A Critical Reading of the Goldstone Report

As regular readers of this blog have noticed, I've been reading the Goldstone Report, in my spare time, for weeks now.

It's a fascinating document. Not for what it tells about the Gaza Operation in January 2009, it's putative subject. If you want to know about that you'll have to look elsewhere, since the Report is of an intellectual and methodological stature that is simply contemptible - and I'm aware that's a very strong word. It's fascinating for the wide window it opens into the minds of a certain type of person who is becoming ever more common in the early 21st century. Intelligent and educated people, who enthusiastically cast off empiric and rational modes of investigation achieved over centuries of effort, in a mad race to impose their world view; this worldview includes undermining democracy itself if the democrats don't think as these people know they must.

As such, the Report is a warning to all of us who regard the uncertain freedoms of the Enlightenment as the best form of society devised by mankind.

My response, 5,600 words, can be found in Google Document form here, and in PDF here.

Here's a snippet:

Even more baffling than the willingness of the investigators to invent Israeli motives, which at least is not denied, is their refusal to seek evidence of the actions and intentions of the defenders. They made a few feeble enquiries of what they call the Gaza Authorities about the fighters, were rebuffed with the odd response that these authorities had no knowledge of what the fighters of their own side might have been doing, and that was all. Yet in dozens of cases described in their report, the question demands to be answered: if the IDF was firing in this direction, what do the Hamas commanders have to tell about their forces? Had they booby trapped the building? Were they firing from here? Had they laid mines in this field? Were they congregating in this mosque, and for what purpose? Was this farm intended as a line of defense, or that zoo as a trap for advancing IDF troops? In many cases the investigators asked local civilians, but they never asked the fighters or their leaders.

Bizarre as it may sound – and it is truly bizarre – the investigators came to what had been the scene of a war, and tried to piece the events together without talking to either of the warring sides. They asked the Israelis, and the Israelis refused to talk. They didn't ask Hamas, so Hamas never even had to refuse. Yet they had the arrogance to tell what had happened.

Having read and written, it is my intention now to put the Goldstone Report firmly behind me. Enough is enough.