Global Issues
Goldstone Escapes Solomonic Trial
He is among the most respected international jurists. But in Israel today, and in much of the Jewish world, he is among the most reviled.
Justice Richard Goldstone, the former South African supreme court judge, continues to stand squarely behind the UN-appointed report produced by the inquiry commission he headed to probe Israel's conduct during its fierce assault last year on Hamas in Gaza.
Many Israelis, and Jews around the world, find it distasteful that a fellow Jew should be seeking to have Israel put in the international dock: the Goldstone Report alleges that Israeli troops and its leadership are suspected of having perpetrated war crimes, and possibly, crimes against humanity.
In recent weeks, this criticism spawned an unseemly situation in Goldstone's native South Africa. It had all the trappings of a would-be Solomonic trial.
In the legendary Bible story, King Solomon is asked to adjudicate on the fate of an infant whom two women both claim to be the mother. Solomon proposes to have the infant cut in half. When one claimant says she would rather surrender her right of motherhood and have the child remain whole, the wise King finds in her favour, saying no true mother would agree to risk her child's welfare.
In a moral equivalent of the judging of Judge Goldstone, Jewish groups around the world have posed the dilemma as a choice between, on one hand, loyalty to fundamental human rights, and loyalty to Israel on the other.
The challenge to Goldstone was also sparked by a child. His own grandson is to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah, the coming of age of a 13-year-old boy, a major milestone in Jewish life, the transition from childhood to becoming a full member of the Jewish community.
At first, religious Jews and Zionists in Johannesburg wanted to ban Judge Goldstone from attending the upcoming Bar Mitzvah.
'Forward', the liberal but mainstream voice of U.S. Jewry, which had also been sharply critical of Goldstone, wrote in an editorial that 'the demonisation and isolation of Richard Goldstone is wrong, offensive and, frankly, in violation of the very Jewish values that the community pretends to uphold. That the man cannot even attend his grandson's Bar Mitzvah speaks volumes about the intolerance and ignorance of those who bully in the name of Israel.'
Now, only after a major, and very public, row, will he be allowed to attend the synagogue -- following the unexpected rescinding of the attempted ban.
Goldstone has revealed that the initiative for ending the acrimonious argument came from the left-wing U.S. Jewish magazine Tikkun. It interceded with the hard-line elements in the South African Jewish community.
The exchange with Tikkun, and the backing off by those seeking to impose the stricture on Goldstone, came in the wake of the magazine's decision to award him its annual prize for ethical behaviour. In the wording of the Tikkun editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner, 'the peace community, both in Israel and around the world, see Justice Goldstone as upholding the best ethical values of the Jewish community.'
'I need hardly say how happy our family is that I will be able to attend the synagogue services,' Goldstone wrote.
He quoted a statement from the South African Jewish Board of Deputies that there would be no further protests against him associated with the family landmark. So, at the last gasp, the attempt to impose 'a Solomonic' trial on Goldstone has been shelved.
Still, the issue of dual loyalty - to universal human and moral values, or to blind and uncritical support for Israel - continues to resonate, particularly within the influential U.S. Jewish community.
For most of the past four decades, so totally aligned have the United States and Israeli governments been, that U.S. Jews have not been forced to seriously consider a question of conflict of interest between them as U.S. citizens and their support for Israel.
Under the Administration of Barack Obama, this has begun to change -- to the discomfit of many Jews in the U.S. Friction has emerged especially since top U.S. officials have not been afraid to spell out their concerns that the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might undermine U.S. national interests, and risks creating problems for the well-being of the U.S. presence in the Middle East.
The concern has become palpable within a broad swathe of Jewish groups.
Leaders of The Jewish Federations of North America revealed last week that they would undertake a rare 'mass visit' to Washington in May 'to convey their concern about U.S.-Israel relations.'
And, a recent public letter by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel expressed very public fears that President Obama is trying to pressure Israel by foisting an unwanted peace policy on the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service