CIVIL TRIAL ATTORNEY BARUCH C. COHEN SPEAKS ABOUT THE DELEGITIMIZATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL TO VALLEY TORAH GIRLS

Demonizing Bibi

Here's why all Israelis should be upset about the way that Presidents Obama and Sarkozy maligned Prime Minister Netanyahu last week.

The trouble here is that we are rarely exposed to slander at such an official level. One would expect more deference from these two statesmen when talking about their Israeli counterpart, a man who studied in the same university as Obama, who was a captain in Israel’s elite Special Forces, and who was elected twice through a democratic process. If anything, his recent gestures towards his neighbors are a token of his willingness to come to an understanding – quite a change from his oft-sported status quo stance.

In fact, these gestures – the 10-month settlement freeze, the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including some with blood on their hands, and the perpetual hand outstretched to Mahmoud Abbas – present a far different picture of Bibi earnestly seeking a tough peace.

This “secret” conversation about the Israeli PM is a dangerous precedent, especially when the character assassination bears the echoes of the demonizing accusations spread with such success during one of the darkest pages of history and still a fixture in the 21st Century. To the watchful mind, it recalls the horrendous epithets thrown at Jews by Nazi ideology, the “liar” libel being the first slander in a long line of verbal humiliation that led the way to actual dehumanization and massacre.

Hearing today’s most influential and powerful leaders capitalizing on such a prejudice carries the danger of conflation, double standard and demonization which can lead to a slippery slope of unfounded hatred.

Of course, Netanyahu was not called a liar because he is a Jew. So why was he called a liar? What did he do to deserve such an epithet? Was it the same thing that he did to deserve being ushered through the back door of the White House in early 2010? What lie/s does Mr. Sarkozy speak of? The qualification for this humiliation was not given, nor did Obama, a trained lawyer, seem to require one – quite the contrary.

Our leaders bear a great responsibility in the accusations they decide to make in public or in private - these have real consequences. This unfortunate but dubious eavesdropping has had the merit of exposing if not a lie, an embarrassing political hypocrisy which demands to be redressed.

Indeed.

The Jewish Conspiracy: A Strategic Weapon to Demonize Jews and Delegitimize Israel by Judge Hadassa Ben Itto

Judge Hadassa Ben Itto

• We democratic countries see the masses gathered in the public square and are very sympathetic to the outcry against dictatorships and to the fight for freedom. But I am concerned with the masses in the streets and with the outcome of a brainwashing process that has been going on for such a long time. Lies have been spread around the world as a strategic weapon.
• In Cairo's Tahrir Square there were placards of Mubarak with a Star of David on his face. Lara Logan, an American journalist, was sexually molested in the middle of the square and was called a Jew, although she is not Jewish. She does not have to be Jewish. The word "Jew" has become an accepted insult in the public square.
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - a proven lie and forgery - is being published around the world, with new editions in Arabic almost every year, and in Persian and Turkish. The Protocols was fabricated in France in the last decade of the nineteenth century, most of the text actually plagiarized from a French book published in 1865 by an opponent of Napoleon the Third.
• In a pearl of literature written by a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, as an allegory, Machiavelli explains to Montesquieu what tools can be effectively used to take over, to dominate his country and the world. This is a detailed plan that describes in 25 dialogues, step by step, how to take over the police force, how to take over the legal system, how to plant bombs - meant to awaken the French people to what was happening in their country. Some 60 to 65 percent of The Protocols are verbatim passages from this book. Chapters were added later to make it the Jewish plan to dominate the world.
• The Protocols is not just a libel; it is a political document describing a Jewish criminal conspiracy. The Protocols was first used by the Russian czars and then by the communists. Later, it became a central theme in Nazi propaganda, and then it was handed to the Muslim world.
• There is no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world but there is an anti-Jewish conspiracy. It starts with the Jews but it does not end with the Jews. The first airplane that was hijacked was an Israeli airplane, and now we line up in every airport for security checks, so the world should be concerned. The danger of contaminating the public discourse with lies is a danger to the whole world.

"Jew" Is an Insult in the Egyptian Public Square

We democratic countries see the masses gathered in the public square and are very sympathetic to the outcry against dictatorships and to the fight for freedom. But I am concerned with the masses in the streets and with the outcome of a brainwashing process that has been going on for such a long time. Lies have been spread around the world as a strategic weapon. Public opinion and public discourse have been polluted, and now the masses are standing up and trying to tell the leaders what to do.

If you paid careful attention to what happened in Cairo's Tahrir Square, you saw the placards of Mubarak with a Star of David on his face. Lara Logan, an American journalist, was sexually molested in the middle of the square and was called a Jew, although she is not Jewish. She does not have to be Jewish. The word "Jew" has become an accepted insult in the public square. A well-known preacher stood up and talked not about freedom but about the Jews, about what is going to happen to us when the masses take over. So we are rightfully worried.


The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Leaves a Long and Lasting Imprint

The democratic societies in the world have sinned for years by ignoring this phenomenon. After being a judge for many years, I retired to researchThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion. After six years of research I wrote a book that has now appeared in ten languages, the most recent one in Arabic.

One of the anecdotes in my book is about a retired agent named Henri Rollin of the French Secret Service, who wrote books about European politics during the 1920s and the 1930s. He was well educated about Russia and, having been a secret agent, he had a lot of information that was not available to others. He had realized the importance of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - ­maintaining that everything that was happening in Europe, most importantly the infiltration of the Nazis into European politics, is influenced by The Protocols. He wrote an 800-page book entitled L'apocalypse de Notre Temps, all about how The Protocols had left its imprint on European politics.

The book was published in France on September 3, 1939, and you would think at the beginning of World War II the book would have been completely ignored. However, the Nazis did not ignore the book. When they conquered France they banned it, and so it vanished. Only in 1991 was Rollin's book republished by a small publisher in France. I see myself as following in Rollin's footsteps by following the history of The Protocols through the last decade and into the twenty-first century, and its impact on world politics.

Why is The Protocols - a proven lie and forgery - important today? Because it is being published around the world, with new editions in Arabic almost every year, and in Persian and Turkish. These publications are financed by government money and distributed not only in Arabic-speaking countries, but also to Muslim minorities around the world.

New editions are necessary because the introductions are updated every year. The introductions say if you do not believe that the Jews are really planning to take over the world, look at what is happening in your country and region. Everything that is happening is rooted in The Protocols, an implementation of the "Jewish Conspiracy." If there is a financial crisis, an Aids or a flu epidemic, a terrorist attack, an upheaval or a catastrophe, one can always point to a chapter or page in The Protocols because it is such a devious document that everything is there. There is a whole detailed plan of how to take over the world.

The Protocols is not only a forgery, it is plagiarism. It was actually written in France in the last decade of the nineteenth century. During the preparation for the Russian Revolution, Russian Bolshevik cells could not operate openly in Russia, so they were active elsewhere in Europe including France. A special envoy of the Russian Secret Police was sent to France to uncover the Bolshevik cells. The Russian Secret Service and the Black Hundreds, an ultra-nationalist movement in Russia whose slogan was "Beat the Jews and Save Russia," were trying to convince the Czar that the Jews were behind the Bolshevik Revolution. The Czar was already convinced, but they needed proof.

More than 100 years ago, a French woman by the name of Juliette Adam had a salon. In those days women still did not have the right to vote or be elected, but important and educated women who wanted to make a difference established salons. Adam was a very educated woman - an historian, newspaper owner and author - and she had a political salon where many anti-Semites gathered. There is much evidence that the preparations for the Dreyfus trial, which occurred more or less at the same time (in which a French Jewish army officer was wrongly convicted of treason and later exonerated), took place in her salon.

Juliette Adam's husband was the Chief of Police in Paris, who collaborated with the Russian envoy sent by the Secret Police, Piotr Rachkowsky, because the French did not like Bolshevik terrorists preparing bombs in small Paris hotels. Rachowsky, who was looking for ways to implicate Jews, was invited to Adam's salon, where someone told him of a book, which was banned in France but which the salon possessed, that could be turned into something against the Jews.

During the 1860s a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, wanted to arouse the French people against the terrible dictatorial regime of Napoleon the Third. In his biography he tells how he decided to write a book to describe to the French people the danger they were in. He decided to write an allegory, which was a dialogue between two people in the after-world: Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Machiavelli would represent the ideas and practices of Napoleon the Third and his terrible regime, while Montesquieu would represent the liberal ideas of the writer. He published it in Brussels because the French would not publish it, and he was arrested, tried, and went to prison. His book was banned.

This book is a pearl of literature. Machiavelli explains to Montesquieu why the people are dumb and why a dictator is necessary and what tools he can use to take over, to dominate his country and the world. There are chapters in this book dedicated to each subject - how to take over the police force, how to take over the legal system, how to do away with all the lawyers, how to raise havoc in the labor field, and how to plant bombs in strategic locations. It is a manual on how to dominate the world. The voice of Montesquieu becomes weaker while the voice of Machiavelli becomes stronger, and at the end Montesquieu says, "Oh God, what have you allowed?" He was telling the French people that this was what was happening in France.

Some 60 to 65 percent of The Protocols are verbatim passages from this book. Chapters were added to make it the Jewish plan to dominate the world. The Protocols was first published in Russia in 1905 by a religious fanatic in a monastery. From there it went around the world. After the revolution, officers of the White Army, who fled Russia, carried The Protocols with them to convince the world that what happened to the Romanov Dynasty in Russia would happen to them. The Jewish plan was to topple all the monarchs and governments in Europe. Between 1919 and 1921, The Protocols was published in every language in the world. Six editions were published in Germany in one year, blaming the Jews for World War I. The Protocols was never translated into Hebrew because we ignored it, thinking it was a bad joke.


The Bern Trial of 1934

There was a major trial in Bern, Switzerland, in 1934 after a new Nazi organization started using The Protocols, distributing copies at a public rally.The local Jews, who realized what was happening across the border in Germany, decided to take the Swiss Nazis to trial.

In the introduction to my English book, Lord Chief Justice of England Harry Wolfe wrote that the Bern trial is probably the most important trial ever because in this trial, live witnesses testified in court and described the origins of The Protocols and the use made of this document. They included the head of the opposition to the Czar, historians, politicians and former agents who escaped the revolution and decided to bear witness to this forgery. 

The Protocols is not just a libel, it is a political document describing a Jewish criminal conspiracy to dominate the world, and almost the first leader outside Russia who picked it up was Adolph Hitler. As a strategic step, the Nazis decided to use The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a central part of their ideology, as we know from correspondence between Hitler and Goebbels. A German historian describes in his book how Hitler used The Protocols on the way to the Final Solution, but he had already mentioned it in Mein Kampf. The Nazis were masters of the "Big Lie" and their tactics have been adopted by the Muslim world. The theory is that the bigger the lie, the better success of brainwashing the public.

The Germans established what they called Weltdienst, a center located in Erfurt that spread Nazi ideology and propaganda around the world. The head of Weltdienst was Ulrich Fleischhauer, and Nazi branches or organizations with different names started springing up in every country, fed on Nazi ideology and tactics. At the 1934 Bern trial, the Swiss judge ordered both sides to appoint experts. The Swiss Nazi defendants could not find an expert to testify that The Protocols were an authentic document, so Ulrich Fleischhauer, the head of Weltdienst, came to Switzerland to be the expert. When the judge asked him if he was an expert on The Protocols, he said that he was not, but that he was an expert on the Jews.


The Protocols in the U.S.

The Protocols was also published in the United States, where its biggest promoter was Henry Ford, who published 97 excerpts in his newspaper, theDearborn Independent. These terrible anti-Semitic articles were then collected in a book called The International Jew. Ford was sued in court by American Jews, and the trial went on for six years (1921-1927). In the end, Ford settled with the Jewish community. By the way, every trial againstThe Protocols before the Bern trial ended with a settlement, because the defendants could never prove the authenticity of The Protocols, but when the Nazis came into power they prohibited any settlement in a trial concerning the Protocols, deciding to use courtrooms as a forum to spread Nazi ideology.

In 1964, the United States Senate appointed a committee to study The Protocols. In a unanimous report nine senior senators called the Protocolsthe hoax of the century and a document endangering America.

Following in the footsteps of The Protocols one realizes that this fabricated document, first used by the Russian czars, was then used by the communists, later served as a central theme in Nazi propaganda, and then it was handed over to the Muslim world.


The Protocols in the Muslim World

The Protocols is a central issue in Arab and Muslim propaganda, even in what we call moderate countries, including countries that made peace with Israel. The Protocols is everywhere, in every Arabic book fair, more in Egypt, less in Jordan. It is in public discourse, in newspapers, and even in TV soap operas. It describes world history from beginning to end, including the French Revolution, as part of the Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. Until the end of World War II, the problem was the Jews, but after the establishment of the State of Israel, the target has become Israel.

The Protocols are best sellers in all Muslim countries because this is what they have been told over and over again in their media and schoolbooks. When my book was translated into Arabic, the translator and publisher, both graduates of the Hebrew University, one a Christian Arab and the other a Muslim Arab, told me that until they read my book, they did not know that The Protocols is a forgery.

There is no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world but there is an anti-Jewish conspiracy.  Using this book against the Jews for 100 years is part of a conspiracy and everybody who takes part in it is a conspirator against us. It starts with the Jews but it does not end with the Jews. The first airplane that was hijacked was an Israeli airplane, and now we line up in every airport for security checks, so the world should be concerned. The danger of contaminating the public discourse with lies is a danger to the whole world.

*    *     *

Judge Hadassa Ben Itto, author of The Lie That Wouldn't Die, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2005), served for 31 years as a judge in all levels of the Israeli courts, including as an acting justice of the Supreme Court. She has also served as an official representative of the State of Israel in various international forums, including UNESCO and the United Nations General Assembly. She is currently the Honorary President of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. This Jerusalem Issue Brief is based on her presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on February 24, 2011.

ISRAEL MATZAV: De-legitimization: Who is at Fault? Us or Them?

This is a liveblog of a panel discussion called De-legitimization: Who is at Fault? Us or Them? You can find details of the panelists here.

Abe Foxman will give the first opening remarks. Why us? Why are we treated differently from all other peoples and nations? Dwelling on question of who is to blame does not serve us well. Trying to find someone to blame distracts us from the true nature of the dilemma. He proposes to focus on what Israel has been dealing with since its creation as a Jewish state: Arab rejection. 1947, 1948, Arab boycott, 1967, and then three more subtle versions: two-state solution without end of conflict, keeping alive demand for right of return (which scuttles chance for successful negotiations) and unilateral declaration of Palestinian state, one sure outcome of which would be continued conflict. Cites Abu Mazen's recent NY Times op-ed. Until Palestinians give signs that they are ready to accept Israel and end conflict, we should view delegitimization as the same sheep in old clothing. It's a rejection of the basic Jewish existence in its own homeland. They don't deserve all the attention we are giving them.

Irwin Cotler says that what's new here is not the delegitimization but the laundering of delegitimization such as the rubrics of human rights, and anti-racism, which make delegitimization seem like it represents all that is good. They have reframed the Arab-Israeli conflict as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that paints us as the villain for denying the Palestinians self-determination. If you posit Israel as the violator of human rights it becomes the anti-Christ of our times. Palestinianism has become a poster child for human rights. The delegitimization has been mainstreamed by the elites. And then there's the juxtaposition of the end of the Cold War and the movement into Durban I.

At every given moment there is a resolution or similar emanating from the United Nations or one of its forums. These forums are attended by diplomats, media, etc. which creates a critical mass of exposure to delegitimization. These decisions read like legal judgments. The focus is to say that Israel is doing something illegal, which is why they focus on the settlements.

They use international law as cover - known as lawfare. This is the war of delegitimization under international law. Example: universal jurisdiction.

Delegitimization under human rights rubric. E.g Goldstone.

Delegitimization under anti-racism rubric - call Israel an apartheid or Nazi state.

He says we have to turn this paradigm around and make it clear that its radical Islam and tyrannies like Syria that are the real source of apartheid.

Malcolm Hoenlein starts out "I agree." He wonders whether at the other side's conferences they also ask whether they are at fault or whether we are at fault. He says we have to stop thinking about ourselves as grasshoppers (quotes last week's Torah portion). The threat is because Israel is and not because Israel has done something wrong. What Israel represents and the values of the Jewish people are what threaten the delegitimizers. This issue and how we counter this will affect us for generations.

He does not believe this is like the 1930's but there are a lot of signs that raise questions about us. This is like a tumor that grows quietly - it's a cancerous process. What matters is what we do and not what our enemies do. We should not tolerate this. The attack is against the Jewish people and not just against the Jewish state. It's time for us to step back and not question whether it's our responsibility. This is a modern blood libel and Hitler's lies spread much more quickly today than they did in the 1930's. We saw the blueprint for this at Durban I. You can trace this back and see everything from there. Globalization has made this far more complex. There is no place you can go to get justice. This involves every sector of our society.

They're trying to deny us our roots and our right to be in the Jewish state. They take away our past to take away our future. They want to intimidate us and we see kids on campus afraid to let anyone know they're Jews. Incitement cannot be ignored. There's nothing worse than Jews who don't get it, who put their heads in the sands and deny reality. 70 years ago they knew but did not want to know. We can't pretend not to know.

It's time for Jews and supporters of Israel to go on the offense. You can't win a game by just playing defense.

We won't be judged by acts of our enemies but by silence of our friends.

Miri Eisin wants to talk about 40 and under crowd and what they've seen for the last 25 years. She wants to talk about the words because the images they have seen of Israel for the last 25 years is what gives the delegitimizers their strongest point. An image is worth 1,000 words. For 25 years IDF has been shown negatively. From mid-May to mid-June Israel has been framed via the delegitimizer's eyes. Does Israel have right to open fire against those who breach its borders? The framing of the debate here is only negative for the last 25 years and it's always about the military and whether they have the right to defend Israel. Whenever Israel is in the news in the world, it's only through the conflict (please don't tell me she's going toward the rebranding Israel thing).

Media image of Israel is part of delegtimizers' strength.

The debate is happening on social media for all the young people. You have to get Israel into your comfort zone. That's where people want to be - numbers count. How many of us are in that world? For the 25-year olds you have to be on one side or the other. We can't afford to have people who don't care. When we open our eyes and start working, we have to step into the 40-and-unders' social media. The last six months have impacted the exact world that we're talking about now and have to talk about it on their terms. The images and words will define us 5-10 years from now.

Peter Goldsmith says we have to look at this from the question of what to do about it. But it's up to us Jews and not Israel's supporters. Two main points: Ability and willingness of Israelis and Jews to engage is important. For example, Goldstone's retraction. What if the report would have been different? Was there sufficient reason not to engage. Goldsmith says that we have to be prepared to engage with those issues. We need to go out and confront the people who are attacking us. It's not just Israel's supporters - it's right-minded people more generally. So Goldsmith thinks it's good that Israel investigated the flotilla and didn't just close the fortress walls.

Michael Herzog says that we are not and should not be asking whether we are at fault. He distinguishes between delegitimization and legitimate criticism. Second, Israeli government sending lawyers to international forums to engage.

I went off this for a while - partly to conserve my battery. At the moment, they're talking about changing the words with which we frame the issues. Miri Eisin says we shouldn't call it delegitimization. Malcolm Hoenlein says to call settlements communities (and Eisin gives him a funny look - why?). Foxman says to stop giving them all the attention.

Someone in the audience (Ken Bialkin - could not see him from here but I've been on business deals with him) suggests we should fight the resolution for a 'Palestinian state' just like Foxman's father tore up the Zionism is racism resolution in the UN (I think it was Foxman's father - not sure on that).

Another person in the audience says we're looking for victim status and accuses panel of evading issue (yes, she's Israeli). Surreal. Audience murmuring.

Foxman says we're not spooked by prospect of UN vote. Cotler says that heart of BDS movement is academia and that's where it has to be targeted.

David Cameron and the JNF; The British PM’s decision to resign his patronage of the JNF speaks to the next stage of Israel delegitimization, war on Zionism in Diaspora

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to resign his patronage of the Jewish National Fund speaks to the next stage of Israel delegitimization and the war on Zionism in the Diaspora.

As the 1949 Armistice Demarcation Lines, the “1967 lines” are transfigured into merely the basis of a peace agreement, and Israel’s enemies are now working at the next encroachment: the Palestinian “right of return” to Israel’s recognized territory, irrespective of the establishment of an independent Palestine. This was one of the “core issues,” as President Barack Obama put it, which are, he alleged a couple of weeks ago, the real matters still to be negotiated. So the “1967 lines” are a given, apparently; that means the Palestinian “right of return” becomes a legitimate issue for negotiation, and therefore can be lobbied for. The result is that Israel is one step closer to the Arabs’ much longed-for relocation to the sea.

So how does the news that Cameron has resigned his patronage of the JNF relate? 

First, some background: Since 1901, the sitting British prime minister has always been a patron of the JNF. Without comment from the JNF, Cameron’s name has been removed from the list of patrons, presumably at Downing Street’s request. Initially, the Prime Minister’s Office explained that the resignation was part of a wider review of Cameron’s charitable activities – a review launched as part of the coalition agreement, and whichseveral other charities (unnamed) had also suffered. It also noted that “time constraints” on the prime minister meant he was unable to retain the position.

However, Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s patronage of the JNF lasted throughout their premierships and continues today, which makes the “time constraints” excuse dubious. Moreover, “time constraints” implies a logistical issue; a coalition review suggests politics.

Consequently, observers were dissatisfied, so Downing Street tried again a few days later, explaining, according to the Jewish Chronicle, that the matter had been discussed with the JNF late last year, and that “one of the issues was having an organization that was specifically focused around work in one specific country,” and that the JNF was one of a “handful” of (again, unnamed) organizations that had been dropped, including another with links to a specific country. This had nothing do to with a policy issue or any anti-Israel campaign, it clarified, and, to reassure us of Cameron’s “clear views” on Israel, we could consult the record. As if that would be reassuring.

TO CONTEXTUALIZE these events, the Stop The JNF campaign was launched in March on Land Day by the Palestinian Boycott National Committee, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others, and its members are claiming credit for Cameron’s decision. Whether these speculations are accurate or not, Stop The JNF spokespeople are probably right to point out that “given the establishment support that the JNF has received, it’s not a decision he [Cameron] will have taken lightly,” and “this decline in political support for the JNF at the highest levels of the political tree may be a sign of the increasing awareness in official quarters that a robust defence of the activities of the JNF may not be sustainable.”

Indeed, back in March, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn tabled an early day motion in Parliament welcoming the establishment of Stop The JNF, noting the JNF’s purported “ongoing illegal expropriation of Palestinian land, concealing of destroyed Palestinian villages beneath parks and forests, and prevention of refugees from returning to their homes.”

The motion went on to regret the prime minister’s patronage of the JNF.

What we have in this episode is an example of the next encroachment: It is not Judea and Samaria, but all of Israel – in particular its internationally recognized borders – that is now explicitly under assault. And JNF’s alleged role in preventing the return of Palestinian refugees is at the heart of this movement; the writings of these campaigners are replete with references to the pre- 1948 Jewish immigration, settlement and cultivation of the land, led by the JNF, as “conquest” and “settler-colonialism,” and condemn the JNF’s alleged concealment of this harsh history, as referenced by Corbyn in the motion. This phenomenon is, of course, not new, but now with the “’67 lines” under their belt, Israel’s enemies are likely to focus on this next battlefield.

Moreover, it should be noted that this attack on the JNF is largely not for the purported forcible removal of people from their homes (although, naturally, these claims feature), but simply for the purchase of land. So illegitimate is the Jewish presence in Israel that, evidently, even legal transactions are offensive. This is familiar territory, however: The most contentious places in Israel today were, according to the Bible, bought for the Jewish people, including the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs.

Cameron’s resignation underscores, then, the terrain on which Israel is now forced to defend itself. The campaigns against Judea and Samaria have, in fact, largely been about all of Israel, but that was not always obvious. It is now.

Whether Cameron’s decision was indeed due to pressure, or simply the zeitgeist, it does not bode well.

The writer is a graduate of Cambridge and the LSE. He writes and teaches, and works in the non-profit sector.

PMW: PA continues to deny Israel's right to exist Both modern Israel and ancient Judea/Israel are "crude colonialism"

The Palestinian Authority's ideology is to refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist. The media it owns and controls regularly publish articles that demonize the modern State of Israel and its establishment as a "colonialist plan".

Recently, the official PA daily went even further, not just maligning the modern State of Israel but also labeling the Jewish/Israelite presence in the land of Judea/Israel 2000 years ago as a "crude form of colonialism".

Whereas Hamas openly denies Israel's right to exist in both English and Arabic, the PA professes in English before the international community to have recognized Israel's right to exist. As documented by Palestinian Media Watch, when addressing its own people in Arabic, the PA - like Hamas - completely denies Israel's right to exist.

The following is the PA daily's defining ancient Judea/Israel as "colonialism":

"The Zionists must acknowledge publicly, in front of the world, that the Jews have no connection to the Palestinian Arab land, upon whose ruins arose the colonialist settler Zionist plan that settles and expels, represented by the Israeli apartheid state. That which occurred two thousand years ago (i.e., the Jewish/Israeli presence in the land), assuming that it is true, represents in the book of history nothing more than invention and falsification and a coarse and crude form of colonialism."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 27, 2011]

At times, the PA's denial of Israel's right to exist serves as the justification for its claim that Israelis should all leave their homes in Israel.

PA TV narrator addresses the Jews of Israel, asking them to leave, because Israel has no right to exist:

"Where are you [Israelis] from? Where are you from? Where are you from? Of course, you're from Ukraine; of course, you're from Germany, from Poland, from Russia, from Ethiopia, the Falasha (pejorative for Ethiopian Jews). Why have you stolen my homeland and taken my place? Please, I ask of you, return to your original homeland, so that I can return to my original homeland. This is my homeland; go back to your homeland!"

[PA TV (Fatah), May 4 and 7, 2010]

The following are other examples of denial of Israel's right to exist from the official education and PA media:

In a 12th-Grade schoolbook published by the PA Ministry of Education, and in use today:

"Palestine's war ended with a catastrophe that is unprecedented in history, when the Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people from their cities, their villages, their lands and their houses, and established the State of Israel."

[Arabic Language, Analysis, Literature and Criticism, Grade 12, p. 104]

Mahmoud Abbas, (in speech delivered by his representative, Abdallah Al-Ifranji): 

"We say to him [Netanyahu], when he claims - that they [Jews] have a historical right dating back to 3000 years BCE - we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7000 year history BCE. This is the truth, which must be understood and we have to note it, in order to say: 'Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history.'"

[PA TV (Fatah), May 14, 2011]

Abd Al-Rahman, columnist for the official PA daily, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration:

"Today is a painful anniversary for the Palestinian people, the 93rd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, in which those who had no ownership of the Palestinian soil and homeland - the British colonialists - gave to those who had no connection to the land, neither near nor distant - the Zionists, in order to realize a colonialist aim, in the service of the objectives of the colonialist West in the Arab region."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 2, 2010]

Adel Abd Al-Rahman, columnist in the official PA daily:

"The history and heritage of Jericho confirm the Arab-Palestinian-Canaanite narrative concerning the entire Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, negating anything else, especially the false Zionist narrative."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 21, 2010]

PA TV documentary program on the UN Partition Plan features Jordanian academic Muhammad Dohal:

"The Jews are hated in every society in which they have lived, because of their behavior relating to their great love of money. ... This was the source of their harm to the societies around them, including Palestinian society, Arab-Palestinian society. We all know that the Jews lived in Palestine and the Palestinian people adopted them, so to say, and they lived in dignity. But they contrived schemes by means of their secret organizations, which gave rise to the idea of the need to purchase tracts of land and to seize control of them, and then to claim that they were the owners of a great area of the land, and that they were the original inhabitants of this land, and that the people which had adopted them was simply accidental in this land... Their behavior led to [Shakespeare's] famous story, the story of Shylock about money lending, which clings to the Jews. This is how they harmed the societies that embraced them."

[PA TV (Fatah), Oct. 10 and 17, 2010]

Adel Abd Al-Rahman, columnist in the official PA daily:

"The false story of the Zionists, according to which Palestine is 'the promised land,' is simply a lie without any basis. No person of the Jewish faith who was born in any country of the world has the right to return to Palestine, other than Jews who were born in Palestine."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 16, 2010]

Adli Sadeq, columnist for the official PA daily:

"The very least [we can do] is to declare explicitly that recognition of Israel's right to be a state in this region represents an environmental and security hazard; it creates the basis for acute internal and regional tensions, and distorts history, just as it poisons the future."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 18, 2010]

PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash: 

"History proves the Arab, Islamic and Palestinian right to this land and disproves all the Israeli claims that they have religious and historical rights in this land."

 [PA TV interview (Fatah), March 2, 2010]

The Jewish Conspiracy: A Strategic Weapon to Demonize Jews and Delegitimize Israel by Judge Hadassa Ben Itto

• We democratic countries see the masses gathered in the public square and are very sympathetic to the outcry against dictatorships and to the fight for freedom. But I am concerned with the masses in the streets and with the outcome of a brainwashing process that has been going on for such a long time. Lies have been spread around the world as a strategic weapon.
• In Cairo's Tahrir Square there were placards of Mubarak with a Star of David on his face. Lara Logan, an American journalist, was sexually molested in the middle of the square and was called a Jew, although she is not Jewish. She does not have to be Jewish. The word "Jew" has become an accepted insult in the public square.
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - a proven lie and forgery - is being published around the world, with new editions in Arabic almost every year, and in Persian and Turkish. The Protocols was fabricated in France in the last decade of the nineteenth century, most of the text actually plagiarized from a French book published in 1865 by an opponent of Napoleon the Third.
• In a pearl of literature written by a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, as an allegory, Machiavelli explains to Montesquieu what tools can be effectively used to take over, to dominate his country and the world. This is a detailed plan that describes in 25 dialogues, step by step, how to take over the police force, how to take over the legal system, how to plant bombs - meant to awaken the French people to what was happening in their country. Some 60 to 65 percent of The Protocols are verbatim passages from this book. Chapters were added later to make it the Jewish plan to dominate the world.
• The Protocols is not just a libel; it is a political document describing a Jewish criminal conspiracy. The Protocols was first used by the Russian czars and then by the communists. Later, it became a central theme in Nazi propaganda, and then it was handed to the Muslim world.
• There is no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world but there is an anti-Jewish conspiracy. It starts with the Jews but it does not end with the Jews. The first airplane that was hijacked was an Israeli airplane, and now we line up in every airport for security checks, so the world should be concerned. The danger of contaminating the public discourse with lies is a danger to the whole world.

"Jew" Is an Insult in the Egyptian Public Square

We democratic countries see the masses gathered in the public square and are very sympathetic to the outcry against dictatorships and to the fight for freedom. But I am concerned with the masses in the streets and with the outcome of a brainwashing process that has been going on for such a long time. Lies have been spread around the world as a strategic weapon. Public opinion and public discourse have been polluted, and now the masses are standing up and trying to tell the leaders what to do.

If you paid careful attention to what happened in Cairo's Tahrir Square, you saw the placards of Mubarak with a Star of David on his face. Lara Logan, an American journalist, was sexually molested in the middle of the square and was called a Jew, although she is not Jewish. She does not have to be Jewish. The word "Jew" has become an accepted insult in the public square. A well-known preacher stood up and talked not about freedom but about the Jews, about what is going to happen to us when the masses take over. So we are rightfully worried.


The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Leaves a Long and Lasting Imprint

The democratic societies in the world have sinned for years by ignoring this phenomenon. After being a judge for many years, I retired to researchThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion. After six years of research I wrote a book that has now appeared in ten languages, the most recent one in Arabic.

One of the anecdotes in my book is about a retired agent named Henri Rollin of the French Secret Service, who wrote books about European politics during the 1920s and the 1930s. He was well educated about Russia and, having been a secret agent, he had a lot of information that was not available to others. He had realized the importance of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - ­maintaining that everything that was happening in Europe, most importantly the infiltration of the Nazis into European politics, is influenced by The Protocols. He wrote an 800-page book entitled L'apocalypse de Notre Temps, all about how The Protocols had left its imprint on European politics.

The book was published in France on September 3, 1939, and you would think at the beginning of World War II the book would have been completely ignored. However, the Nazis did not ignore the book. When they conquered France they banned it, and so it vanished. Only in 1991 was Rollin's book republished by a small publisher in France. I see myself as following in Rollin's footsteps by following the history of The Protocols through the last decade and into the twenty-first century, and its impact on world politics.

Why is The Protocols - a proven lie and forgery - important today? Because it is being published around the world, with new editions in Arabic almost every year, and in Persian and Turkish. These publications are financed by government money and distributed not only in Arabic-speaking countries, but also to Muslim minorities around the world.

New editions are necessary because the introductions are updated every year. The introductions say if you do not believe that the Jews are really planning to take over the world, look at what is happening in your country and region. Everything that is happening is rooted in The Protocols, an implementation of the "Jewish Conspiracy." If there is a financial crisis, an Aids or a flu epidemic, a terrorist attack, an upheaval or a catastrophe, one can always point to a chapter or page in The Protocols because it is such a devious document that everything is there. There is a whole detailed plan of how to take over the world.

The Protocols is not only a forgery, it is plagiarism. It was actually written in France in the last decade of the nineteenth century. During the preparation for the Russian Revolution, Russian Bolshevik cells could not operate openly in Russia, so they were active elsewhere in Europe including France. A special envoy of the Russian Secret Police was sent to France to uncover the Bolshevik cells. The Russian Secret Service and the Black Hundreds, an ultra-nationalist movement in Russia whose slogan was "Beat the Jews and Save Russia," were trying to convince the Czar that the Jews were behind the Bolshevik Revolution. The Czar was already convinced, but they needed proof.

More than 100 years ago, a French woman by the name of Juliette Adam had a salon. In those days women still did not have the right to vote or be elected, but important and educated women who wanted to make a difference established salons. Adam was a very educated woman - an historian, newspaper owner and author - and she had a political salon where many anti-Semites gathered. There is much evidence that the preparations for the Dreyfus trial, which occurred more or less at the same time (in which a French Jewish army officer was wrongly convicted of treason and later exonerated), took place in her salon.

Juliette Adam's husband was the Chief of Police in Paris, who collaborated with the Russian envoy sent by the Secret Police, Piotr Rachkowsky, because the French did not like Bolshevik terrorists preparing bombs in small Paris hotels. Rachowsky, who was looking for ways to implicate Jews, was invited to Adam's salon, where someone told him of a book, which was banned in France but which the salon possessed, that could be turned into something against the Jews.

During the 1860s a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, wanted to arouse the French people against the terrible dictatorial regime of Napoleon the Third. In his biography he tells how he decided to write a book to describe to the French people the danger they were in. He decided to write an allegory, which was a dialogue between two people in the after-world: Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Machiavelli would represent the ideas and practices of Napoleon the Third and his terrible regime, while Montesquieu would represent the liberal ideas of the writer. He published it in Brussels because the French would not publish it, and he was arrested, tried, and went to prison. His book was banned.

This book is a pearl of literature. Machiavelli explains to Montesquieu why the people are dumb and why a dictator is necessary and what tools he can use to take over, to dominate his country and the world. There are chapters in this book dedicated to each subject - how to take over the police force, how to take over the legal system, how to do away with all the lawyers, how to raise havoc in the labor field, and how to plant bombs in strategic locations. It is a manual on how to dominate the world. The voice of Montesquieu becomes weaker while the voice of Machiavelli becomes stronger, and at the end Montesquieu says, "Oh God, what have you allowed?" He was telling the French people that this was what was happening in France.

Some 60 to 65 percent of The Protocols are verbatim passages from this book. Chapters were added to make it the Jewish plan to dominate the world. The Protocols was first published in Russia in 1905 by a religious fanatic in a monastery. From there it went around the world. After the revolution, officers of the White Army, who fled Russia, carried The Protocols with them to convince the world that what happened to the Romanov Dynasty in Russia would happen to them. The Jewish plan was to topple all the monarchs and governments in Europe. Between 1919 and 1921, The Protocols was published in every language in the world. Six editions were published in Germany in one year, blaming the Jews for World War I. The Protocols was never translated into Hebrew because we ignored it, thinking it was a bad joke.


The Bern Trial of 1934

There was a major trial in Bern, Switzerland, in 1934 after a new Nazi organization started using The Protocols, distributing copies at a public rally.The local Jews, who realized what was happening across the border in Germany, decided to take the Swiss Nazis to trial.

In the introduction to my English book, Lord Chief Justice of England Harry Wolfe wrote that the Bern trial is probably the most important trial ever because in this trial, live witnesses testified in court and described the origins of The Protocols and the use made of this document. They included the head of the opposition to the Czar, historians, politicians and former agents who escaped the revolution and decided to bear witness to this forgery. 

The Protocols is not just a libel, it is a political document describing a Jewish criminal conspiracy to dominate the world, and almost the first leader outside Russia who picked it up was Adolph Hitler. As a strategic step, the Nazis decided to use The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a central part of their ideology, as we know from correspondence between Hitler and Goebbels. A German historian describes in his book how Hitler used The Protocols on the way to the Final Solution, but he had already mentioned it in Mein Kampf. The Nazis were masters of the "Big Lie" and their tactics have been adopted by the Muslim world. The theory is that the bigger the lie, the better success of brainwashing the public.

The Germans established what they called Weltdienst, a center located in Erfurt that spread Nazi ideology and propaganda around the world. The head of Weltdienst was Ulrich Fleischhauer, and Nazi branches or organizations with different names started springing up in every country, fed on Nazi ideology and tactics. At the 1934 Bern trial, the Swiss judge ordered both sides to appoint experts. The Swiss Nazi defendants could not find an expert to testify that The Protocols were an authentic document, so Ulrich Fleischhauer, the head of Weltdienst, came to Switzerland to be the expert. When the judge asked him if he was an expert on The Protocols, he said that he was not, but that he was an expert on the Jews.


The Protocols in the U.S.

The Protocols was also published in the United States, where its biggest promoter was Henry Ford, who published 97 excerpts in his newspaper, theDearborn Independent. These terrible anti-Semitic articles were then collected in a book called The International Jew. Ford was sued in court by American Jews, and the trial went on for six years (1921-1927). In the end, Ford settled with the Jewish community. By the way, every trial againstThe Protocols before the Bern trial ended with a settlement, because the defendants could never prove the authenticity of The Protocols, but when the Nazis came into power they prohibited any settlement in a trial concerning the Protocols, deciding to use courtrooms as a forum to spread Nazi ideology.

In 1964, the United States Senate appointed a committee to study The Protocols. In a unanimous report nine senior senators called the Protocolsthe hoax of the century and a document endangering America.

Following in the footsteps of The Protocols one realizes that this fabricated document, first used by the Russian czars, was then used by the communists, later served as a central theme in Nazi propaganda, and then it was handed over to the Muslim world.


The Protocols in the Muslim World

The Protocols is a central issue in Arab and Muslim propaganda, even in what we call moderate countries, including countries that made peace with Israel. The Protocols is everywhere, in every Arabic book fair, more in Egypt, less in Jordan. It is in public discourse, in newspapers, and even in TV soap operas. It describes world history from beginning to end, including the French Revolution, as part of the Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. Until the end of World War II, the problem was the Jews, but after the establishment of the State of Israel, the target has become Israel.

The Protocols are best sellers in all Muslim countries because this is what they have been told over and over again in their media and schoolbooks. When my book was translated into Arabic, the translator and publisher, both graduates of the Hebrew University, one a Christian Arab and the other a Muslim Arab, told me that until they read my book, they did not know that The Protocols is a forgery.

There is no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world but there is an anti-Jewish conspiracy.  Using this book against the Jews for 100 years is part of a conspiracy and everybody who takes part in it is a conspirator against us. It starts with the Jews but it does not end with the Jews. The first airplane that was hijacked was an Israeli airplane, and now we line up in every airport for security checks, so the world should be concerned. The danger of contaminating the public discourse with lies is a danger to the whole world.

*    *     *

Judge Hadassa Ben Itto, author of The Lie That Wouldn't Die, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2005), served for 31 years as a judge in all levels of the Israeli courts, including as an acting justice of the Supreme Court. She has also served as an official representative of the State of Israel in various international forums, including UNESCO and the United Nations General Assembly. She is currently the Honorary President of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. This Jerusalem Issue Brief is based on her presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on February 24, 2011.

Comment: Goldstone the belated penitent; By alleging, unfoundedly, that we were an immoral enemy, the sanctimonious judge put all of our lives at greater risk. By DAVID HOROVITZ

Yom Kippur has evidently come early this year for Richard Goldstone.

He couldn’t quite bring himself, in his Friday article “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and War Crimes,” to write, “I have sinned, forgive me.”

RELATED:
Goldstone: Israel didn't target civilians
Netanyahu: Throw Goldstone Report into dustbin of history

But the astounding piece in The Washington Post by the Jewish justice, who presided over the Goldstone Report that accused Israel of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, represents nothing less than an apology to Israel.

“If I had known then what I know now,” he writes in the first extraordinary paragraph of his mea culpa, “the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

How dramatic the about-face. And how terrible that it was necessitated.

How tragic, that is, that Goldstone so misplaced his moral compass in the first place as to have produced a report that has caused such irreversible damage to Israel’s good name. Tragic least of all forthe utterly discredited Goldstone himself, and most of all for our unfairly besmirched armed forces and the country they were putting their lives on the line to honorably defend against a ruthless, murderous, terrorist government in Gaza.

The “if I had know then what I know now” defense Goldstone invokes to try to justify his perfidy is typically flimsy, of course.

Sanctimonious even now, Goldstone complains about Israel’s “lack of cooperation with our investigation.” But as he knows full well, Israel could not possibly have formally cooperated with his inquiry, which had been constructed by the obsessively anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council with the precise intention of blackening Israel’s name, legitimizing its enemies and curtailing its capacity to defend itself in future conflicts – such as the one Israel may have to fight quite soon if the current upsurge in Hamas rocket fire continues.

To have formally subjected itself to examination by his committee and the institutionally biased UN Human Rights Council that had formed it – a bias which Goldstone now acknowledges in his article – would merely have given his work greater purported credibility.

Notwithstanding that absent formal cooperation, however, the truth about what happened in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 – the truth that Goldstone now disingenuously claims to have discovered only after he filed his malicious indictment of the IDF and of Israel – was readily available to him at the time.

Israel did informally make the necessary information available to his committee in the shape of detailed reports on what had unfolded. And open sources, honestly evaluated, left no doubt that Hamas was the provocateur, that Hamas was deliberately placing Palestinians in harm’s way, that Hamas was lying about the proportion of combatants among the Gaza dead. Open sources also left no doubt that the IDF – far from deliberately targeting civilians; the bitter accusation at the heart of Goldstone’s report – was doing more than most any military force has ever done to minimize civilian deaths, even as it sought to destroy the terrorist infrastructure and pick out the terrorists who had been firing relentlessly into Israel’s residential areas.

Only now, 18 months after he submitted his incendiary accusations against Israel, has Goldstone brought himself to acknowledge what a fair-minded investigation would have established from the start – that the IDF emphatically did not seek to kill civilians in Gaza. As he puts it in the simple phrase that should reverberate inside every foreign parliament and every human rights organization that rushed to demonize Israel: “Civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”

Risibly, Goldstone asserts that his report’s “allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion.”

In truth, the only reasonable conclusion that an honest investigation could possibly have drawn – given the evidence available, given the Hamas track record and given the IDF’s moral tradition – was that Israel had not intentionally killed Palestinian civilians. But, again, his was no honest investigation.

Unfortunately, Goldstone’s “reconsideration” will not garner a thousandth of the publicity or have a thousandth of the impact that his original, baseless accusations against Israel drew. Governments – including, to what should be their abiding shame, self-styled friends of Israel in Europe and beyond who failed to vote against this report – will not rush to deliver the apology they owe our government and our soldiers.

They will not rush to recalibrate their policies.

They will not now rush to issue statements expressing their confidence in Israel’s capacity to properly investigate allegations of misdoings by its military, even though the man who had previously given cover for their criticisms has now reversed himself and penned an article endorsing Israel’s processes for self-investigation.

The statesmen and the NGOs that savaged us, using the Goldstone Report as their “proof,” will not now, prompted by Goldstone’s reversal, ratchet up their criticisms of Hamas. They will not now express their outrage at the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to exploit the Goldstone Report to harm Israel – a key milestone on the PA’s road toward international recognition for a unilateral declaration of statehood.

They will not now demand that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas abandon his current effort to negotiate “unity” with Hamas, a terrorist group avowedly working for the destruction of Israel and, as Goldstone now writes, “purposefully and indiscriminately” targeting Israel’s civilians.

They should, but they will not. They have moved on now.

Israel’s guilt has long-since been “established.” And no matter that the man who certified it has belatedly internalized the gravity of the big lie he helped facilitate.

Nor either, pitifully, will the media organizations that so hyped the baseless allegations of Israeli war crimes now allocate similar broadcast-topping coverage and front page space to Goldstone’s belated exoneration of Israel. It will be a surprise, indeed, if we see the world’s most resonant newspapers following Goldstone’s lead and penning texts acknowledging that their reports and their analyses and their expert opinion pieces were wide of the mark.

And we had best not hold our breath, either, for Israel’s own internal critics – including certain widely cited newspapers and so-called watchdog groups that amplified the allegations of deliberate killings of civilians, and that so often seem to want to believe the very worst about Israel in the face of all reasonable evidence to the contrary – to emulate the judge’s shift.

The hollow Goldstone now writes that “I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the UN Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.”


Given that “history of bias” at the council, one can only wonder, yet again, why Goldstone consented to do its dirty work for it, to such devastating effect.

His duplicitous investigation has had a toxic effect everywhere on the second battlefield – in diplomatic and legal forums, in the media, on university campuses, in global public discourse. He poisoned Israel’s name.

And on the real battlefield, he gave succor to our enemies, encouraging them to believe that they could kill us not with mere impunity, but with active international empathy and support.

He alleged that we were an immoral enemy, and thus he put all of our lives at greater risk.

An apology just isn’t good enough. The very least he owes Israel is to work unstintingly from now on to try to undo the damage he has caused.

Yom Kippur came early this year for Richard Goldstone. His show of penitence has come far too late.

Richard Goldstone recants. What price the Israel witch-hunt now? by Melanie Phillips

In an extraordinary article in the Washington Post, Richard Goldstone has now admitted that his infamous report was wrong. Having fuelled the blood libel that in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza Israel had targeted civilians and possibly had committed crimes against humanity, he now says that, as a result of the final report of the UN committee of independent experts and other evidence that has emerged since his report was published, he accepts that

civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy

and further states that

if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

What self-serving rubbish. There was ample evidence at the time from numerous sources that Hamas was telling lies about the number of civilians who were killed by Israeli fire. There was ample evidence that Hamas was deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way. There was ample evidence that Hamas does not operate under the rule of law or uphold human rights. There was ample evidence that Israeli rules of engagement required the IDF to avoid hitting civilians wherever possible. There was ample evidence that Israel always investigates allegations of misconduct made against its soldiers and holds them to acount under the rule of law. Yet Goldstone, having accepted the poisoned chalice from the UN Human Rights Council to subject Israel to a show trial whose verdict preceded the evidence (despite his protestations that he modified this odious remit), chose to believe the propaganda put out by Hamas and its proxies among NGOs with a long track record of malevolent hostility to Israel.

Even now, in this purported mea culpa, Goldstone does not take responsibility for the Big Lie he helped perpetrate with such terrible consequences in putting rocket-fuel behind Israel’s delegitimisation as a pariah in the eyes of the world. Instead, he blames his false conclusions upon Israel’s refusal to co-operate with his inquiry.

So for the second time, he is again blaming Israel for its own victimisation – first at the hands of Hamas, and now at his own hands.

Ludicrously, he now says that his report’s

allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion.

The protestation that he had no alternative but to believe Hamas is quite astounding. Hamas is a terrorist organisation with a solid track record of lies, distortions and ‘Pallywood’-style fabrications as a strategy of aggressive warfare.  Israel, the victim of that aggression, has a solid record of telling the truth. Yet Goldstone chose to believe the Hamas version of events. Nor was this all. As he says in the Washington Post:

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel....

In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise. So, too, the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

I continue to believe in the cause of establishing and applying international law to protracted and deadly conflicts....Regrettably, there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Can you believe this? He appears to have expected genocidal aggressor Hamas to behave in a civilised fashion by investigating its alleged abuses -- while he chose to throw the book at its democratic victim, Israel. And now the most he will acknowledge is that expecting Hamas to do so

may have been a mistaken enterprise.

By his own admission, the man stands revealed as at best an abject idiot and at worst a moral and judicial bankrupt. His report blackened Israel’s name for defending itself against existential attack; encouraged its attackers to ratchet up their onslaught safe in the knowledge that the international community now had official confirmation that Israel was morally beyond the pale; put Israeli civilians, along with Israel’s very survival, at increased risk by helping delegitimise Israel as a global pariah; and fuelled the pressure on Israel not to defend its civilians by military means against the attacks which have relentlessly increased in audacity and scope.  

Regardless of its manifest moral and intellectual inadequacies, however, his recantation carries inescapable consequences. All those who have used Goldstone’s report as a basis for their own delegitimisation of Israel now also stand revealed as having endorsed one of the worst officially sanctioned international falsehoods in history. All their attacks on Israel which relied upon Goldstone’s report are now shown to be equally baseless and discredited. Any future such attacks which use this report as an authority will be demonstrably false and malicious. The UN should now declare the Goldstone report null and void. Any less will make it knowingly and demonstrably party to a travesty of justice.

But of course, like all previous blood libels against the Jews, the poison this one has injected into the global bloodstream has no antidote. The damage is done – and no amount of self-serving recantations by Richard Goldstone will undo the terrible harm he has done.