Wednesday, March 7, 2012

137 Human Rights Watch replies to its founder over Israel

(1) Richard Goldstone: My mission - and motivation
(2) Goldstone: Double standard cf Moral clarity - Paul Craig Roberts
(3) Human Rights Watch replies to its founder over Israel
(4) Kissinger's Memorandum to Nixon on Israel's Nuclear Weapons
(5) Nozette Spy Sting: Is Justice Department Targeting Israel? - Jewish Week
(6) Under Jewish pressure, David Irving's American Express account is cancelled

(1) Richard Goldstone: My mission - and motivation

From: Ken Freeland <diogenesquest@gmail.com> Date: 21.10.2009 03:00 PM

My mission - and motivation

Oct. 18, 2009
Richard Goldstone , THE JERUSALEM POST

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1255694838474

Five weeks after the release of the Report of the Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance. It has been fulsomely approved by those whose interests it is thought to serve and rejected by those of the opposite view. Those who attack it do so too often by making personal attacks on its authors' motives and those who approve it rely on its authors' reputations.

Israeli government spokesmen and those who support them have attacked it in the harshest terms and, in particular my participation, in a most personal and hurtful way. The time has now come for more sober reflection on what the report means and appropriate Israeli reactions to it.

I begin with my own motivation, as a Jew who has supported Israel and its people all my life, for having agreed to head the Gaza mission. Over the past 20 years, I have investigated serious violations of international law in my own country, South Africa, in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and the alleged fraud and theft by governments and political leaders in a number of countries in connection with the United Nations Iraq Oil for Food program. In all of these, allegations reached the highest political echelons. In every instance, I spoke out strongly in favor of full investigations and, where appropriate, criminal prosecutions. I have spoken out over the years on behalf of the International Bar Association against human rights violations in many countries, including Sri Lanka, China, Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Pakistan.

I would have been acting against those principles and my own convictions and conscience if I had refused a request from the United Nations to investigate serious allegations of war crimes against both Israel and Hamas in the context of Operation Cast Lead.

AS A Jew, I felt a greater and not a lesser obligation to do so. It is well documented that as a condition of my participation I insisted upon and received an evenhanded mandate to investigate all sides and that is what we sought to do.

I sincerely believed that because of my own record and the terms of the mission's mandate we would receive the cooperation of the Israeli government. Its refusal to cooperate was a grave error. My plea for cooperation was repeated before and during the investigation and it sits, plain as day, in the appendices of the Gaza report for those who actually bother to read it. Our mission obviously could only consider and report on what it saw, heard and read. If the government of Israel failed to bring facts and analyses to our attention, we cannot fairly be blamed for the consequences. Those who feel that our report failed to give adequate attention to specific incidents or issues should be asking the Israeli government why it failed to argue its cause.

Israel missed a golden opportunity to actually have a fair hearing from a UN-sponsored inquiry. Of course, I was aware of and have frequently spoken out against the unfair and exceptional treatment of Israel by the UN and especially by the Human Rights Council.

I did so again last week. Israel could have seized the opportunity provided by the even-handed mandate of our mission and used it as a precedent for a new direction by the United Nations in the Middle East. Instead, we were shut out.

As I stated in response to a recent letter from the mayor of Sderot, I believed strongly that our mission should have been allowed to visit Sderot and other parts of southern Israel that have been at the receiving end of unlawful attacks by many thousands of rockets and mortars fired at civilian targets by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza. We were prevented from doing so by, what I believe, was a misguided decision by the Israeli government.

In Gaza, I was surprised and shocked by the destruction and misery there. I had not expected it. I did not anticipate that the IDF would have targeted civilians and civilian objects. I did not anticipate seeing the vast destruction of the economic infrastructure of Gaza including its agricultural lands, industrial factories, water supply and sanitation works. These are not military targets. I have not heard or read any government justification for this destruction.

OF COURSE the children of Sderot and the children of Gaza have the same rights to protection under international law and that is why, notwithstanding the decision of the government of Israel, we took whatever steps were open to us to obtain information from victims and experts in southern Israel about the effects on their lives of sustained rocket and mortar attacks over a period of years. It was on the strength of those investigations that we held those attacks to constitute serious war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

The refusal of cooperation by the government of Israel did not prevent us from reacting positively to a request from Gilad Schalit's father to speak personally to our mission at its public session in Geneva. No one who heard his evidence could fail to have been moved by the unspeakable pain of a parent whose young son was being held for over three years in unlawful circumstances without any contact with the outside world and not even allowed visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The mission called for his release.

Israel and its courts have always recognized that they are bound by norms of international law that it has formally ratified or that have become binding as customary international law upon all nations. The fact that the United Nations and too many members of the international community have unfairly singled out Israel for condemnation and failed to investigate horrible human rights violations in other countries cannot make Israel immune from the very standards it has accepted as binding upon it.

Israel has a strong history of investigating allegations made against its own officials reaching to the highest levels of government: the inquiries into the Yom Kippur War, Sabra and Shatila, Bus 300 and the Second Lebanon War.

Israel has an internationally renowned and respected judiciary that should be envy of many other countries in the region. It has the means and ability to investigate itself. Has it the will?

The writer led the UN-mandated Gaza Fact-Finding Mission established to investigate alleged crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead earlier this year. The mission released its 575-page report last month.

(2) Goldstone: Double standard cf Moral clarity - Paul Craig Roberts

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu>  Date: 24.10.2009 01:39 PM

War Criminals Are Becoming The Arbiters Of Law

By Paul Craig Roberts, October 12, 2009

[Paul Craig Roberts is the Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week From 1982 through 1993. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in President Reagan's administration]
...............................................................................
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23702.htm

The double standard under which the Israeli government operates is too much for everyone except the brainwashed Americans. Even the very Israeli Jerusalem Post can see the double standard displayed by "all of Israel now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report":

"This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We're entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism. That's the way it's always been, that's the way it was in Operation Cast Lead. And there are no limits on our right to self-defense. There is no such thing as 'disproportionate.' We can deliberately destroy thousands of Gazan homes, the Gazan parliament, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior, courthouses, the only Gazan flour plant, the main poultry farm, a sewage treatment plant, water wells and God knows what else.

Deliberately.

Why? Because we're better than them. Because we're a democracy and they're a bunch of Islamo-fascists. Because ours is a culture of life and theirs is a culture of death. Because they're out to destroy us and all we are saying is give peace a chance.

The Goldstones of the world call this hypocrisy, a double standard. How dare they! Around here, we call it moral clarity."

A person would never read such as this in the New York Times or Washington Post or hear it from any US news source. Unlike Israeli newspapers, the US media is a complete mouthpiece for the Israel Lobby. Never a critical word is heard.This is the way the syllogism works:

It is anti-semitic to criticize Israel. Anti-semitism is a hate crime. Therefore, to criticize Israel is a hate crime.

Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, stepped into the hate crime arena when he told Israel Army radio that the Goldstone report on Israel's military assault on Gaza contains "some very serious details which need to be investigated." A year from now when the Anti-Defamation League has its phalanx of US Department of Justice (sic) prosecutors in place, Sawers would be seized and placed on trial. Diplomatic immunity means nothing to the US, which routinely invades other countries, executes their leaders or sends them to the Hague for trial as war criminals.

(3) Human Rights Watch replies to its founder over Israel

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu>  Date: 24.10.2009 01:39 PM

October 22, 2009, Letters to the Editor, NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/opinion/22iht-edlet.html?_r=1

Human Rights Watch was saddened to read that our founding chairman, Robert Bernstein, opposes holding Israel to the same standards that we apply to the rest of the world ("Lost in the Mideast," Views, Oct. 21). Human Rights Watch does not believe that the human rights records of "closed" societies are the only ones deserving investigation. If that were the case, we would not work on U.S. abuses in Guantánamo Bay, police abuse in Brazil, maternal deaths in India, or the ill-treatment of migrants in the E.U. "Open" societies and democracies commit human rights abuses, too, and Human Rights Watch has an important role to play in documenting those abuses.

Human Rights Watch has produced more than 1,700 reports, letters, news releases and other commentaries on the Middle East and North Africa since January 2000, and the vast majority of these were about countries other than Israel. Our Middle East division is only one of 16 research programs at Human Rights Watch. The work on Israel is a tiny fraction of Human Rights Watch's output.

It is not the case that Human Rights Watch had "no access to the battlefield" during and after the Israeli operation in Gaza in January 2009. We have a research assistant based in Gaza, and other researchers entered via the border with Egypt after the fighting and conducted interviews with victims, eyewitnesses, U.N. officials, local authorities and others. We also visited attack sites, analyzed ballistics evidence, and examined autopsy and other medical reports.

Mr. Bernstein would excuse these violations because they were supposedly committed in "self-defense" rather than "intentionally." But the Geneva Conventions prohibit abuses regardless of motivation. Moreover, many of Israel's actions showed evidence of official policy; the same was true of Palestinian rocket fire into Israeli towns. We've published reports on both.

In April 2009, Mr. Bernstein brought his concerns about our work on Israel to a full meeting of the Human Rights Watch board of directors. The board rejected his view that Human Rights Watch should report on only closed societies, and expressed its full support for the organization's work.

Carroll Bogert, New York

Associate director, Human Rights Watch

(4) Kissinger's Memorandum to Nixon on Israel's Nuclear Weapons
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 23.10.2009 03:05 PM

Nixon Presidential Library and Museum - http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/mr/071969_israel.pdf

In this secret internal memo of July 19, 1969, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger explains to President Richard Nixon the "dangers" of Israel's nuclear weapons program. Kissinger notes that Israel had broken its pledge to the US not to "introduce" nuclear weapons in the region. He also notes that if the US tries to force Israel to live up to its commitment by withholding delivery of US warplanes, "enormous political pressure will be mounted on us." This memo, declassified in 2007 after being "sanitized," lays out US policy regarding the Zionist state's nuclear arsenal: "While we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact." __

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT

FROM: Henry A. Kissinger

SUB JECT; Israeli Nuclear Program

You will recall that you created a special group --because of the sensitivity of the issue --to consider the status of the Israeli nuclear program and our possible responses to it. We have met twice at the top level (Packard, Richards on, Helms, Wheeler, Kissinger) to consider analyses drawn up by a srnall working group under us.

The paper is a summary of the situation as our group sees it after reviewing the intelligence and of our discussion of the issues which that situation raises. This is long, but I believe you will want to read through it because this is a complex problern,

THE SITUATION

We judge that the introduction of nuclear weapons into the Near East would increase the dangers in an already dangerous situation and therefore not be in our interest.

Israel has 12 surface-to-surface missiles delivered from France. It has set up a production line and plans by the end of 1970 to have a total force of 24-30, ten of which are programmed for nuclear warheads.

When the Israelis signed tlhe contract buying the Phantom aircraft last Novernber, they committed thernselve s "not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Near East." But it was plain from the discuss ion that they interpreted that to mean they could possess nuclear weapons as long as they did not test, deploy, or make them public. In signing the contract, we wrote Rabin saying that we believe mere "possession " constitutes "introduction" and  Israel's introduction of nuclear weapons by our definition would be cause for us to cancel the contract.

Delivery of the Phantoms is scheduled to begin in September , But some of the aircraft will be ready at the factory in August, and the Israelis have asked to begin taking delivery then.

WHAT WE WANT

There was general agreement in our group that we must recognize one important distinction to begin with:

1. Israel's secret possession of nuclear weapons would increase the potential danger in the Middle East, and we do not desire complicity in it.

2. In this case, public knowledge is almost as dangerous as possession itself. This is what might spark a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the Arabs, tighten the Soviet hold on the Arabs and increase the danger of our involvement. Indeed, the Soviets might have an incentive not to know.

What this means is that, while we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession , what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.

In our discussions, the following positions were taken:

1. Everyone agreed that, as a minimum, we want Israel to sign the NPT. This is not because signing will make any difference in Israel' s actual nuclear program because Israel could produce warheads clandestinely. Israel's signature would, however, give us a publicly feasible issue to raise with the Israeli government --a way of opening the discussion. It would also publicly commit Israel not to acquire nuclear weapons.

2. Everyone agreed that, in addition, we should try to get from Israel a bilateral understanding on Israel's nuclear intentions because the NPT is not precise enough and because the Phantom aircraft are potential nuclear weapons carriers.

3. Opinion was divided on the nature of the assurances we should seek and on the tactics of seeking them:

--The JCS felt that if Israel's program becomes known, we should be in a position to say we did everything in our power to prevent Israel from going nuclear. JCS felt that we should try to stop Israel's missile production and use the Phantoms as leverage.

--Defense felt that we could live with the existence of Israeli  nuclear weapons provided they were not deployed.

Defense agreed that we should try to stop missile production and that we should use the Phantoms as leverage to get the assurances  we want,

--State believed that we should try to keep Israel from going any further with its nuclear weapons program --~it may be so close to completion that Israel would be willing --and make a record for ourselves of having tried. State has joined in suggesting asking the Israelis to halt production of the missiles. State would not threaten to withhold the Phantoms in the first Approach to the Israelis but would be prepared to imply that threat if they were unresponsive to our first approach.

At the end of our discussions. State. Defense. and JCS agreed to describe a course of action which represented as nearly as possible the consensus of our group. Despite the different shades of opinion expressed in our discussions. the State. Defense and JCS members have concurred in the paper at Tab B which proposes asking the Israelis to:

1. Sign the NPT at an early date (by the end of this year) and ratify it soon thereafter.

2. Reaffirm to the US in writing the assurance that Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Near East. specifying that 1Jintroduetion" shall rriean possession of nuclear explosive devices. [For our own internal purposes. we would decide that we could tolerate Israeli activity short of assembly of a completed nuclear device.]

3. Give us assurances in writing that it will stop production and will not deploy "Jericho" rnissiles or any other nuclear-capable strategic missile. ...

(5) Nozette Spy Sting: Is Justice Department Targeting Israel? - Jewish Week

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 22.10.2009 01:06 AM

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c40_a17037/News/Israel.html#

by James D. Besser
Washington Correspondent

The arrest of a Maryland scientist in the latest case involving FBI stings aimed at individuals with connections to Israel has revived questions about whether the Justice Department is targeting Jews and the Jewish state.

The fact that the indictment of Stewart David Nozette, 52, a prominent space scientist and former Pentagon contractor, specifically noted that Israeli agencies were not involved did not stop bloggers and anti-Israel Web sites from trumpeting another "Israeli spy case' and citing it as proof that individuals with connections to Israel cannot be trusted with sensitive defense information.

"What I find troubling and perplexing is that our government seems only interested in investigating people who are connected to Israel,' said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

"It plays into the hands of those who say Jews or those connected to Israel are disloyal.'
Foxman said he doesn't see similar attention being paid to "commercial espionage' by individuals working for Chinese, Russian, French or other concerns.

The Justice Department, another analyst said, is "always looking for the 'next Pollard'' — a reference to Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel.

Unlike in the Pollard case, the Nozette case does not involve allegations of Israeli government involvement.

The new indictment comes almost six months after the government dropped its botched case against two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, in a case critics said involved government entrapment. The two were charged with possessing government secrets and conveying them to Israeli officials, but critics said the case was mostly about the Bush administration's excessive focus on secrecy.

Nozette was charged with attempting to "communicate, deliver and transmit United States national defense information to the government of the State of Israel.'

Details of the case against Nozette were revealed by the Justice Department on Monday, touching off a tsunami of headlines that seemed to link Israel to the case. But one critical detail was omitted: Why, exactly, was Nozette targeted?

An affidavit by FBI agent Leslie Martell, a counterintelligence officer in the FBI's Washington field office, suggested it could be because for 10 years, from 1998 to 2008, Nozette "acted as a technical consultant for an aerospace company that was wholly owned by the Government of the State of Israel.' The company is Israel Aerospace Industries.

During that time, according to the affidavit, "the aerospace company requested that Nozette provide technical data. Approximately once a month, representatives of the aerospace company proposed questions, or taskings, to Nozette, and Nozette answered the aerospace company's questions.'
In return, the FBI agent continued, "Nozette received regular payments from the company, totaling approximately $250,000.'

He also noted that early this year, Nozette traveled to a "different foreign country (foreign country A)' carrying portable thumb drives that he did not have on his return — and that he told a colleague that "if the United States government tried to 'put him in jail' (based on an unrelated criminal offense,) Nozette would move from the United States to Israel or foreign country A and 'tell them everything' he knows.'

That "unrelated criminal offense' was not specified in the affidavit, but in 2006 the Washington Times reported that federal officials were investigating the financial dealings of a nonprofit — the Alliance for Competitive Technology — that Nozette ran.

In early September, Nozette was contacted "by an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was, in fact, an undercover employee of the FBI.'

At a meeting in a hotel restaurant, Nozette indicated a "willingness to work for Israeli intelligence.'
As the meeting continued, Nozette allegedly indicated that he wanted money to provide information about U.S. satellite technology.

And, bizarrely, Nozette said, "I don't get recruited by Mossad every day. I knew this day would come ... I knew you guys would show up.' They did show up — but it was an FBI sting, not Israeli spies.
None of the information released by the Justice Department indicates whether Nozette himself is Jewish. But in the affidavit he allegedly requested an Israeli passport and said "My parents are Jewish, right ... so I ... theoretically have the right of return.'

And he demanded that if he was brought to Israel, it must be on business class. "I always fly business class,' he allegedly said. "Have them pay for business class.'

Later the FBI sent Nozette a letter via a "dead drop' facility asking a series of questions about U.S. satellite technology, along with a $2,000 payment; a week later, agents retrieved a sealed envelope with his answers.

One of those answers contained classified information, the affidavit alleges. In addition, "Nozette offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites and other major weapons systems.'

Nozette, who worked on the Reagan- era Strategic Defense Initiative, the controversial, high-tech missile-defense shield, is regarded as the scientist who discovered water on the moon.

Shoshana Bryen, (whose husband may have spied for Israel) senior director for security policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), said that while she is "troubled' that inaccurate reports of an Israeli spy operation have already been splashed across the Internet, her biggest disappointment is with Nozette — if the allegations are proven.

The reasons behind the FBI investigation "matter less, in the broader scheme of things, than the fact that this guy didn't say 'get out of here, this is offensive' when he was asked to spy,' she said.

"Yes, it's possible the FBI targeted him because they thought he was Jewish, or because he had worked for an Israeli company,' Bryen continued. "That's possible, but it doesn't change the fact his answer should have been "you're out of your mind, get out of here.'

Cases like this, she said, inevitably make things more difficult for the many Jews in sensitive defense and intelligence jobs.

The impact will be multiplied by the bloggers, activists and conspiracy theorists who are already citing the Nozette case as yet another example of Jewish dual loyalty, she said.

"There's no suggestion the Israel government did anything here, but people with their own agendas will say and do what they want,' she said. "And many of them are saying this is about an 'Israeli' spy. That should be worrisome to all Americans and to friends of Israel.'

(6) Under Jewish pressure, David Irving's American Express account is cancelled

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 22.10.2009 06:01 PM

New York Daily News

American Express says Holocaust denier David Irving's no 'merchant,' thanks to Assemblyman Hikind

BY Corky Siemaszko

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, October 21st 2009, 4:00 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/10/21/2009-10-21_lifes_less_rewarding_for_denier_of_the_holocaust_thanks_to_pol.html

Brooklyn assemblyman Dov Hikind has hit Holocaust denier David Irving where it really hurts - in the wallet. When Hikind discovered that Irving was accepting American Express payments for tickets to his ongoing book tour, the lawmaker drafted a letter urging the company to "rescind Mr. Irving's merchant agreement." A dozen elected officials signed it. American Express complied. "David Irving is no longer a merchant on the American Express network," company spokeswoman Christine Elliott said Tuesday. Hikind, whose parents survived Nazi concentration camps, applauded American Express for "doing the right thing." ...

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