Just a few days after the UN Human Rights Council backed a report into the Israeli offensive in Gaza that accuses both Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes, peace activist and proprietor of Tikun Olam, Richard Silverstein, attended a conference in which Judge Richard Goldstone defended his report before a group of liberal Rabbis.

Silverstein issued this interesting report about the tensions between Judaism and Israeli colonialism and all that it has entailed including the siege of Gaza.

October 19th, 2009

Rabbis Brant Rosen and Brian Walt have created a wonderful project, Taanit Tzedek (Fast for Gaza), devoted to awakening opposition within the Jewish religious community to the siege of Gaza and the suffering it is causing to Gaza’s 1.5 million civilians.  Today, Judge Richard Goldstone spoke eloquently to 150 rabbis mostly affiliated with the group (and me, I invited myself and the good rabbis allowed me to join in) about the effect Gaza has had on his own relationship with Israel and other important questions.

Many of the questions asked of him were regurgitations of arguments raised by the Israel lobby and Israeli government against the Report.  Goldstone refuted them with firmness, but respectfully.  For example, to the argument that the judge allowed himself and his Jewishness to be used by enemies of Israel to smear the Jewish state-he replied that just the opposite was the case.  First, he wasn’t the first person asked to chair the investigation.  Second, his Jewishness in fact was an impediment to assuming his position since the Council and Hamas itself felt his religious affiliation meant he could not be objective.

Responding to the claim that his Report will destroy the peace process (a claim advanced by Bibi Netanyahu**), the human rights lawyer responds: a. there IS no peace process currently; and b. there can be no true peace without justice.  If you examine similar situations in which there were egregious violations of human rights followed by blanket amnesties absolving violators of liability, almost none of these amnesties held over the long term (Argentina, Chile, etc.).  So Goldstone is precisely right.  For there to be true peace the victims on both sides need to feel that justice has been done in some form.

Anyone listening to the judge talk about the very real suffering of the residents of southern Israel would understand that this man is just the opposite of one-sided or Israel-hating.  He spoke very powerfully of the suffering of the people of Sderot, Ashkelon and elsewhere in southern Israel.  He even paid for such victims to travel to Geneva to testify for his commission.  He knows that these victims cannot come to terms with the Palestinians and the crimes committed against them until justice is done.

One of the Taanit Tzedek rabbis noted an important tension that motivates Jews involved with human rights: on the one hand we have a sense of tribal loyalty represented by the phrase kol yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh (“All Israel is connected one to the other”).  But on the other hand there is an indisputable prophetic call for universal human rights, not just rights for Jews.  As an eminent jurist, Goldstone, if forced to choose, indicated that he would always choose universal rights and the call for justice for all, not just Jews.  In this day and age, I think we must follow the good judge’s example.  Any ideological movement that calls for us to betray our commitment to international law and human rights in favor of a tribal loyalty to our own (and often the worst among our own as represented by the settlers and IDF perpetrators of mayhem) is asking too much.  Goldstone believes in effect, that to be a good Jew he must be true to this Jewish prophetic calling.

Yesterday it was also reported that the Russians just endorsed the Goldstone report as well.