Abu Wabu

Scott Johnson tells why "the South African jurist Richard Goldstone is a fool and a knave."

He lent his name to a lengthy report issued under the auspices of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The report accused Israel of massive war crimes in the war Israel waged against Hamas in 2008-2009, commenced by Israel after Hamas and friends had fired more than 12,000 rockets at Israel (every one of which was criminal).

Johnson evokes the comments of John Podhoretz:

That Richard Goldstone did not know in 2009 that Hamas is a terrorist monstrosity which functions parasitically off civilian populaces while Israel is a beacon of war-fighting restraint in a manner practically unknown in the course of human history suggests even more plainly than the report itself that he is a dupe, a fool, a clown, and a worldwide embarrassment. Not to mention a special kind of reprehensible and appalling figure of inglorious, hideous shame to his own people through the delivery and promulgation of a false document that helped anti-Semites everywhere feel themselves justified.

He was then, and is now, an entirely despicable public figure--and so is his op-ed, by the way, which continues to act as though it is appropriate to draw parallel inferences about Hamas and the state of Israel. It would be right for world Jewry that his name be hereafter summoned as we summon Benedict Arnold's, or Tokyo Rose's.

Jonathan Tobin, Ron Radosh, Jeffrey Goldberg and Melanie Philips also figure, as does Peter Berkowitz. Read it all.