Bridge Building from page 26

Commentary

The Goldstone Fiasco

T

Israel's Helmi Kittani

Making Inroads
Kittani embraces President Shimon
Peres' call for Israeli high-tech com-
panies to end Arab discrimination.
That goal drew coverage in the Wall
Street Journal. On Feb. 9, the newspa-
per quoted Kittani supporting Peres'
call: "It's great because it will influ-
ence more companies to hire Arabs.
But we also need more open-minded
managers and human resources
managers."
The Journal reported that
the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development has
warned Israel to narrow social gaps
and increase the number of minority
workers if it hopes to sustain eco-
nomic growth. A troubling incidence
of poverty among Arabs prevents
Israel's economy from achieving its
potential, according to the OECD,
which Israel joined last year.
Backing from the Strauss Group,
a major Israeli food product manu-
facturer, and Bezeq, Israel's largest
telecommunications provider, gives
CJAED instant credibility.
Despite slow progress, Helmi
Kittani is pressing forward. "The con-
tinued effects of the economic crisis
have not only made our job at CJAED
more challenging than ever, but they
also have made it more necessary
than ever as well:' he said.
There's no stopping CJAED (www.
cjaed.org.il ). Said Kittani: "We are
always reaching out to new partners
who share our aims and values, par-
ticularly in the U.S. I welcome anyone
in the Detroit community to contact
me anytime."
Jewish Detroit doesn't have much
in the way of steel-hard economic
ties with Arab Dearborn. The climate
for a Jewish-Arab economic partner-
ship, however, seems more promising
in Israel.

he admission by Robert
Goldstone, who chaired the
United Nations fact-finding
mission investigating Israel's invasion
of Gaza in 2008-09, that he and his
commission were wrong to find that
Israel purposely targeted
civilians during the conflict
might be welcomed with
the cliche "better late than
never."
But Goldstone's "correc-
tion" expressed in an Op-Ed
article in the Washington
Post on April 1 brings to
mind a much more suited
idiom — it should never have
happened.
Goldstone writes in his
opening sentence: "...
if I had known what I know now, the
Goldstone Report would have been a
different document."
This from a man who is a retired
justice of the Constitutional Court of
South Africa and former chief prose-
cutor of the U.N. International Criminal
Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia
and Rwanda.
Indeed, critics of Israel continually
described Goldstone as a "distin-
guished" jurist in trying to give cred-
ibility to his original report. One won-
ders whether they will now continually
refer to him as "distinguished" to give
credibility to his reversal.
The major point is that a man with
such a background surely knows that
if he did not have sufficient facts at
the time, he had options that did not
include libelous accusations against
Israel. These included withholding

judgment, asking for more time to
investigate or issuing a report with
more moderate — might one suggest —
equivocal conclusions.
Accusing a country of purposely tar-
geting civilians, particularly a country
that, throughout its history,
as Goldstone undoubtedly
knows, has made avoiding
civilian fatalities a priority, is
inexcusable.
But even in his reversal,
Goldstone equivocates. He
writes: "Although the Israeli
evidence that has emerged
since publication of our
report doesn't negate the
tragic loss of civilian life, I
regret that our fact-finding
mission did not have such
evidence explaining the circumstances
in which we said civilians in Gaza were
targeted, because it probably [empha-
sis supplied] would have influenced
our findings about intentionality and
war crimes."
Probably? Is Goldstone suggesting
that even if he had the evidence prov-
ing Israel did not target civilians, his
commission might still have accused
the country of war crimes? What
more does he need to prove that civil-
ians were not targeted as a matter of
Israeli policies?
Yes, civilians die in wars. Collateral
damage — that ugly euphemism — is a
sad and tragic by-product of military
conflicts particularly when an enemy
like Hamas launches its attacks from
residential areas.
But Goldstone's straddling on what
his commission might have reported if

Greenberg's View

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it had had appropriate evidence aside,
there are many other questions raised
by his relatively short article in the
Washington Post. Among them:
•Why did he use the Washington
Post as the venue for such an impor-
tant decision?
•Why not call a press conference to
highlight his decision and give it the
publicity it deserves? That would have
been justified given that the commis-
sion's original charges prompted inter-
national headlines condemning Israel.
•Why not call on the U.N. to dis-
card the original findings since he
acknowledges that they were tainted?
Expressing "regrets" hardly undoes
the injustice committed against Israel.
Sadly, Goldstone offers no recommen-
dations on "official" remedial action.
These questions and many others
are not answered by Goldstone. One
assumes that he considers the case
closed and will leave it up to Israel
to take whatever actions are neces-
sary to set the official record straight.
Numerous news stories have reported
that Israel plans to launch a major
effort to right this wrong.
That will not be easy given the U.N's
historic enmity toward Israel which,
incidentally, Goldstone also acknowl-
edges, stating: "I had hoped that our
inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza
conflict would begin a new era of even-
handedness at the U.N. Human Rights
Council, whose history of bias against
Israel cannot be doubted."
Moreover, Israel's critics can be
expected to launch a campaign in sup-
port of Goldstone's original report;
and they can be expected to charge
Goldstone with all kinds of political
motivations for his reversal.
At first glance, one might hail and
commend Goldstone's mea culpa, but
given the anti-Israel international
political landscape, we can expect
a major debate on the merits of
Goldstone's reversal.
We will hear a rehashing of all the
terrible atrocities that Israel allegedly
committed in Gaza, unfounded charges
that led to the investigation of the
conflict in the first place.
Goldstone may feel good because he
cleared his conscience, but Israel is left
with trying to clean up the mess. II

Berl Falbaum of West Bloomfield is an author,

a public relations executive and a former

political reporter. He teaches journalism part

0 1 40941,10raow slevaftwentyntartoom

time at Wayne State University in Detroit.

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