Israel-Haters Unmoved By Goldstone Recantation

Even though Goldstone himself recanted on his own scurrilous report, the British government and media establishments, moral degenerates that they are, still defend it. This is a country that is currently fighting a war for oil against Libya, a country which never attacked it. Yet they would deny Israel the right to defend itself against terrorists on her doorstep. You would think it would be obvious by now that Britain has failed to reap any rewards from having spent decades siding with the fakestinians against Israel. Quite the contrary. England itself is undergoing a hostile jihad invasion.

For Israel-bashers, recantation is heresy
Melanie Phillips, The Spectator
Wednesday, 6th April 2011


The reaction to Richard Goldstone’s recantation of his infamous report has been as instructive as it is predictable. The haters of Israel will not allow the facts to get in the way of the hate – even when the very author of the report they have used to foment that hate has now recanted his pivotal allegation and pulled the rug from under their feet.

In his article, Goldstone says he now accepts that Israel did not intentionally kill civilians in Gaza. The most terrible element of his report was the assertion that it had done so, turning Israel’s actions in Cast Lead from a justifiable defence of its citizens against attack into a monstrous and evil intention to kill the innocent, and thus opening up the suggestion it may have committed crimes against humanity. That is the blood libel against Israel which is used over and over again to delegitimise any Israeli military defence against attack and intended genocide, and thus make it unable to defend itself. And it is that diabolical inversion, for which Goldstone provided rocket fuel, which underpinned the thrust of his report.

That claim placed Israel on the same moral plane as the murderous terrorists whose aim is indeed to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. It thus delegitimises not just Israel’s self-defence but Israel itself, and turns it into a moral pariah — whose own eradication is therefore implicitly to be justified. For Goldstone now to recant this claim – and to say into the bargain that the UN Human Rights Council which commissioned him is prejudiced against Israel and thus by implication cannot ever be trusted as an impartial arbiter of such matters – not only vitiates his report but calls into question the UNHRC and all those in Britain, America and Europe who treat its lethal bullying of Israel and malevolent distortions of international law as unquestionably justified.

So this recantation, given the appalling consequences of what has now been withdrawn, is an event of considerable magnitude. For the Israel-bashers, it is a terrible blow to their whole platform of hate – such a blow, indeed, that they have to find ways of pretending it hasn’t happened. This requires the kind of brazen intellectual legerdemain which, for those whose attitude to Israel is based on lies and hatred, is second nature.

The UK government, for example, sees no reason why Goldstone’s recantation should cause it to abandon its endorsement of the Goldstone report. Not even the bits about deliberate killing of civilians and possible crimes against humanity. The Jerusalem Post reported:

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