IDF legal official: Israel should probe Goldstone Gaza report

[bemildred]

Yes, I know, the headline mis-leads about the story.

The head of the Military Advocate General's international law department during Operation Cast Lead said Monday that it may be necessary to establish a commission of inquiry to respond to the Goldstone report on Israel's conduct during the conflict in Gaza last winter.

"It is possible that, in hindsight, it would have been correct to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission," Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch said in a private closed-door meeting in Tel Aviv. "It's possible that had we cooperated with the commission, its report wouldn't have been as bad. I don't think anyone thought the report would be so severe."

Sharvit-Baruch said she believes the report's harsh condemnation of Israel's conduct and its wide distribution on the Internet have been "very, very damaging" to Israel's international standing. Sharvit-Baruch found herself at the center of a highly publicized academic storm a year ago, after it emerged that officers in her bureau had granted permission to army units to carry out a number of operations that resulted in civilian casualties, such as striking a police officers' course linked to Hamas. Several lecturers at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law wrote letters to the department head asking that Sharvit-Baruch not be appointed a lecturer in international law there.

Sharvit-Baruch said she was concerned by the Goldstone report's negative effect on Israel's legitimacy in the global arena, and that Israel could potentially turn into "a kind of South Africa or Serbia" or a "criminal" or "racist" state in international opinion.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1147186.html

[azurnoir]

1. Sharvit-Baruch is correct in that Israel should have co-operated

however she is correct for the IMO wrong reasons, that the report may not have been so critical of Israel had it cooperated implies some sort of vendetta on Goldstones part
Still I must wonder just how much "Goldstone awareness" there really is outside of people that are truly "wonks" on the subject of Israel and Palestine. IMO and from what I've heard from "regular" folk the real damage while OCL was going on and here in America the subsequent attitude taken towards Obama, and in fact a couple of people I know that had always been very proIsrael are still shaking their heads over this and I am talking about people who did not blink at Lebanon in 2006

[bemildred]

2. Well, I disagree, her point is sound, and I don't think a vendetta is implied.

Though that certainly is a popular idea in some circles. Back when the commission was doing its study and report, quite a few people, including some here, pointed out that the boycott of the commission would result in an unbalanced report. I think the intent at the time in Israeli gov't circles was to use that lack of balance as a weapon to claim bias, but that strategy has not worked out so well. And that is what Ms Sharvit-Baruch is pointing out.

[azurnoir]

3. Actually that is what I initially thought too

what changed my mind was this peice from article

they were concerned that "if we cooperate and a very bad report comes out, that basically means that they heard us, but ruled that we are war criminals. Then it's harder to distance ourselves from its conclusions," she said.

eta the report looked not so much at intent but at end results, intent can be said to be anything after the fact

[bemildred]

4. Well, you have a point, it's not like she is Mother Theresa.

But she is nevertheless considering the question from different points of view, and asserting that maybe they were wrong not to cooperate, hence that maybe the "distancing" was problematic, that it didn't work. Really what she says is that they misjudged the harshness of the report, and hence misjudged the need to try to moderate it, and chose the "distancing" strategy instead. Which is actually the accustomed approach for the IDF and GOI with this sort of thing, and they have got away with it for a long time. That helps to understand why they are so annoyed with Mr Goldstone, because he more than anyone gave the report credibility and legitimacy.

But the very fact that she still asserts that "I really don't think we have anything we need to hide" shows that she is not a good judge of actions or of consequences. She is still thinking of it as a PR problem, a failure to apply the proper media management strategy. She sees the problem in international condemnation, but does not admit that the problem is one of substance rather than spin.