RSS Feed Breaking News
Updated 11/20/09 @ 11:30AM EDT
- Canada's opposition Liberal Party is crying foul after the ruling Conservatives mailed out flyers extolling themselves as stronger supporters of Israel.
- Israel arrested five Palestinian Authority intelligence officers in the West Bank.
- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel is conducting secret negotiations with Hamas.
- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was welcomed Thursday in Brazil by a state governor who is Jewish.
- Prominent South African Jewish leader and philanthropist Mendel Kaplan has died at the age of 73.
- Canadian Liberals object after Conservatives say they’re stronger Israel backers
- Israel arrests five P.A. officers
- Abbas: Israel talking to Hamas
- Abbas welcomed by Jewish pol in Brazil
- South African Jewish leader Mendel Kaplan dies
- Israel will send ship to NATO anti-terror force
- Obama: New Iran sanctions coming within weeks
- What should we bring? Thanksgiving foods that travel well
- Female Orthodox scholars helping women talk about sex
- Obama half-brother has Jewish roots
- Lieberman: Fort Hood could be terror attack
- J Street confab shows generational divide on Israel
- What really happened at the Reform biennial in Toronto
- Obama shifts to Israel’s corner, but tries not to show it
- Rubashkin convicted on 86 charges
- Sniffing underwear and other high jinks in satire on intermarriage
Get this feed
Posted in: Foxman to Goldstone: Recant
11/04/09 05:52 PM
As a matter of fact, though, Foxman ignores in his courteous letter to Goldstone the overwhelming evidence from the Goldstone Report itself, and as well from Goldstone's subsequent defenses of it, that Goldstone quite consciously and intentionally crafted the Report in a biased and dishonest manner, to demonize Israel and to slant the Report against Israel. It goes beyond the evidence, for example, to lay the charge that Israel intentionally sought civilian casualties, when there is overwhelming evidence that it did not (if it had, Israel could easily have wiped out hundreds of thousands of Gazans, not a few hundred.) The Report even misrepresents international law itself in its claims against Israel, and shows very sloppy legal investigative methodology in handling witnesses and other evidence. Goldstone knew, after all (as do we all), not only the heavy bias of the UN and HRC itself, which commissioned him, but also that of Hamas itself, an openly antisemitic terrorist organization which has boasted of its genocidal agenda against Jews. Even its charter cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He choose to trust evidence from such an organization and to dismiss as unreliable and dubious evidence from Israel and NGOs and individuals defending it. He continues to defend his indefensible Report, using dodgy answers. This goes far beyond naivety. So there will be no recantation coming from Richard Goldstone.
Posted in: Foxman to Goldstone: Recant
11/04/09 05:38 PM
Not really, David. Foxman is merely stating the obvious, as any unbiased reader of his article can see. For a full analysis of what is wrong with the Goldstone Report, and the dishonesty of "Goldstone's" letter to Congress defending it (a letter not even written by Goldstone but by a founder and leader of J-Street, Mort Halperin), see my post at; http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2009/10/30/1008853/goldstone-v-ros-lehtinen-and-berman#comment_92224 There are links in that post to some of the chief detailed refutations of the Goldstone Report on the internet, showing the Report's hollowness in case after case.
Posted in: AIPAC, OU praise Goldstone resolution passage
11/04/09 05:32 PM
The Congressional resolution is a triumph for decency and sanity in the often very indecent and immoral alternative universe of Middle Eastern (and U.N.) politics. In that universe authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes, sponsors of terrorism and hate, guilty of endless crimes against their own people and each other, arraign the only liberal democracy in the Middle East before kangeroo courts for the "crime" of defending itself against terrorism. In fact, the Goldstone Report and the U.N. H.R.C. itself are used by those regimes as part of their on-going war against liberal democracy as such. None of them are real allies of the U.S., but rather must be numbered amongst its enemies. Israel here as so often is a stand-in and front-line for all decent and liberal societies in the world. As for Judge Goldstone's obvious willingness to associate himself with such regimes and organisations against the only Jewish state in the world, laying trumped-up charges against it, while claiming to act on its behalf, well, that speaks for itself. But for those for whom those behaviors do not speak for themselves, see the actual text of the letter Judge Goldstone wrote to Congress members considering his Report, and the analysis of the slipperiness and even dishonesty in that letter in my post responding to it, at this website's blog at: http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2009/10/30/1008853/goldstone-v-ros-lehtinen-and-berman#comment_92224 It turns out that the letter to Congress was not even actually written by Judge Goldstone, though he no doubt signed it, but by one of the founders of J-Street, Morton Halperin. See my post above for details. This in turn exposes the double-facedness of J-Street, which has pretended to be pro-Israel and critical of the Goldstone Report and to accept the right of the State of Israel to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism. Actually J-Street founders are working feverishly against it.
Posted in: Goldstone v. Ros-Lehtinen and Berman
11/03/09 07:55 PM
Readers of all the above would be interested in some revelatory comments regarding the "Goldstone" letter to Congress elsewhere on-line. It turns out the letter was written not by Goldstone, although no doubt he signed it, but by his J-Street advisor, Morton Halperin. This sheds light not only on the probity or lack of it of Judge Goldstone, but also of J Street - and also George Soros, who is sponsoring and funding a lot of this. Here are the other items, the first by the Editor of The Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb, the second by Steve Rosen, an academic posting on the Harvard University "Middle East Forum" blog: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/10/j_street_adviser_morton_halper.asp J Street Adviser Morton Halperin Goes to Work for Goldstone THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a document authored by Judge Richard Goldstone that is now being circulated on Capitol Hill. The document was written in response to HR 867 -- the resolution sponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman condemning Goldstone's report on Israeli war crimes in Operation Cast Lead. Goldstone explains in the document that he sends his "comments on this resolution in an effort to correct factual errors." Spencer Ackerman reported today that J Street would oppose the resolution in the House, but J Street chief Jeremy Ben-Ami has also said his organization "refuses to embrace" the Goldstone report. But it seems that certain elements of J Street have indeed embraced Goldstone and his report. Upon further inspection of the Goldstone letter, the actual author seems to be Morton H. Halperin, who serves on the J Street advisory council and is a senior adviser at George Soros's Open Society Institute. The original document can be downloaded here. (A check of the file's "properties" reveals the author as Morton H. Halperin.) Individuals with official ties to J Street are not just embracing the Goldstone report, they are involved in efforts on behalf of Goldstone himself to scuttle opposition to the report in Congress. It's just another example of the disconnect between J Street's official positions and the actions of those who are connected to the organization. Posted by Michael Goldfarb on October 30, 2009 12:51 PM http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2009/11/j-street-allied-to-goldstone J Street allied to Goldstone?? by Steve Rosen • Nov 2, 2009 at 9:03 pm I haven't posted for a while, but this is remarkable. Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard discovered ("J Street Adviser Morton Halperin Goes to Work for Goldstone") that a letter purportedly written by Judge Richard Goldstone to criticize a House of Representative resolution condemning the Goldstone report (HR 867 sponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman) was substantially written by Morton H. Halperin, who serves on the J Street advisory council and is a senior adviser at George Soros's Open Society Institute. The original document can be downloaded from the Standard. A check of the file's "properties" revealed the author as Halperin. There has been a lot of warm and cozy talk about expanding our definition of the pro-Israel family to include some cousins who dissent a little here and there, like calling for less pressure on Iran and more on Israel. But this Goldstone maneuver is not mere dissent, but an apolgia for a report that would, if left unanswered, make it impossible for Israel to defend itself against a systematic campaign to target Israeli civilians. Mort Halperin was one of the key founders of J Street, and held what may have been the first serious fundraiser for the new organization in his home. This is not merely wrong, but profoundly evil, and it is being done by one of the fathers of J Street, which tosses around the phrase "pro-Israel" while robbing it of all meaning.
Posted in: Forgiving Ronan Tynan
11/01/09 11:21 PM
steve ariza may be in Outer Mongolia. You cannot believe everything a blogger, especially such a nasty one, says about himself/herself, starting with the claim to being Jewish at all. I tend to give the benefit of a doubt, although steve ariza stretches it quite a bit - see the uniformly negative tone of all his posts.
View all comments »