Professionalism

Judge Richard Goldstone has a confession to make, made in a Washington Post op-ed. The confession is, he's a nitwit.

Goldstone's name is associated with a so-called report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza two years ago. No one ever took this screed seriously, if for no other reason than that it was sponsored by the United Nations Council on Human Rights, worthy successor to Der Sturmer as the most vicious Jew-hating institution of the 21st century.

But at the time, there were other reasons to question Goldstone's common sense. His new confession is more revealing than the self-satisfied judge imagines, For example:

"The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion."

But, a couple of sentences later:

"I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes."

This is carefully worded, but what it means is that -- surprise, surprise- the Jew-haters took evidence of other Jew-haters, and no other evidence, and found evidence of Jewish perfidy.

The whole piece has to be read to be believed, but one other sentence deserves to be pulled out for attention:

"The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel."

So, he was asked to be a hanging judge, and he took the job.