Goldstone "reconsiders" his earlier report

[Anonymous]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/AFg111JC_story.html

Goldstone recants his earlier, widely-cited UN report that Isarel, in fact, did not intentionally target civilians.
He further states that the UN Human Rights Council is blatantly anti-Israel and calls them out for not condemning the continuous rocket fires into Israel, Hamas's intentional targeting of civilians, as well as not making a peep about the terrorist attack on the Fogel family (slaughtering a young couple and three of their children while they slept, which hardly made news here).

Once again, great job UN.

[Anonymous]

The world believes what it wants to believe about Israel, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. If Mexico was regularly sending rockets into Texas and families in Oklahoma were getting slaughtered, the US would not act any differently.

"Unfortunately, Goldstone’s “reconsideration” will not garner a thousandth of the publicity or have a thousandth of the impact that his original, baseless accusations against Israel drew." http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=214866

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/AFg111JC_story.html

Goldstone recants his earlier, widely-cited UN report that Isarel, in fact, did not intentionally target civilians.

What he recants is that civilians were "intentionally targeted as a matter of policy". The fact that Israeli soldiers intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians remains undisputed.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:What he recants is that civilians were "intentionally targeted as a matter of policy". The fact that Israeli soldiers intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians remains undisputed.

I do not differ greatly from Jeff on this issue. I agree that Israel uses disproportionate force, and that the settlements should be stopped immediately and, ideally, disbanded, or at least paid for by a fair land swap. However, I would just note that American soldiers target civilians also. It was a matter of policy in the bombing of Dresden in WWII, occurred notoriously at My Lai in Viet Nam, and just recently made news in Afghanistan. Since Israelis have a much greater hostility toward Palestinians than we have toward Afghans, it is no surprise that some, perhaps many, Israeli soldiers kill civilians.

That their policy opposes this is noteworthy, and I think it came as something of a surprise to Goldstone, given the intransigence of the present government.

[Anonymous]

Great response by Richard Cohen http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-goldstone-report-and-israels-moral-standing/2011/04/04/AFxln9eC_story.html?hpid=z4

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/AFg111JC_story.html

Goldstone recants his earlier, widely-cited UN report that Isarel, in fact, did not intentionally target civilians.

What he recants is that civilians were "intentionally targeted as a matter of policy". The fact that Israeli soldiers intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians remains undisputed.

But that makes all the difference. Some soldiers have intentionally targeted civilians in every armed conflict that has ever occurred, and those soldiers are guilty of war crimes. But the killing of civilians as a side-effect of legitimate military operations is not unlawful and is also an unavoidable consequence of war. The fact that command policies call for reduction of civilian casualties to the extent possible makes a huge difference, both in the legality of the military operation and the absolute numbers of civilian deaths. It's an important thing you shouldn't gloss over, and quite distinct from the intentional firing of rockets into civilian areas often engaged in by the other side.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
But that makes all the difference. Some soldiers have intentionally targeted civilians in every armed conflict that has ever occurred, and those soldiers are guilty of war crimes. But the killing of civilians as a side-effect of legitimate military operations is not unlawful and is also an unavoidable consequence of war. The fact that command policies call for reduction of civilian casualties to the extent possible makes a huge difference, both in the legality of the military operation and the absolute numbers of civilian deaths. It's an important thing you shouldn't gloss over, and quite distinct from the intentional firing of rockets into civilian areas often engaged in by the other side.

All I was doing was correcting information that was wrongly reported in the original post of this thread. If you want to continue the conversation in the direction of justifying the killing of unarmed civilians and children, that is your choice but has nothing to do with my post.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
But that makes all the difference. Some soldiers have intentionally targeted civilians in every armed conflict that has ever occurred, and those soldiers are guilty of war crimes. But the killing of civilians as a side-effect of legitimate military operations is not unlawful and is also an unavoidable consequence of war. The fact that command policies call for reduction of civilian casualties to the extent possible makes a huge difference, both in the legality of the military operation and the absolute numbers of civilian deaths. It's an important thing you shouldn't gloss over, and quite distinct from the intentional firing of rockets into civilian areas often engaged in by the other side.

All I was doing was correcting information that was wrongly reported in the original post of this thread. If you want to continue the conversation in the direction of justifying the killing of unarmed civilians and children, that is your choice but has nothing to do with my post.

I don't think the OP was wrong, although perhaps the reference to "Israel" was ambiguous. I don't read OP's language as suggesting that no individual Israeli soldier ever targeted an individual Palestinian citizen, and think it is more fairly read as talking about the types of policy decisions I referenced in my response. Perhaps we don't have a substantive disagreement, only a semantic one.