Articles
United Nations Report, Pages 20-21
General Assembly Expected to Step Up to The Plate for Goldstone Report
By Ian Williams
ISRAEL’S response to the U.N. resolution on the Goldstone Report was a paper that ignores the core request for an independent investigation into allegations of crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead.
The reception of Israel and its uncritical supporters to the Goldstone Report begs the question: What are they scared of? It is, of course, a rhetorical question, since it is clear that the South African Jewish and Zionist judge’s report raises questions that they cannot answer. Hence the tide of vituperation now being directed in Goldstone’s direction, and indeed the other members of his panel—most recently Irish Col. Desmond Travers, who also has been accused of bias.
Bias is, of course, a term of polemic art for anyone who criticizes any deed of any Israeli government toward Arabs. To be attacked by Alan Dershowitz, as Goldstone was, should be an honor for any civilized person. But not everybody sees it like that. Equally important are the willful distortions of the report’s contents which are now deafening anyone who tries to discern the truth in the pro-Israel echo-chamber.
Even in Israel, however, people who dispute what Goldstone reported are having lucid moments suggesting that an impartial inquiry is called for. His report refuses to go away.
Apologists for Israel have seized upon Goldstone’s own admission that the report was not enough to convict Israel of war crimes. They ignore his scrupulously fair point that he and his colleagues were not a court, and that they simply found that the allegations apparently had enough substance to bear further examination.
When Israel refused to cooperate with his inquiry team, Goldstone and his colleagues went to Gaza to investigate, interviewing the survivors, NGOs on both sides of the border, and even accepting testimony from any Israelis who wanted their views heard. Based upon that testimony, they concluded that both Israel and Hamas had a case to answer and that each should conduct credible independent investigations into the report’s allegations. If they did not, the international community should use the various avenues open to it, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), to do so.
Let us remember that, for all their dissimulatory attempts to get Israel off the hook on which its generals and politicians had impaled themselves, the UK, France and the U.S. have asked the Israelis to hold a serious inquiry. Israel itself has indeed set up an inquiry, but one that would tend to give whitewash a darker shade of gray. The IDF is investigating itself—and to whom has it turned for help? The same NGOs that provided witnesses and evidence for Goldstone.
In contrast, the Goldstone Report recommends that the Security Council establish “an independent committee of experts in international humanitarian and human rights law to monitor and report on any domestic legal or other proceedings undertaken by the Government of Israel in relation to the aforesaid investigations.” The U.S. veto, not to mention Chinese and Russian leeriness about the ICC, ensure that the Council will do no such thing.
So it’s back to the General Assembly, whose timetable for considering the responses of Israel and Hamas allowed them until Feb. 6 to show evidence of their investigations into the allegations contained in the report. The date came and went, with neither seriously complying. Indeed, the Hamas response was not included in the official U.N. report, which instead contained a report from the PA on setting up an investigation.
The Swiss government reported on the convening of a meeting of signatories to the Geneva Convention which noted that while many states wanted the meeting, some were opposed, not least since it would single out one state. Of course only one state is occupying the Palestinian territories, but logic often challenges Israel’s diehard supporters.
No Comment From Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon passed their responses on to the General Assembly without comment on whether or not they had complied with the terms of the resolution adopting the report, since all of them said they were still investigating. “No determination can be made on the implementation of the resolution by the parties concerned,” he non-committed. However, he has certainly not killed the issue, just shoved the skeleton in the closet—from which it will soon be resurrected.
While NGOs such as Amnesty International called the secretary-general’s report “deeply disappointing and a missed opportunity to help secure accountability for the conflict’s hundreds of victims,” Ali Treki, the Libyan president of the General Assembly, is certainly going to have the issue on the agenda soon, exploring ways that member states can bypass the implicit vetoes in the Security Council to refer the report to the International Criminal Court.
In fact, it is clear that—despite whatever, presumably political, constraints prevented the secretary-general from determining the implementation of the report—neither party had really fulfilled its terms. Hamas denied that the rockets into Israel were aimed at civilians and claimed they were aimed at military targets. Of course, they are so badly aimed that Hamas almost has a case, but still violates international law precisely because of that. Aiming at military targets recklessly in a way that needlessly risks civilians is against the law as well—it’s like Israel dropping a huge bomb on an apartment block full of civilians to get a Hamas leader who lived there.
Israel sent a report to Ban Ki-moon, widely billed as a “refutation” by much of the pro-Israel press, whose English is as bad as its ethics. It was, of course, no such thing, indeed it was not even a rebuttal. Let us call it a “refuttal”—a feeble feint intended to obscure Israel’s failure to meet the terms of the resolution, so that any dismissal of its lack of substance will be met with the traditional accusations of anti-Semitism. Most of it dwelt on the superiority of IDF legal doctrine and mechanisms for investigating complaints. Insofar as its authors attempted to respond to four specific allegations in the Goldstone report, they seriously bungled it.
A few weeks before submitting its report exculpating itself completely to the satisfaction of its admirers, Israel paid $10.5 million in “reimbursment”—i.e., compensation—for burning down UNRWA’s warehouse with white phosphorus shells—which Israel had previously denied using.
“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] acts only in accordance with what is permitted by international law and does not use white phosphorus,” IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last year. Since then the line has changed to deny that the use of the shells is against international law.
The Israeli response claims “that Israel has demonstrated its ability and its commitment to pursue serious criminal charges to uphold the Law of Armed Conflict, a commitment which has been confirmed by outside observers and foreign legal systems.”
Well, up to a point. Just before the report to the U.N., it was revealed that two senior Israeli officers had been reprimanded for using the shells that Israel did not use, and that were legal if it did. A Daniel come to judgment? Well, not quite, since while one IDF spokesman proudly announced this second coming for military justice, another explained that it just means there is a note on their file. Sadly, given the current direction of the IDF, that note is more likely to enhance than inhibit their career prospects.
The actual basis for the reprimand, it seems, was not so much using white phosphorus, but using it to burn the UNRWA compound, and thus costing the state $10.5 million in reimbursement. The shells are made in the U.S., of course, and presumably paid for in part or in total by the U.S. taxpayer.
Oh, and let us not forget the other case. An IDF soldier was actually imprisoned for stealing a credit card and using it. One would suspect that the crime being punished is the one against the banking system, rather than against the Palestinian whose card was robbed—but with 1,400 dead, it is rather a light record for the military prosecutors.
In the case of the flour mill that the Israeli “refuttal” claimed was accidentally hit by ground fire during an exchange with Hamas, obliging U.N. military engineers promptly leaked pictures of the remains of a 200 kilogram MK-82 air-dropped bomb in the wreckage of the mill. Doubtless smuggled in and planted by Goldstone—but, almost equally doubtless, once again paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.
This did not enhance confidence in the efficiency, let alone integrity, of the IDF’s internal investigations, which is precisely why Goldstone’s report called for an independent investigation.
General Assembly Options
The U.N. General Assembly has several options open to it. One would be to refer the issue to a “Uniting For Peace” special session—a format designed by the Americans to bypass a (then-Soviet) veto-bound Security Council and refer the issue to the International Criminal Court.
Some diplomats, however, have suggested that there would be a referral to the other Hague Court, the International Court of Justice. This could take several forms. One would be a ruling on the legality of the “Uniting for Peace” procedure, which could pose a threat to the supremacy of the Security Council and its veto holders. The other would be to declare Palestine as a state, and ask the Court to rule on the validity of its signature on the ICC convention. Then, since the alleged crimes were committed on Palestinian soil, its government could ask the ICC to initiate investigations and proceedings.
The approach that really worries Israel is Goldstone’s injunction of “universal jurisdiction,” under which countries can prosecute perpetrators of crimes against international humanitarian law regardless of where in the world the alleged crimes were committed. Countries like the UK and Spain are becoming no-go areas for Israeli military and political figures for fear of prosecution. Embarrassed governments like Britain’s are wriggling with the consequences of how to ensure that laws inspired by the need to catch Nazi war criminals, and since extended to other torturers and killers, should have a single exception and not be applied to Israel. Of course to codify it so boldly would be to invite attention to what the governments concerned would like to cover up. But at least it would put on paper what the governments of the U.S., Canada, UK and France have been trying to implement in fact—absolute impunity for Israel.
But the Goldstone report will not go away.
Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations and has a blog at <www.deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>.
