Goldstone Report website launches

A new website, set up by prominent bloggers and writers, goes into detail on the Goldstone Report's problems. The main organizer is Professor Richard Landes, historian and writer of the Augean Stables blog and Second Draft site. Many other people, including myself, contribute to the website. As the website says:

Those of us who have constructed Understanding the Goldstone Report, have been following the claims under contention since the events themselves almost a year ago, and have read the report in detail. We offer a wide range of analysis, from careful examination of specific incidents and controversies to broader legal and conceptual issues. In so doing, we have come to the following conclusions:

• The report violates international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact-finding, replicating earlier UNHRC biased statements.
• The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case.
• The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; the report reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies.
• At the same time, the Commission inexplicably downplayed or ignored substantial evidence of Hamas’ commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of terror, including specifically its victimization of the Palestinian population by its use of human shields, civilian dress for combatants, and combat use of protected objects like ambulances, hospitals and mosques.
• The Commission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.
• The report contains numerous gratuitous digressions into issues beyond the purview of a fact-finding commission that are inaccurate and profoundly hostile to Israel and Jews.
• The Commission distorted legal standards, imposing on Israel standards that reverse their generally understood and applied meaning, while ignoring important rules of international law that put the onus of responsibility on an organization as base, by Goldstone’s own standards, as Hamas.

Check it out.

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HRW will believe anything (UPDATED)

HRW just came out with a report claiming multiple cases where IDF soldiers killed, in cold blood, innocent civilians holding white flags. I cannot speak to all the details of the report right now, but one part is clear: HRW fully believes the "eyewitness" accounts of liars. They interviewed the Abed Rabbo family, whose previous statements to reporters were found to be incredibly inconsistent. The fact that HRW is so credulous when many have noted the inconsistencies shows that their research is pretty shoddy. At the very least they should have addressed the issue, but of course that is not HRW's aim. One simple example: HRW says that

Seven neighborhood residents who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that major fighting in the area had stopped by the morning of January 7, although sporadic exchanges of fire may have continued after that.

Time magazine's report mentions a salient fact that HRW chose to ignore:

Most residents of Jebel al-Kashif claim there were no Hamas fighters in the area at the time of the alleged incident, but a middle-aged farmer in a battered army jacket took me aside and said, in a near whisper, that Hamas had been firing rockets from the vicinity of where the episode took place.

Now, who is more credible? The farmer has nothing to gain by lying, but the Abed Rabbo family - who are members of Fatah and who had earlier told a PA newspaper that Hamas was using them as human shields - just might not want to antagonize their tormenters. Why are none of these facts mentioned by HRW when it relates the story of the Abed Rabbo sisters told by a family with very shaky credibility? The reason is, of course, that HRW wants to find human rights abuses and "war crimes," and will ignore evidence to the contrary. NGO Monitor's critique of the report can be found here. UPDATE: Here's video of a terrorist trying to get away from the IDF by using a white flag, something HRW seems to not have known about during the past seven months. (h/t Richard Landes of Augean Stables via email)

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Knock, knock - another example of Free Gaza/Hamas propaganda

The Free Gaza Movement is trying hard to be the premier place to go to get unfettered pro-terrorist propaganda. Here is part of a recent email meant to stir up rage against Israel:

1. Israel has begun a new policy in Gaza in the past two days called the "roof knock". This is when a "small" rocket is fired from Israeli military aircraft that is strong enough to blast open the roof of a targeted building. It is sent as a "warning message" to the building's inhabitants giving them between 2 and 3 minutes to evacuate before the building is completely destroyed. A number of cases of this new technique have been reported recently.

And what is the truth? From the New York Times:

A new Israeli weapon, meanwhile, is tailored to the Hamas tactic of asking civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings so Israeli pilots will not bomb. The Israelis are countering with a missile designed, paradoxically, not to explode. They aim the missiles at empty areas of the roofs to frighten residents into leaving the buildings, a tactic called “a knock on the roof.”

The evil-sounding IDF method is, yet again, a way to save the lives of Gazans that Hamas is purposefully putting into danger. And the FGM just happens to leave out the part about Hamas using human shields. This shows yet again that Israel spends time, effort and thought into how to save Gazans' lives while going after terrorists, and Hamas spends time and effort on how to endanger Gazans' lives in order to save their own. Hamas' and Islamic Jihad's tactics of purposefully hiding behind civilians is the evil here, and no amount of pro-terrorist "human rights' spin can make it otherwise. Plus, we once again see that Free Gaza is simply a Hamas PR front organization who cares little about real Palestinian Arab lives and much about whitewashing Hamas' crimes against the people they pretend to care about. Just like many of the "pro-Palestinian" protesters.

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