Financial Times endorses Goldstone Report
Three key themes emerged:
1) Israel’s opposition to the report was ‘disingenuous’
2) Any potential bias against Israel in the UNHRC is balanced out elsewhere in the UN
3) The conclusions of the report were correct: Israel used indiscriminate force against civilians in Gaza
Israel’s opposition to the report
The editorial began by noting that the ‘torrent of enraged polemics’ against the Goldstone report began long before the report was endorsed on Friday. It demonstrated that in the newspaper’s view, the fact that the report - ‘virulently condemned by Israel and its allies as biased’ – censured both Hamas and Israel rendered Israel’s rejection unjustified.
Instead, the piece argued that despite Israel’s claims to the contrary, it was ‘his [Richard Goldstone’s] reputation the government feared…not his methods.’ The FT described Goldstone as a ‘distinguished’ South African jurist and claimed that the ‘subtext’ of Israel’s attitude was based on the view of ‘Israel’s irredentist right’ that ‘since Mr Goldstone is a Jew he must be a traitor’; a position the editorial describes as ‘disingenuous’. The publication noted that ‘Much of the criticism centre[d] on methodology’ – but did not indicate what those criticisms were.
The role of the United Nations Human Rights Council
The editorial did give weight to the credibility of Israel’s opposition to the UNHRC in general, noting that ‘Israel has been the subject of about a third of country-specific resolutions, as council members from Libya to Angola hide behind the Palestinian cause to deflect attention from their own records of serious human rights abuse.’
However, the FT contended that ‘Israel should not complain too much’ because this prejudice is balanced out elsewhere in the UN. For example, the UN was ‘the body where the US…has prevented sanctions for Israel’s illegal colonisation’. The UN had also rejected the application of Farouk Hosni - ‘a censor and anti-Semite’ - to become the head of Unesco.
Israel’s conduct during Operation Cast Lead was disproportionate
The FT acknowledged that the report gives ‘greater weight to Israel’s military activity in Gaza’, but claimed that this is justified due to its ‘disproportionate conduct in war’, as evidenced by the fact that ‘some 1,400 Palestinians died, most of them civilians, as against 13 Israelis fatalities, three of them civilians’. Not only does the FT believe Israel’s response was disproportionate, but it also alleged that Israel was guilty of not discriminating between civilians and combatants. The closing sentence of the editorial identifies the central message of the Goldstone report as: ‘there should be no warrant or moral right for indiscriminate attacks on civilians’, clearly equating the actions of Israel’s army with those of Hamas.