Answering Judge Goldstone’s defense and denial of Israeli apartheid

What does it mean that Judge Richard Goldstone – he of the Goldstone report – has penned a desperate and propagandistic defense of Israel against what he calls the “apartheid slander” in The New York Times?

It’s a classic case of the judge doth protest too much:

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is going to be one-sided and the members of the “jury” are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.

It is remarkable that Goldstone felt a need to launch a frontal attack on the Russell Tribunal in The New York Times. A more confident Israel (and its ardent supporters) would simply ignore it. It is a sign of weakness and panic – and therefore a good sign – that Israel is becoming hypersensitive to any and all criticism, just like apartheid South Africa in the decade before it was replaced by a democracy of all its citizens (Read Frank Barat’s op-ed on The Russell Tribunal here on The Electronic Intifada).

Goldstone attempts to argue – disingenuously – that there is no comparison to be made between Israel and apartheid South Africa:

In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

That is precisely what exists. Israel itself declares that it is a “Jewish state” and demands that Palestinians and the world recognize it as such. Stemming from this self-definition, which is based on a genetic, not voluntary, definition of who is a Jew, Israel claims the right to carry out all sorts of inhumane acts especially excluding indigenous Palestinians exiled from their land from returning solely because they are not Jews. Israel explicitly wants to maintain a Jewish majority in order to dominate and exclude Palestinians from having any effective political voice.

The monstrosity of Israel’s siege and war on Gaza exists precisely and only for this purpose. Did Goldstone ask himself how things would be different if the 1.6 million people – 80 percent of them refugees – corralled into Gaza were Jews? Of course Israel would welcome them back to their lands and villages with open arms, restore their property, and give them full political rights and a whole range of financial incentives.