen.

Hamas authorities on Thursday asked several educational institutions in southern Gaza Strip to segregate males and females in compliance with Islamic norms.

The call appeared on a notification signed by Police General-Directorate in Rafah town, ordering private social and educational centers to sign a form demanding their commitment of Islamic and Palestinian traditions and preventing smoking.

The police threatened to impose about 1,300 U.S. dollars in fine to those who do not commit to “inform the police about suspected students or infracting decency.”

It’s okay, they’re only going to fine violaters. There won’t be any floggings.

Yet.

Previous decision included forcing lawyers and high school female students to wear long, loose uniforms with head covers and preventing women from riding behind men on motorcycles.

Gee, I really can’t argue with those Muslims who tell me how liberating Islam is for women.

Iran to Syria: Give us back the uranium we illegally sold you. And oh yeah—do it on your own damned dime. Wow, this one’s just awesome. Iran wants Syria to return the uranium it was supposed to use in the nuclear plant that Israel bombed so that, well, Syria couldn’t make a nuclear bomb. I hope they do try it. And the IDF intercepts the ship. That would be fun.

No Security Council resolution on Goldstone: Israel and the White House have apparently reached a “silent understanding” on not letting Goldstone reach the Security Council. How long before the Palestinians and the OIC get noisy about the silence? I figure a day or two.

The Palestinian Lobby trumps the Israel lobby. Hillary Clinton has now been spanked by just about all the major players in the Middle East for daring to suggest that a total settlement freeze should not be a precondition to peace talks. And she has been properly repentant:

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington does not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and wants to see their construction halted “forever.”

That’s funny. I thought it was the Israel lobby that was powerful enough to force the U.S. President to dance to its tune, and yet, here she is, slamming Israel only days after saying that Netanyahu made “unprecedented” steps toward freezing settlement construction. Huh. Go figure. That Walt & Mearsheimer—boy, they really pulled one over on the world, hey?

The present crisis began on 6 November when the government attack on Bouaké also killed nine French peacekeepers. The French president, Jacques Chirac, ordered the destruction of the Ivorian air force. In Abidjan Gbagbo’s supporters promptly turned on the expatriate French community.

None of this settled anything, but it did clarify the nature of the conflict. This was the first time in 40 years of postcolonial apprenticeship that the lives of French citizens in Africa had been so threatened. Everyone had been happy to watch Africans kill each other, but television images of tearful French evacuees stepping off planes outside Paris were another matter – almost enough to make viewers forget that French forces had killed Ivorian civilians and destroyed a sovereign state’s air force to reassure 15,000 compatriots and to avenge the deaths of nine soldiers.

[...] On 7 November 2004 there were minor skirmishes between Fanci, Ivory Coast’s national armed forces, and French Operation Unicorn soldiers. Although these were of no military significance, it would be unwise to underestimate their symbolic importance. Even before these confrontations, and despite the fact that it was operating under a UN security council mandate, Operation Unicorn was perceived as an occupation force. The disproportionate nature of its response confirmed this, sending a signal not just to Ivory Coast but to other client states in France’s sphere of influence. It is easy for the weight of history to give young soldiers the impression of being stuck in an isolated garrison on the remote tribal fringes of the empire. Although African heads of state – all fervent democrats, of course – sided with France, there was fierce condemnation in French-speaking countries of what had become a bloody colonial adventure.

There were no UN resolutions or worldwide outrage that the French were using disproportionate force on a former colony. There was no call for investigation of the deaths of civilians. There were no charges of war crimes. There was only the expectation that since French citizens were being attacked, France had the right to defend them with all means at her disposal.

Funny, isn’t it, how the French can get away with this, yet Israel cannot defend herself against eight years of missile attacks on her civilian population without raising the anger of the collective world community—including the hypocrites in France?

What time is it? That’s right. Israeli Double Standard Time. But don’t worry, it only occurs on days that end with a “y.”

Update: Found this after I posted. The hypocrisy is even worse.

UN and US back French intervention in Ivory Coast
France has received international backing for its intervention in its former colony, Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) where a civil war has been raging for five months. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that “welcomes the deployment of Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States) forces and French troops” and endorses the peace agreement signed by both the government and rebels in the current civil war.

A UN resolution backing France’s action. Wow. Words just fail.

But he’s not sorry for any of it, really.

Are you sorry about anything?

“I’m sorry there are so many lies about me. Like for example that they say I wrote that the soldiers hunted for youths so as to take their organs. It’s obvious that’s a lie. Even the Palestinians don’t make a claim like that. And the other side attributes anti-Semitism to me. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry I’ve become a political tool. I’m sorry the article caused damage to the struggle for human rights here. And above all, I’m sorry that no one took the article seriously and that they did not examine the suspicions. In Sweden too they didn’t take it seriously.”

What. A. Tool. The human rights he’s talking about? Palestinians being killed by soldiers. The fact that the Palestinian that was killed, the one that inspired his story, was a terrorist battling the IDF seems to have been conveniently left out of Bostrom’s narrative.

Note that he’s not sorry at all that Israel’s enemies have another Mohammed al-Dura club to wield. What a jackass. This guy is considered a journalist in Sweden?

Do you think the IDF killed people to get body organs?

“I don’t think soldiers behaved like that. I don’t think they killed in order to gather organs. The truth is that they kill them without a trial and their bodies are taken to Abu Kabir. We don’t know whether they take out the organs. That has still to be further investigated. No one opened up the bodies after they were returned and only one man knows the truth, Prof. Yehuda Hiss, the director of the forensic institute. “

Actually, any medical doctor knowledgeable in transplants could tell you the truth: The organs that were “harvested” in such a way would be useless. But don’t let the facts get in the way of your spreading lies.

You have already had scandals at your forensic institute with other bodies, he says, and there is illegal trade in organs, so there is a need to investigate.

In other words: Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Guilty until proven innocent. Except when Israel offers the proof, the world will still insist that Israel is guilty. And then there’s the fact that he’s being accompanied by a bodyguard, paid for, no doubt, by Israeli taxpayers. Why? Um. Because he was met by protesters at the airport. Oooh. Scary.

Then there’s the conference itself, where he was booed and challenged on his made-up facts:

Lapid shot back, “To say this without a shred of evidence, that Israel possibly harvested organs from Palestinians who disappeared, in other words, whom we kidnapped, killed, and robbed their organs, is a degrading and monstrous idea.”

In response, Bostrom said that he understands why people are angry, saying that everyone lies while at war. He said that it is difficult for reporters to distinguish between what is correct and what is a lie. “If it were just one family, fine. But there were many families. Mothers have a right to know what happened to their sons,” claimed Bostrom.

Bostrom was told to his face that he was an anti-Semite. Of course, he responded that not all critics of Israel are anti-Semitic. Kudos to Yair Lapid for this:

Lapid concluded, “You are an anti-Semite because you are prepared to believe that there is a possibility that the government and the authorities would take part in such a monstrous thing. The only thing I can say in your favor is that you don’t know you’re an anti-Semite.”

I don’t think that counts very much in his favor. In fact, let us all chant the Yourish.com mantra for our Swedish photographer who says he really, really, really likes Israel, no, really: Anti-Semites of the world, just die already.

Israel files complaint with UN; complaint goes into circular file. Shyeah, like the UN is going to do something about Lebanese terrorists launching katyushas into Israel. It’s not like UNIFIL is doing anything to stop Hezbullah from building stockpiles of rockets in south Lebanon, even when the stockpiles blow up and UNIFIL can’t pretend they don’t exist anymore. The fact that UNIFIL and the Lebanese army actually found four unfired katyushas is astonishing, as they can’t seem to find their asses with either hand when it comes to Hezbullah arms and munitions.

The Goldstone dividends: Over 1,500 lawsuits are being filed by Gazans over damages from Cast Lead. Yeah, good luck with that. Israeli courts are not the UN. You have to go by actual laws in order to say that the IDF violated them. I anticipate about 1,500 dismissals.

Turkey and Iran: Together again for the very first time. Turkey’s prime minister goes to Iran, stands smiling while Ahmadinejad denounces “the Zionist regime” yet again. Oh, yeah. The honeymoon with Israel is over, and the Islamists have won. Then there’s that little bit about Erdogan saying that Avigdor Lieberman told him he wanted to nuke the Palestinians. I call bullshit on that, but of course, the Guardian printed it anyway.

J-Street is like Kadima like this blog is like J-Street: Shyeah, pull the other leg, Ben-Ami. Gawd. You are such a loser. Your student arm is dropping the words “pro-Israel” to keep people from thinking that, gee, they’re pro-Israel. Yeah, that’s just like Kadima, the party that Ariel Sharon built to keep himself in power long enough to disengage from Gaza (and that worked out so well, too). Sure. Uh-huh. In Bizarro World, maybe.

But the Gazans are living in crushing misery: The New York Times is calling Rafah a “shopping mecca,” even as Richard Goldstone, HRW, and the EU and UN insist that Gazans are starving, miserable, and oppressed. Cognitive dissonance? No. The narrative.

It’s on. It’s off. It’s on. It’s off. No, it’s Iran. Yesterday, the news was full of the Iranians accepting the draft agreement to let us enrich their nuclear fuel for them. Today, Iran did their usual thing and said, “What? We never said we’d accept that.” If Iran was a child, I’d put it in permanent time-out.

It’s certainly news that Human Rights Watch’s critics were able to get a former HRW chairman to slam the organization for having the temerity to hold Israel to the same standards of international humanitarian law to which it holds every other country. But Bernstein doesn’t appear to have any arguments to make that any of the instances of human rights violations HRW has documented didn’t take place. Instead his view is basically that Israel ought to be exempt from criticism because its enemies are mean:

No, Bernstein’s argument is that HRW is spending far more time and effort portraying Israeli violations than it is the human rights offenders that surround Israel. And Yglesias’ ever-astute commenters (the ones that aren’t slamming Zionism as racism) are comparing search result pages with number of reports, and declaring that since Israel and Egypt have the same number of pages, they have the same number of HRW reports. Argument over.

Except, well, let’s take a look by date, shall we? And include news releases as well as reports. For Israel and the Territories, we have the following press releases dating back to July. I’m going to put in bold those releases that do not concentrate on Israel:

Hamas: Investigate Attacks on Israeli Civilians   Oct 20, 2009
UN Security Council: Demand Justice for Gaza Victims   Oct 12, 2009
Israel: Stop Blocking School Supplies From Entering Gaza   Oct 11, 2009
UN: US Block on Goldstone Report Must Not Defer Justice   Oct 2, 2009
UN Human Rights Council: ‘Traditional Values’ Vote and Gaza Overshadow Progress   Oct 2, 2009
UN: US, EU Undermine Justice for Gaza Conflict   Sep 30, 2009
US: Endorse Goldstone Report on Gaza    Sep 27, 2009
EU: Demand Justice for Victims of Gaza War   Sep 25, 2009
Any chance for justice for victims of the Gaza war?   Sep 11, 2009
Israel: Gaza ‘White Flag’ Deaths Inquiry a Step Forward   Sep 10, 2009
‘Better than’ is not always good enough   Sep 9, 2009
Gaza: Rescind Religious Dress Code for Girls   Sep 4, 2009
Human Rights Watch plays no favorites in probes   Sep 3, 2009
Right of Reply: Don’t Smear the Messenger   Aug 25, 2009
False Allegations about Human Rights Watch’s Latest Gaza Report   Aug 14, 2009
Israel: Investigate ‘White Flag’ Shootings of Gaza Civilians   Aug 13, 2009
Gaza/Israel: Hamas Rocket Attacks on Civilians Unlawful   Aug 6, 2009
Will Arab States help end the Scourge of Cluster Munitions?   Aug 6, 2009
Israel: Ensure Improved ‘Attack Warnings’ to Civilians Are Effective   Aug 3, 2009
Palestinian Authority: Lift the Ban on Al Jazeera   Jul 17, 2009

The total: One release a month on the Palestinians. All the rest about Israel. Now, let’s take a look at the press releases about Egypt from July through the present.

Nobel Spotlights Need for Obama to Act on Rights   Oct 9, 2009
Egypt: Stop Killing Migrants in Sinai   Sep 10, 2009
US/Egypt: Obama Should Highlight Rights at Meeting With Mubarak   Aug 17, 2009
Will Arab States help end the Scourge of Cluster Munitions?   Aug 6, 2009
African Civil Society Urges African States Parties to the Rome Statute to Reaffirm Their Commitment to the ICC   Jul 30, 2009

Now let’s look at the totals. Twenty press releases under the category “Israeli and the Occupied Territories” since July. Four concern the Palestinians. Eighty percent of the HRW press releases in that time period concern Israel. Was Hamas firing rockets at Israeli civilians during that time? Yes. Was Hamas torturing Fatah prisoners during that time? Yes. Was Hamas killing “collaborators” without trial during that time? Yes. Was Hamas shooting at Israeli civilians on their farms during that time? Yes. What does HRW consider newsworthy? Lifting the press ban on Al Jazeera in the West Bank.

Look at the press releases concerning Egypt. Only one of them directly concerns Egyptian human rights abuses—the killing of migrants trying to get into Israel. Egyptian border guards have killed dozens of Africans fleeing over the border, and they’ve been doing it for years. A million African immigrants are poised along the Israeli border, so many that Israel will be building a fence to keep them out. And yet, there is only one news release about the deaths of civilians trying to make a better life for themselves than they can find in the Egyptian refugee camps. Why is that?

The commenters at Yglesias cite the number of pages in a search result as evidence that the reporting is equal. Clearly, their research skills need a little brushing up. HRW released three reports on Israel so far this year. HRW also released two about the Palestinians, one regarding the rockets from Gaza (in August, the first in two years about the nonstop rocket attacks on Israel), one regarding Hamas’ human rights abuses against Fatah and others in Gaza. HRW wrote zero reports about Egypt this year. That’s right. None.

In other words, Matthew, Robert Bernstein’s main point—that Human Rights Watch spends far more time on Israel than it does on the human rights abusers in the neighborhood around her—is true. Bernstein never said that Israel should be exempt, only that HRW should pay more attention to the human rights abusers in the countries without a free judiciary and laws on the books preventing such abuses. It’s a point I’ve been making for years. But when the founder of Human Rights Watch makes it—well, then one would have to think that there’s some validity to it. And if not, there’s always the evidence I’m citing in this post. But why would Yglesias let a little thing like facts get in the way of his opinion?