How Long Will Goldstone Keep Lying?
Wednesday of last week Yediot Achronot published a promotional piece for a bigger upcoming article which ran in the weekend magazine. The subject: Richard Goldstone’s past as an apartheid era South African judge who sentenced prisoners to death.
Ha’aretz was apparently perturbed by the upcoming negative publicity concerning His Honor and decided to preempt with an antidote of its own. Akiva Eldar conducted a phone interview with Goldstone which was published, no less, than on page 2 of the newspaper. The concerned Eldar permitted Goldstone to speak out against the articles attacking him, and in the process, allowed him to justify once again his report following Cast Lead.
According to the Hebrew version of the article, but for some inexplicable reason not the English version, Goldstone reportedly repeats his tired claim:
There were no facts which contradicted any important detail in the report. There were many marginal arguments, but no one — not the government of Israel and not any other party — discredited the main findings. (CAMERA’s translation.)
Marginal arguments? Not one source discredited him? Is he for real?
Again and again long lists of documentation concerning problems with the content of the report, the method of collecting testimonies, and also concerning the opinions of the commission members which were expressed prior to the report’s publication.
How much longer will we continue to hear the absurd claim that nobody has challenged the report’s findings? And what would need to happen for us to expect that a senior journalist like Akiva Eldar would do his homework and ask difficult questions of his interviewee? OK, why would Eldar challenge him if, at the end of the interview (again, only in the Hebrew version), Goldstone strokes the journalist in return, saying that he is sad about what appears to be an attack on Israeli democracy and calls “to close Ha’aretz“?
Ha’aretz did a service for Goldstone, and Goldstone did a service for Ha’aretz. Outstanding journalism.
To see this blog entry in Hebrew at Presspectiva, CAMERA’s new Hebrew-language site, click here.
— By YG
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