The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict

by Adam Horowitz (Editor), Lizzy Ratner (Editor), Philip Weiss (Editor), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Foreword by), Naomi Klein (Introduction)

Overview

The Goldstone Report is one of the most controversial UN reports ever published. It alleges that both Israel and Hamas committed atrocities when Israel invaded Gaza in January 2009 as a part of Operation Cast Lead. Justice Richard Goldstone, a celebrated South African and Jewish human rights lawyer, oversaw the UN fact-finding mission after the invasion. What Goldstone found, and later published, caused a maelstrom within Israel and the international community at large. Goldstone was demonized by many who claimed bias, intimating the report unfairly vilified Israel. Though the findings are of enormous historical, political and moral significance, few have actually read the document in its entirety—thus the furious political debate that mushroomed in the wake of its publication has supplanted any true understanding of the report’s discoveries. The Goldstone Report: The Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict of 2008-2009 will change this. Edited by three progressive American Jews, Adam Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner and Philip Weiss, The Goldstone Report is an edited and annotated edition of the report that contains analysis, original essays and a context for the debate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568586649
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	01/11/2011
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Adam Horowitz lives in New York City, where he is co-editor of Mondoweiss. Horowitz is the former Director of the Israel/Palestine Program for the American Friends Service Committee. He holds a master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from New York University.

A journalist also based in New York, Lizzy Ratner has written for The New York Times and The Nation. She was previously a reporter for The New York Observer.

Philip Weiss is an investigative journalist who has written for The New York Observer, The Nation, The American Conservative, National Review, Washington Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Harper's and Jewish World Review. He also wrote the 2004 book American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps. He is the founder of a popular news website, Mondoweiss, devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.

Table of Contents

Foreword: A Call to the Community of Conscience Desmond Tutu vii

Introduction: The End of Israeli Exceptionalism Naomi Klein xi

Editors' Note Adam Horowitz Lizzy Ratner Philip Weiss xix

Maps xxiii

Timeline xxv

Part I Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (Abridged) 1

Part II The Legacy of the Goldstone Report 327

1 The Right to Live in Dignity Raji Sourani 329

2 International Law and the Goldstone Report Jules Lobel 337

3 The Goldstone Illusion Moshe Halbertal 346

4 The Attacks on the Goldstone Report Jerome Slater 360

5 The U.S. Congress and the Goldstone Report Brian Baird 369

6 Palestinian Dispossession and the U.S. Public Sphere Rashid Khalidi 375

7 Discrediting Goldstone, Delegitimizing Israel Henry Siegman 387

8 Gaza, Goldstone, and the Movement for Israeli Accountability Ali Abunimah 391

9 Israel's Siege Mentality Noam Sheizaf 401

10 The Unholy Assault on Richard Goldstone Letty Cottin Pogrebin 409

11 Messages from Gaza Laila El-Haddad 417

Contributor Bios 423

Index 427

Editorial Reviews

American journalists Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner, and Philip Weiss provide a comprehensive picture of the 2009 Gaza conflict in this abridged version of the UN Fact-Finding Mission's report on the Gaza Conflict commonly known as "the Goldstone Report." Much more than a simple paring down of the controversial original document, which recounts human rights abuses committed by both Israel and Hamas, this edition is enhanced by oral testimonies and essays from experts following the report's publication. The evocative oral testimonies describing limbs strewn about a bombed mosque and young girls shot in front of their father inject a harrowing human element to counterbalance the report's dispassionate tone. The additional essays, including Tutu's eloquent foreword, offer an array of thought-provoking perspectives on the validity of the report, the vehement debates it has generated, and its effects on judge Goldstone himself, who became the victim of "Jewish excommunication" for what some perceived as a betrayal of Israel. An essential read for those concerned with accurate documentation of historical events and nations' accountability for their treatment of civilians living in war zones. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

An edited and annotated version of the controversial United Nations investigation into the recent Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip and reactions by mostly pro-Palestinian observers.

The result of a fact-finding mission commissioned by the UN and led by South African Justice Richard Goldstone to investigate potential war crimes committed by Israel during its Gaza attack in January 2009, the report has been heavily edited by American journalists Horowitz, Ratner and Weiss, introduced by Desmond Tutu and Naomi Klein, and is followed by 11 essays "that capture its ongoing impact." The Israeli government refused to cooperate—despite the report's finding that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were complicit in crimes—and there is essentially one essay in Israel's defense, by Moshe Halbertal, who condemns the report as "biased and unfair" while urging Israel to respond to the allegations. The report is hard-hitting and grim, exposing for the world the horrendous conditions wrought by the years of Israeli occupation. Following three years of blockade of an already weakened Gaza and responding to suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism inflicted on southern Israel, the Israeli Defense Force swiftly moved into Gaza in late 2008 and deliberately destroyed houses, industry and agricultural land. At least 1,400 Palestinians were killed, approximately 900 of which were civilians, 300 children and 100 women. The report asserts that Israel's military operations were "designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity...[and] force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability." The report also addresses the deliberate attacks against the civilian population, the use of Palestinians as "human shields," internal violence by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and the suppression of dissent in Israel. Subsequently, the commentators—including Rashid Khalidi, Raji Sourani, Jerome Slater and Henry Siegman—discuss the report's acknowledgement of the "prolonged state of impunity" by Israel and the implications for international law, while Brian Baird recounts the systematic condemnation of the report by the U.S. Congress.

An eye-opening document and an urgent call for accountability.

Kirkus Reviews