Monday, February 1, 2010

Gaza, Goldstone, and Freedom of Speech

Amos Harel at Haaretz has read Israel's response to the Goldstone Report and is impressed:
Israel's detailed response to the Goldstone report shows that the country can, in fact, respond to accusations with more than complaints of anti-Semitism and endless repetitions of the mantra that "the Israel Defense Forces is the most moral army in the world." Drawn up by the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry and the IDF prosecutor's office, the document gives a wide-ranging and well-argued reply to many of the claims raised by Goldstone.
Not surprising, nice to hear, and I look forward to reading the document itself, not Harel's reading of it.

The new report apparently also tells of a brigadier and a colonel who were reprimanded last year over the way they authorized the use of white phosphorous shells two days before the end of the operation. The Israelis say this proves their investigations are serious; Israel's enemies will say it's merely the tip of the iceberg. I continue to say that Israel should have a standing procedure in which wars are automatically followed by independent investigations headed by a retired Supreme Court justice, since such investigations always find something of interest. True, no other country in the world does this, but Israel can afford to be unusual. If it were automatic it wouldn't seem like caving in to external pressure. As it is, we've had such an investigation after every large military operation since 1982 and a few smaller ones, and are only stronger for it. Wiser, too.

Meanwhile, this week a small NGO called Im Tirtzu has published a 112-page report on the sources of the Goldstone Report. (Their main website is in Hebrew, here; the executive summary of their report is here, and at it you can download the entire document). Maariv had a big write up about them over the weekend, here. The thesis: a small number of Israeli NGOs contributed significantly to Goldstone's ability to castigate Israel. Most of them are funded by one foundation, the New Israel Foundation (NIF).

The investigators not only carefully read the Goldstone Report, they also followed all its footnotes. There are 1,208 of them, containing 1,377 sources. 450 of the citations are to Israeli sources. 247 of them came from various Israeli NGOs (the others were citations of the Ministry of Foreign Affair's report and so on). Of those 247, 40 were either supportive of Israel or neutral. 207 were critical of Israel, which means that close to 20% of Goldstone's case against Israel came directly from Israeli sources (and some additional ones came indirectly, when international media or NGOs quoted critical Israelis). 92%, that's 191 of the sources against Israel, came from the 16 NIF-funded NGOs.

So far, so problematic. I've been writing about some of these NGOs for quite a while; now someone has done the research and demonstrated how significant their contribution is to a stridently dishonest document which attacks Israel.

Im Tirtzu has now launched a public campaign against the NIF, which funded these particular 16 organizations to the tune of $7,805,226 between 2006-2008 (The sums for 2009 are not yet public). You can see some of the campaign here. It's based on the fact that the Hebrew word Keren serves both for horn and foundation, and shows Naomi Hazan, former Meretz MK and now president of the NIF, wearing a horn. The prestigious Knesset Committee of Foreign and Security Affairs is to discuss the issue soon.

All of this has me uncomfortable. On the one hand, supporting enemy propaganda at time of war is serious. On the other hand, no-one seems to be saying the NIF or any of these organizations has done anything illegal, and indeed everyone seems to be saying the most that can be achieved is to heap opprobrium upon them - opprobrium they've earned with the sweat of their brows or probably the wearing out of their keyboards. Then again, no amount of such opprobrium will convince them to desist - on the contrary. They will now feel doubly righteous and also persecuted, and will soon be telling the world how undemocratic a society Israel is becoming. As with most of their allegations, this is fundamentally dishonest - but like much of it, there's just enough substance there to make the allegations stick. Such a public outing, justified as it may be, is vaguely unpleasant. We're a democracy, and they're allowed to lie; we're a strong nation, and should be able to tolerate a clutch of kooks. Then again, we're at war, and they're offering succor to the enemy.

Had they only done their watchdog task in Hebrew, I'd be applauding them. But, as I've often noted, much of their activity isn't aimed at their own society, it's aimed outwards.

Complicated.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

For those who haven't seen it yet this is the first report just handed to Ban:
http://haaretz.com/hasite/images/iht_daily/D290110/Gaza%20Operation%20Investigations%20An%20Update.pdf

There is supposed to be another more detailed one onthe way. I give up trying to figure out which Harel is referring to.

Anonymous said...

"Had they only done their watchdog task in Hebrew, I'd be applauding them. But, as I've often noted, much of their activity isn't aimed at their own society, it's aimed outwards."

complicated yes - because if they publish it only in Hebrew you'll get accused of being clannish and backwards (the don't even speak English over there Ha Ha) - "they"'ll always find something
... and I listened for some time to a very nice Israeli podcast by an American couple who said quite openly that their Hebrew was poor while at the same time they considered themselves whole-heartedly Israelis - so maybe you are an (at minmum) bi-lingual country.

to say who said what and gets his research funded by whom and if possible is "married" to so-and-so are facts which should be widely and easily available

- here is a non-Israeli example which I wish I had more facts to understand because it seems somewhat strange: while the US-op-ed-writers indulge in a competition of self-flagellation about US-mistakes in Haiti mentioning France if at all only in a half-sentence. this British one goes after France in full battle-gear (and rather convinces me) but: does it matter that he presently has a book to promote or is this just a more than usual outspoken example of the British bias for putting down the French? and why are the Americans so mum about it?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article6995750.ece
Silke

Anonymous said...

I can understand appointing a commission to question the politicians and perhapsthe top officers. But will even that be enough? As the IDf/MFA report points out, criminal investigations of the military in the leading democracies is carried out by the military. But Goldstone questioned the independence of the Israeli military investigations and seemed to demand more.
t34zakat

Anonymous said...

On a happier note
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1146631.html

Anonymous said...

On the other hand, donors to NIF should know to what they are donating.

Anonymous said...

The question is what is the nature of those 191 critical statements. Are they lies? Misinformation? Hearsay? Opinion? Support for the 17 from MFA? Eyewitness testimony?

Of course the discussion should be open. If the NGO's tell lies, it should be exposed. If the NGO's say Israel must be accountable, then the NGO's must be accountable as well.

Nycerbarb

Yaacov said...

I don't know if you read Hebrew, Nycerbarb, but if you do, the Im Tirtsu reports details each and every one of the relevant footnotes, so you can judge for yourself.

David Boxenhorn said...

Look how the BBC reports on Israel's response to the Goldstone Report: The 'explosive admission' in Israel's Gaza report. You can't win.

Anonymous said...

Yaacov -

Thank you for the challenge. My Hebrew is good enough to read the report, but not very quickly.

But because you challenged me, I checked out the Im Tirzu English website. So I was surprised to learn that anti-Zionism is even a problem on Israeli campuses.

I do think this story about NIF and the NGO funding is important, as is the work of Im Tirzu, so I sent a letter to my local Jewish newspaper, telling them to give it some coverage. (cc'd you)

As for Im Tirzu's report, it leaves me more confused. I looked at pp. 24-28, that deal specifically with Adalah and Shovrim Shtika. In the sections "Central Citations in the Goldstone Report," Im Tirzu list things like "Accused IDF soldiers of violence." Did the Goldstone report accuse Israel of war crimes based on the accusations NGO's without further inquiry? Or does Goldstone give a reason theses accusations are credible? Does Im Tirzu or anyone say why these accusations are not credible?

Nycerbarb

Anonymous said...

Yaacov -

Thank you for the challenge. My Hebrew is good enough to read the report, but not very quickly.

But because you challenged me, I checked out the Im Tirzu English website. So I was surprised to learn that anti-Zionism is even a problem on Israeli campuses.

I do think this story about NIF and the NGO funding is important, as is the work of Im Tirzu, so I sent a letter to my local Jewish newspaper, telling them to give it some coverage. (cc'd you)

As for Im Tirzu's report, it leaves me more confused. I looked at pp. 24-28, that deal specifically with Adalah and Shovrim Shtika. In the sections "Central Citations in the Goldstone Report," Im Tirzu list things like "Accused IDF soldiers of violence." Did the Goldstone report accuse Israel of war crimes based on the accusations NGO's without further inquiry? Or does Goldstone give a reason theses accusations are credible? Does Im Tirzu or anyone say why these accusations are not credible?

Nycerbarb

Anonymous said...

sorry for the double click.

Nycerbarb

Gavin said...

The phosphorus business continues to bamboozle me, people on the left are just obsessed with it to the extent of fanaticism. The report doesn't say that the General and Colonel were discplined for using WP, it says they were disciplined for authorising the use of explosive shells. Haaretz are plain wrong, they read from the report only what they wanted to see.

(ref paragraphs 100 and 108, one assumes they were also firing HE rounds as well as smoke in the same action)

I read the reports on the use of WP in the Goldstone report, after researching how the smoke shells work, and the only deaths from WP I could find in the report that were consistent with the physical behaviour of those smoke rounds were people being hit by the falling shell casing. This WP obsession is truly bizarre.

Gavin

Anonymous said...

The left's obsession with WP goes back at least to Fallujah. Perhaps it extends back to Viet Nam?
In either case, Russia's use of WP smoke shells during the battle for Grozny seems to have been of somewhat less interest.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1995/grozny.htm

Edward Halper said...

I think that the outward aim is only superficial. The idea is to get foreigners so angry at Israel that Israelis will feel the need to change governments and elect a party like Meretz. The self-absorbed character of the Israeli NGOs--and their confidence in Israel's strength--is probably a symptom of democracy. To those who see a real threat to Israel from its enemies, the activities of these NGOs and Goldstone serves to make clear the threat and to reinforce support for conservative governments dedicated to insuring that Israel can defend itself. Such is the dialectic that is playing out.

Barry Meislin said...

The idea is to get foreigners so angry at Israel that Israelis will feel the need to change governments and elect a party like Meretz.

Um, no.

"The idea is to get foreigners so angry that" when Israel is fighting for its life (whenever, not if, this will occur) and is within range of obliteration, such "angry foreigners" will be cheering for it to happen.

It is called "deligitimization".

What has been happening, globally, stoked by progressive humanity, together with their Islamist (and Neonazi) confederates, and spread, happily, by the Media, is the equivalent of Nazis making films of Jews interposed with juicy footage of poverty, filth and scurrying rats.

The best-case scenario is that should Israel be destroyed, such "angry foreigners" will say, "It's a shame that this (i.e., the very thing they had been cheering) had to happen... but Israel had it coming".