Interview with Norman Finkelstein: The Goldstone recantation

On April 1, the Washington Post ran an op-ed piece by Richard Goldstone [1], the South African jurist who chaired the UN fact-finding mission on the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza. In it he suggested he'd gotten things wrong, writing, "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." The op-ed led to an immediate flurry of articles and commentary suggesting the entire report -- and by implication the very notion that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza -- was suspect. Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu declared: "It's time to throw this report into the dustbin of history." Knesset member Tzipi Livni, told the media, "Better late than never, but the rectification must be stronger than a newspaper article."

All this stands against the reality of what happened. When I interviewed Norman Finkelstein, the scholar and author last year for the History News Network [2] he gave an overview of events. Among other things he explained, "About 1,400 Palestinians were killed and about 13 Israelis were killed. Of the 1,400 Palestinian casualties, about four-fifths were civilians and 350 children. In the case of the Israelis 10 soldiers were killed, (four of them by friendly fire) and three civilians.... After the massacre ended [then] Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni went on Channel 10 News in Israel and said 'Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded.'" I talked to Dr. Finkelstein recently via phone to get his assessment of the Goldstone recantation.
- Aaron Leonard

Aaron Leonard: Goldstone did not retract the substance of his findings but he has kicked open the door for his report to be questioned, what is going on here?

Norman Finkelstein: There are three separate questions. What is Goldstone saying, how is Goldstone being interpreted, and why Goldstone did it? The third question, no one is able to answer it is purely speculative, although in my opinion it is impossible that he issued his recantation on the grounds he alleges in the op-ed. That is to say there isn't a scintilla, there isn't a scratch, there isn't a jot of new evidence that can warrant his recantation.

On the other two questions. First, what Goldstone actually said in the op-ed. I think it is written in a purposely murky fashion. It is impossible to actually make out what Goldstone is saying. If Goldstone wanted to be clear about what he said, he certainly has enough grasp over the English language that he could have written a clear statement and it wouldn't have required a kind of parsing of words that has been going on since the op-ed was published. The only reasonable assumption is that since he had the capacity to write a lucid explanation for his recantation, but instead chose to write a murky recantation, then the only possible explanation is that it was purposeful. All those people who are saying if you look closely what Goldstone said he didn't say this or he didn't say that, I think is a pointless approach. If he did want to say this or that he could have just said it! He certainly has enough control over the English language that he could have said, 'I stand by my nine-tenths of the report.' Or 'I stand by everything in the report, except x and y.' That is not what he did. He wrote something that was purposely murky.

The second issue is, Goldstone knew exactly how his words were going to be spun. It took no great insight to [anticipate] that his words would be spun as a recantation, that he was saying that Israel had not committed any war crimes, and that he was saying that he was fully confident that Israel was able to carry out military investigations on its own and therefore didn't need to be referred to the International Criminal Court. That is what we have to deal with. Not what Goldstone allegedly said, if you parse his words. What you have to deal with is what the spin is saying because number one, the murkiness is intentional. If people say, 'I think Goldstone said Israel did not commit war crimes.' They have every right to interpret his murky op-ed that way because he knew that was how it would be interpreted.

AL: Your book, This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion references more than just the Goldstone Report...

NF: I did not rely in any way shape, manner or form on the Goldstone Report. There are now thousands and thousands of pages, literally it must run into several tens of thousands [on the Gaza invasion]. By one credible estimate there are 300 human rights reports on what happened in Gaza. The truth does not rise or fall on what Goldstone had to say in the report.

NF: It's impossible in the space of a phone interview to do give a full picture of that. What is clear is that Israel committed massive war crimes in the course of its assault on Gaza. It used massive indiscriminate force against a civilian population. What Goldstone said in the original report still stands, in my opinion, without requirement of any amendment. Israel launched "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population." That's what happened.

NF: The recantation caused a disaster. He has obfuscated the truth about what happened in Gaza, he's poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, he's undermined the courageous work of Jewish dissidents inside Israel. He has delivered a smack in the face to the major human rights organizations. He has done a lot of damage. There is no question about it.

NF: I think it is very simple. Go through the record. There isn't one word, as I said in the beginning, there isn't jot, a scintilla, of new evidence to warrant the recantation. Quite the contrary, all the new evidence further confirms the original findings of the Goldstone Report.

NF: Israel destroyed everything in sight in Gaza. They destroyed about 6,300 hundred homes, destroyed factories, agricultural land, targeted hospitals and ambulances, used white phosphorous in civilian areas. All told, as of now, one Israeli was given an unknown disciplinary punishment for the destruction of property in Gaza. Another Israeli has served prison time for criminal conduct in Gaza, he served seven-and-a-half-months in jail for stealing a credit card. That's it.

Aaron Leonard is a writer and journalist, he lives in New York City. His writings can be found at www.aaronleonard.net [3].

Comments

Submitted by Bikingdoc on April 13, 2011 - 6:14pm.

More dishonest anti-Israel and antiSemitic crap from the widely discredited bigot Finkelstein. This guy was denied tenure by 2 different universities, and his last book was described by the NYTimes reviewer as "juvenile", "distorted" and "highly biased".

One wonders why Rabble would give this notorious racist liar a forum to spout his hatespeech?

Submitted by andre_g on April 14, 2011 - 3:03am.

Those are some pretty serious claims you're making, Bikingdoc. Could you please explain what it is that Finkelstein said that was "dishonest," "anti-Semitic," or that constitutes "hate speech?" I've read it a few times and I see nothing even slightly disparaging in his comments, let alone racist or anything contrary to well-known facts (should you choose to know them) about the Israeli invasion - or massacre, more accurately - of Gaza in 2008-09.

It's perfectly reasonable to expect that accusations are followed by substantiations and evidence; you've completely failed to provide even a whiff of either in your slanderous comments.

And is it the case that you've read Finkelstein's book and happen to agree with the New York Times' conclusions? Or, as I suspect, did you not read the book, but instead accept that paper's opinion at face value rather than attempt to seek out the facts and form your own opinion?

What do you think would be more valuable: blindly trusting others in matters where a well-documented bias exists (see http://bit.ly/8ORsSN, for a sample), or seeking the truth out for yourself?

Submitted by Bikingdoc on April 14, 2011 - 4:19am.

Finkelstein has devoted his whole career, such as it is, to an unending series of hatespeechs directed at the citizens of democratic little Israel,often with little concern for facts which don't agree with his relentelessly anti-Semitic racism.

A recent review of Finkelstein's written pieces reveals that out of 42 involving the MidEast, Israel was portrayed negatively 41 timrs (must have been hung over once.). Even if one could disagree occasionaly with the generally very peace-seeking and humanistic Israelis not even a screaming self-hating Jew like Finkelstein could expect any rational being to accept the idea tha Israel is essentially responsible for all the Mideast violence, when they've been attacked since declaring their Independence over 7,000 time by Islamic terrorist, brutal cowardly attacks against unarmed women and children like the ones last week for the deranged Islamfascist cowardly pig knifed to death 5 member of 1 peacefully sleeping Israeli family--including slitting the throat of a 2 yr old baby.

Finkelstein's response to the relentless Islamofascist terorism is to get in bed with the charmers of Hamas and Hezbollah and congratulate the terrorism of these murderers. I guess Isralie lives don't mattter for him.

But somehow this ongoing Islamic fundamentalist terror against Israel (and indeed the world) sseems to play no role in Finkelstein's incredibly twisted Weltanschauung. He has rubbed salt in the wounds of all the Israelis murdered by these terorist animals by lionizing such charming outfits as Hezbollah and Hamas, groups who have perpetrated innumerable barbaric acts of cowardly murders against not just innocent Israeli citizens, but indeed all over the world. These are Norman's people!

Israel's Gaza action, taken only literally years of shelling by the charmers led by Hamas in Gaza, was most judicious and careful One British general, there as a U.N. adviser, described the conduct of the Israeil forces in Gaza as "the most careful about injuring innocent civilians as any in the history of warfare". Of couse there were civilan deaths, as there inevitably are when an attacked country retaliates,the blame for which falling squarely on those who initiated the conflict by the incessant rocket attacks on Israael. Do you think there were any civilians killed when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? But then as now, although the loss of civilians is always unfortunate is an inevitable consequence of even defensive battles. The highly hypocritical treatment of Israel's retalitatory actin in Gaza by Finkelstein and others certainly qualifies him for the adjectives of "dishonest and biased", since his narrative conveniently avoids any mention of the events leading up to the Israeli action. I wonder how long the US. or any other country would tolerate repeated rocket shelling of their civilians across a shared border, and it's safe to say when the called for retaliaton against the aggressors took place, there would inevitably be as there always are in warr, civilian casualties.

It's also fascinating that for all of Finkelstein's nearly lifelong antiIsrael and antisemitic agenda, he seems blithely unconcerned about these facts, Finkelstein also doesn't seem intersted in the hundreds of thousands murdered in Africa, many by Islamic rulers there--but then they're not Israel, so why even look there?

And why isn't Finkelstein concerned with all the disgusting human rights abuses in Arab countries, where often no religions other than Islam are permitted, women are subjugated and stoned for behavior deemed improper, gays badly persecuted and student leaders of antgovernment rebellions are hanged.

The absurdity of Finkelstein's Israel obsession become painfullu obvious when considering these facts. Why this hate-crazed widely discredited lunatic bigot is ever given a forum by any major University is beyond conprehension. His brand of "hate journalism" has no place among people of good will and honesty anywhere, as his expulsions from several Universities attests.

Submitted by DrBro on April 14, 2011 - 2:31pm.

bikingdoc, you are just the kind of Jew who turns me into a self-hating one.

Has it ever, ever crossed your miserable mind that you might possibly be not only in error, but totally, completely wrong on just about everything you think?

There's certainly reams of info out there if you really wanted to check (e.g. Mondoweiss, just for one website); but you wouldn't want to have the slightest doubt, would you?

Submitted by terrafirma on April 18, 2011 - 5:02pm.

Definition of SEMITE
1 a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs
b : a descendant of these peoples
2 : a member of a modern people speaking a Semitic language"
Aren't most Israel residents from Eastern Europe? And not originally from those areas???

Submitted by jonnyx1 on September 23, 2011 - 4:25pm.

bikingdoc, you must then think that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B'tselem are racist organizations and Anti-Semitic and or self-hating Jews. Also, you must think that leading Israelis scholars (such as Benny Morris, Zeev Maoz or Shlomo Ben Ami) are also self-hating Jews, because Prof. Finkelstein overwhelmingly uses these sources for his arguments.

As Finkelstein once said in a lecture, lets say for argument sake he was a self-loving Jew, then would that make his arguments any less valid. The facts are the facts and I know they are hard for you to recognize as they are for any self-loving Jew (as I am), but prove him wrong instead of these ridiculous insults. He is be far the most knowledgeable scholar on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict alive today. To me he is one of the greatest minds alive. He makes me proud to be a Jew.