Enough of Blaming the Goldstone Report!

A brief news item in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) a few days ago made depressing reading. It was entitled: “State Department blames Goldstone for stalled peace talks.” “Wow!” I thought to myself, has it really come down to this? The United States and Israel, who do not hesitate to toot their horn about their democratic credentials, now blame the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process on Judge Richard Goldstone, the main author of a report on potential war crimes during the Gaza war that was issued last September by the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry commission?

It is hard to think of a more distorted and backward brand of political morality than this American-Israeli view of the Goldstone report, which most of the world sees as a historic breakthrough in the elusive quest to apply international norms of accountability to avoid the savagery that has come to define Arab-Israeli warfare.