You just have to shake your head over the Israeli government’s newly launched world-wide public relations campaign to discredit Richard Goldstone, the South African judge whose UN-commissioned investigation concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel’s 2008 invasion of the Gaza Strip. The daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported somewhat breathlessly on May 6th that the Israeli foreign ministry regards information unearthed by its journalists as “explosive” in its potential to discredit Goldstone: under apartheid, according to the paper, Goldstone sentenced black South Africans to death.
I was dismayed and appalled to learn that Goldstone, whom President Nelson Mandela appointed to the International Criminal Tribunal, had sent powerless people of color to be murdered by the apartheid state. Still, we opponents of the death penalty are accustomed to being disappointed by political leaders who fear to voice anything but support for the death penalty.
But this is the Israeli government voicing (according to Yedioth Aronoth, instructing its diplomats around the world to voice) what seems more like glee than disappointment over Goldstone’s past as a hanging judge. This is the same Israeli government that, while Goldstone was signing death warrants in the 1980s and 1990s, was selling the white minority government of South Africa hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military technology and weaponry with uses ranging from the battlefield to the rebellious black townships.
The military relationship was formally launched in 1976 with agreements signed during a high visibility state visit to Israel by South African Prime Minister John Vorster, who had been jailed for 20 months during World War II by the British for collaborating with the Axis. Three years later, in the wake of a blast in the Indian Ocean widely believed to have been an Israeli-South African nuclear test blast, the CIA noted (in a report declassified in 1990) that “Israelis have not only participated in certain South African nuclear research activities over the last few years, but they have also offered and transferred various sorts of advanced nonnuclear weapons technology to South Africa.” In the early 1990s I obtained and reported on documents indicating that Israel had provided South Africa with tritium that could be used in the development of an advanced nuclear weapon, while itself obtaining from South Africa yellowcake uranium for use in its nuclear program. During the Reagan Administration a State Department advisory committee on South Africa issued a report suggesting that Israel was passing US military technology to South Africa.
In 1977 the United Nations established a total embargo on military dealings with South Africa. Israel violated that embargo until the fall of the apartheid regime in the early 1990s. Israel’s supporters in the United States variously attacked those who mentioned arms sales and denied or justified the arms dealing. In a 1988 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the Congressional Black Caucus handed Shamir a letter stating: “We are deeply disappointed that Israel has not joined in the concerted international effort to impose sanctions against the apartheid system.” That same year then Representative Robert Toricelli (D-NJ) said that Israel was now more secure than it had been and therefore should no longer be selling weapons to states like Iran, Chile and South Africa. Add to that list the dictatorships of Argentina and El Salvador, the Noriega government in Panama and the murderous Guatemalan governments which used Israeli weapons and technical expertise in their genocidal wars that are believed to have killed over 400 ,000 indigenous people.
Judge Goldstone meanwhile, was making the reputation that brought him to Nelson Mandela’s attention as leader of a commission whose findings resulted in the prosecution of regime officials and as a judge who, singularly, visited some of the black political prisoners who appeared in his court.
The relative moral valuation of the death penalty, apartheid and the Israeli occupation (not to mention the extrajudicial executions characterizing the latter two) could, I suppose, be intellectually engaging — until one reduces them to the dynamic of powerful minorities wielding the power of life and death over their powerless disenfranchised subjects. But what baffles me is how the international industry of Goldstone disparagement, now about to receive fresh inputs, is supposed to morally purify Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.
I know of at least one in Austin. The crazies who tried to blow up the WTC came after McVeigh, then we had 9/11 a suicide plot.
I say, just wait, we will see more of this. One thing hindering us was lack of war vets. With the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan perhaps we’ll have more trained soldiers willing to demonstrate their skills.
Perhaps it will take some more gov’t changes. Perhaps if our stance on Israel changes we’ll see someone, or when we’re facing defaulting on our debt, tensions will be much higher than they are now. Maybe some are waiting for 2012, once 2013 arrives and assuming Jesus doesn’t come rapture us, there may be a few new loose cannons unleashed.
Finally, the stupidity of this conversation lies in the fact that for some facing a lifetime of incarceration some would rather die, others rot. So long as we offer subjective answers to this policy, the policy won’t do any one thing.
The first WTC bombing was in ’93, before McVeigh. But that’s not the point. I was referring to right-wing Americans of McVeigh’s ilk. The death penalty certainly isn’t going to deter the Ramzi Yousefs of the world, and I didn’t claim it would. The fact remains that no Oklahoma City-type plot has been carried out since McVeigh’s execution. Does that “prove” his death has served as a deterrent? Of course not. I have reason to believe it’s so, but obviously I can’t prove it. Nor can Atheo “prove” the opposite.
By the way, if you think this discussion is stupid, why are you participating in it?
Forget McVeigh for a minute, what about the DEA and FBI criminals who killed innocent civilians at Waco? McVeigh only retaliated for the Federal government’s illegal acts.