The conventional understanding you get from the media is that Israel is worried that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a serious threat to the country's existence.

Is that really what's happening, though? Another interpretation is that Iran might want nuclear weapons not to launch any such an attack but to prevent an attack on its country--nuclear deterrence, in other words. (Of course, it's important to note that there is currently no evidence that Iran is pursuing a weapons program.)

I was struck when I heard Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman bring up some of these ideas on NPR's Talk of the Nation on January 30. Bergman is no outsider critic of Israeli policy; when he appeared recently on the NewsHour (1/12/12) and was asked about the assassination of Iranian scientists, his answer was: "I don't know. And even if I knew, I would tell you that I don't know."

Here's what he said on NPR, appearing to talk about his New York Times magazine piece on Israel and Iran:

NEAL CONAN: Chris, thanks very much for the call. Israel itself possesses, what, 300 nuclear weapons we believe, maybe more? Why does not deterrence work? Israel, of course, would retaliate if Iran were to use a nuclear weapon.

BERGMAN: I would assume that--oh, I know that most of Israel's leaders do not believe that Iran is going to use nuclear weapons against Israel. The problem is not the nuclear threat. The Iranians are not stupid. They want to live.... And I think that most leaders, and me personally as well, see that there are only a few people who believe that Iran would be hesitant enough to--sorry, brutal enough and stupid enough to use nuclear weapon against Israel.

The problem is that once Iran acquires this ability, it would change the balance of power in the Middle East. And a country that possesses nuclear weapon is a different country when it comes to support proxy jihadist movement. And these Israeli leaders afraid would significantly narrow down the variety of options from the point of view of Israel, just to quote one example coming from Minister of Defense Barak, when he said, just imagine--he told me in a meeting we had on the 13th of January in his house--said, just imagine, Ronen, that tomorrow we go into another war with Hezbollah in Lebanon like we did in 2006, and this time we are determined to take them out. But Iran comes forward and say, to attack Hezbollah is like attacking Iran, and we threaten you with nuclear weaponry.

Now, Minister of Defense Barak says it's not necessarily that we would be threatened not to attack, and we would decide to cancel the war, but it would certainly make us think twice.

In other words, Israel's position might be that an nuclear-armed Iran could make it harder to have future wars. That's a very different discussion from the one we're having now.

Of course Newt Gingrich (you know, the "big thinker" in the Republican campaign) made a lot of news by declaring that the Palestinians are an "invented" people.

As As'ad AbuKhalill--aka Angry Arab--pointed out, the New York Times ran a piece on this controversy on December 10 quoting exactly two sources: former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk and David A. Harris, chief executive of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Times reporter Trip Gabriel also noted of Gingrich:

He described Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, as denying Israel's right to exist.

"You have Abbas, who says in the United Nations, 'We do not necessarily concede Israel's right to exist,'" Mr. Gingrich said. "So you have to start with this question: 'Who are you making peace with?'"

It would be rather unusual for Abbas to have said such a thing. I cannot find any evidence of it (a conclusion reached by others, too).  A Reuters piece about Abbas' UN speech noted that he "told the United Nations he had no intention of denying Israel's right to exist, but said he did want to delegitimize the settler movement."

So "invented" people aren't given a chance to respond,  and apparently words can be put in their mouths by history professor Republican candidates.

The Washington Post today:

Diplomatic Efforts Unable to Derail Palestinians' UN Gambit

"Gambit" is the kind of word that seems intended to send a certain message--as if there some kind of sneaky maneuver at work here.  That's especially true when it is contrasted with "diplomatic efforts."

In this case, the paper is referring to efforts by superpowers (like the United States) to tell people with very little power (Palestinians) to pipe down.  Whatever you think of Palestinian efforts to elevate their  status at the United Nations, an alternate headline--"U.S. Gambits Unlikely to Derail Palestinians' Diplomatic Efforts"--is hard to imagine.

The coverage of the Israeli attacks on Gaza is following  some predictable patterns. The New York Times has a headline today (8/26/11), "Israeli Strikes in Retaliation Kill Nine Gazans."  Readers should ask: Retaliation for what?

It's widely understood that this violence stems from the attack last week in the southern Israeli town of Eilat. As the Times puts it:  "The recent round of violence started a week ago, with a terrorist attack on southern Israel in which eight Israelis were killed."

The real question, though, is who committed these acts.  The Times says:

Israeli officials said the perpetrators and planners of the terrorist attack were originally from Gaza, and Israel has retaliated with strikes that have killed at least 23 Palestinians. Gazan officials say they know nothing about the source of the attack.

That's a massive understatement.

To date, no armed Palestinian groups have claimed responsibility for the Eilat attack. Israeli officials claimed the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) were behind it, but have offered no proof to back up these allegations.  And there has been almost no critical coverage of the weakness of the Israeli case.  On NPR (8/18/11), for example, listeners have heard Israeli ambassador Michael Oren claim that Palestinian militants carried out the attack, and five days later London Times reporter James Hider (8/23/11) stated the same thing as if it were a well-established fact.

A handful of journalists have been persistently pointing out that the weakness of this case. One of those writers, Yossi Gurvitz, explains in his latest piece at the Israeli website +972 (8/25/11) that Israeli media are beginning to raise serious questions:

Since Monday, there have been a few more reports in the Israeli media, casting more doubt on the official story. Yediot reported on Tuesday (Hebrew) that nameless people in the security apparatus doubt the PRC were responsible for the attacks, and raise an interesting question: If they were responsible, why was the PRC's entire leadership in the same place?

According to Yediot’s anonymous intelligence sources (bear in mind that such sources should always be viewed with skepticism; by their very nature they cannot be corroborated, and they tend to be unreliable even when speaking openly), the attribution of the attacks to the PRC stems from one somewhat incoherent comment on some Jihadi message board.

Ha'aretz reported on Tuesday (Hebrew) that at least three on the attackers were Egyptian Jihadis. American intelligence sources – the same caveat above applies here--told Globes (Hebrew) that they, too, doubt the PRC are responsible, though they may have had a small role in the attacks.

Two days ago, the IAF attacked the Gaza Strip again--naturally, it does not consider itself bound by the ceasefire; only the Palestinians are, and only them can be blamed for breaking it--and killed some Islamic Jihad apparatchick. Yesterday, the IDF claimed (Hebrew) that he was in charge of funding the Eilat attacks. Hold on a minute, I'm confused: I thought you said the attacks were carried out by the PRC, and now it’s the Islamic Jihad left holding the bag? As of yesterday, reported Amira Hass in Ha'aretz (Hebrew), there are no mourning tents in Gaza. As of today, one week after the attack, the IDF refrains from exposing the identity of the attackers it killed.

This is a remarkable story that deserves serious coverage. Two dozen people in Gaza have been killed in "retaliation" for an attack that very well could have originated somewhere else.

The first sentence of Mark Landler's piece in the New York Times today (7/21/11):

It is a truism of Middle East peacemaking that the United States is the pivotal player--the most credible broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

If by "truism" he means "something most people don't believe to be true," then this makes sense. If he means "truism" in the other, more conventional way, then it is difficult to understand the article in question--which is about Palestinian efforts to pursue alternatives to U.S.-backed negotiations.

Here's the headline and subhead in a Newsweek piece (7/10/11) about the Egyptian presidential election:

Egypt's Rising Power Player

Amr Moussa is on track to succeed Mubarak. And that spells danger for Israel.

Reporter Dan Ephron characterizes Moussa like this:

"long and vocal history of anti-Israel diatribes"

"his anger against Israel"

"one of Israel’s most relentless detractors in Egypt"

"He confronted Israelis at conferences and attacked them in television interviews"

"His tirades even made him the subject of a hit song"

"his longstanding dislike of Israel"

"anger at Israel is genuine"

This would be a lot more convincing if there was some rhetoric or record from Moussa that would suggest an obsessive dislike of Israel. Instead, we get one quote from him saying the peace plan was "just [an Israeli] trick to continue talking and make the cameras flash ... but there's no substance. We shall not engage in such a thing anymore."

It would be hard to argue, whatever your position, that this "peace process" has led to much in the way of peace.

Newsweek goes on on to note that opposition to the current "peace plan" is common in Egypt. That suggests Egyptians don't believe that their views were reflected by the foreign policy of their country's previous dictatorship--one that Moussa served for a decade. But readers get less a sense of that fact, and plenty of discussion of the supposed anti-Israel obsession of a leading presidential candidate.

When I saw the July 3 New York Times headline "Setting Sail on Gaza’s Sea of Spin," I expected the worst.

Times reporter Ethan Bronner's analysis piece on the Gaza humanitarian flotilla starts off predictably enough, saying there's blame to spread all around:

Almost everything about the flotilla stuck in Greece and waiting to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza seems to be a parable for something else, part of an unstated effort to recast the Israeli-Palestinian narrative in extreme terms. Instead of helping to clarify what Gaza needs and how it might build a future, the saga has merely brought out the public relations demons on all sides.

PR demons?!

The first problem, according to Bronner, concerns the very purpose of the flotilla. As he sees it, there would seem to be no need for much relief in Gaza, thanks to Israel's generosity following the killings of activists on last year's  flotilla:

The international outrage that followed helped force an easing of the siege. One result, largely unacknowledged by the flotilla leaders: far more goods have gone into Gaza over the past year, and while the 1.6 million people there still need many things, basic supplies are not among them.

This is something that Bronner seems to fixate on in his reporting-- he had a June 25 report that touted the building boom in Gaza:

Two luxury hotels are opening in Gaza this month. Thousands of new cars are plying the roads. A second shopping mall — with escalators imported from Israel — will open next month. Hundreds of homes and two dozen schools are about to go up. A Hamas-run farm where Jewish settlements once stood is producing enough fruit that Israeli imports are tapering off.

As pro-Palestinian activists prepare to set sail aboard a flotilla aimed at maintaining an international spotlight on Gaza and pressure on Israel, this isolated Palestinian coastal enclave is experiencing its first real period of economic growth since the siege they are protesting began in 2007.

He went on to note that things were not progressing evenly, but his point seemed to be that things were much improved since the last flotilla, thus making the current efforts unnecessary ("For the past year, Israel has allowed most everything into Gaza but cement, steel and other construction material.")

But the evidence available from human rights observers tells a very different story.  From the Oxfam report, "Dashed Hopes" (12/1/10):

Many in the international community, including Quartet Representative Tony Blair, expressed hopes that this would lead to a major change and alleviate the plight of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. However, five months later, there are few signs of real improvement on the ground as the ‘ease’ has left foundations of the illegal blockade policy intact.

While the Government of Israel committed to expand and accelerate the inflow of construction materials for international projects, it has so far only approved 7 per cent of the building plan for UNRWA’s projects in Gaza, and of that 7 per cent only a small fraction of the necessary construction material has been allowed to enter for projects including schools and health centres.  In fact, the UN reports that Gaza requires 670,000 truckloads of construction material, while only an average of 715 of these truckloads have been received per month since the ‘easing’ was announced.

Although there has been a significant increase in the amount of food stuffs entering Gaza, many humanitarian items, including vital water equipment, that are not on the Israeli restricted list continue to receive no permits. Two thirds of Gaza’s factories report they have received none or only some of the raw materials they need to recommence operations. As a result, 39% of Gaza residents remain unemployed and unable to afford the new goods in the shops. Without raw materials and the chance to export, Gaza's businesses are unable to compete with the cheaper newly imported goods. This economic development leaves 80% of the population dependent upon international aid.

And a March 2011 United Nations report found that

the easing of the blockade on the Gaza Strip since June 2010 did not result in a significant improvement in people’s livelihoods, which were largely depleted during three years of strict blockade. Because of the ongoing restrictions on the import of building materials, only a small minority of the 40,000 housing units, needed to meet natural population growth and the loss of homes during the ‘Cast Lead’ offensive, could be actually constructed.

Bronner argues that the improvement in Gaza goes "largely unacknowledged" by the flotilla activists. Actually, what they're saying is that the blockade has hardly been eased-- which is almost the opposite of what Ethan Bronner is reporting.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes (6/7/11):

I once worked for an editor who banned the word "oxymoron." I don’t know why. It's a good word, meaning a contradiction in terms. The dictionary offers some examples: "wise fool" and "legal murder." I would like to cite another: Barack Obama. He sends contradictory messages.

That sounds reasonable enough--what are some good examples? Cohen writes:

The fact remains, no matter what Obama says--and almost no matter what he does--the business community deeply feels that he is unsympathetic to them and their goals. They say all they want to do is make an (honest) buck, but to do that they need consistency, predictability and--it would be nice--a pat on the back.

Whatever you think of that, it's not really an oxymoron. It's an example of a class of people who have apparently arrived at a conclusion about Obama that doesn't seem to be rooted in reality. Not even Cohen finds their case persuasive:

My reading of it is not much different than Obama's, but then I am not a businessman, do not eat in their clubs or fly charter. I do know that many of them feel that Obama is at root a hostile liberal, a former community organizer (this is often cited as if the word "community" was synonymous with communist) who would tinker with God's most perfect economic system by giving the government an inordinate role. You will look in vain for anything Obama has said to substantiate this view.

Again, interesting observation--but not at all an oxymoron.

Cohen sees the same thing with Israel policy:

Here again Obama's oxymoronic quality is on display. As with the business community, Obama's assurances to the pro-Israel community mean little. His precise words are discounted. As with the business community, rumor or anecdote trumps pronouncements or actions--something Obama once said, a pro-Palestinian friend he once had. Something like that. The whisper has more volume than the speech itself. It is an odd state of affairs.

Again, hard to see how this would qualify as an oxymoron.

Maybe Richard Cohen's old editor banned him from using that word because he didn't seem to know what it means.

In today's New York Times (5/25/11), columnist Tom Friedman issues yet another call for Palestinians to practice non-violence:

May I suggest a Tahrir Square alternative? Announce that every Friday from today forward will be "Peace Day," and have thousands of West Bank Palestinians march nonviolently to Jerusalem, carrying two things--an olive branch in one hand and a sign in Hebrew and Arabic in the other. The sign should say: "Two states for two peoples. We, the Palestinian people, offer the Jewish people a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders--with mutually agreed adjustments--including Jerusalem, where the Arabs will control their neighborhoods and the Jews theirs."

If Palestinians peacefully march to Jerusalem by the thousands every Friday with a clear peace message, it would become a global news event. Every network in the world would be there.

The implication--a familiar one in corporate media--is that there's never been much Palestinian non-violent resistance. This is false--see here, here, here, or especially here--a piece by Yousef Munayyer titled,"Palestine's Hidden History of Nonviolence: You Wouldn't Know It From the Media Coverage, but Peaceful Protests Are Nothing New for Palestinians."

The other part of Friedman's argument is that media would pay this movement serious attention. Again, we don't need to imagine what might happen if Palestinians were to take Friedman's advice. Regular non-violent protests against the West Bank separation wall are ignored in the U.S. media, as Patrick O'Connor documented in 2005. A 2009 Guardian report is a reminder of what often happens in response to such demonstrations. As the subhead put it, "Palestinian demonstrations intended to be peaceful met with Israeli teargas, stun grenades and sometimes live ammunition." And one of the most prominent non-violent Palestinian activists is Adeeb Abu Rahma, who was held in an Israeli prison for 17 months before being released late last year.

Or take a more recent example:

On March 24, the Israeli government arrested Bassem Tamimi, a 44-year-old resident of the small Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, which is just west of Ramallah. Tamimi was arrested for leading a group of his neighbors in protest marches on a settlement that had "expropriated" the village's spring--the symbolic center of Nabi Saleh's life.

Tamimi was brought before the Ofer military court and charged with "incitement, organizing unpermitted marches, disobeying the duty to report to questioning" and "obstruction of justice"--for giving young Palestinians advice on how to act under Israeli police interrogation. He was remanded to an Israeli military prison to await a hearing and a trial. The detention of Tamimi is not a formality: Under Israeli military decree 101 he is being charged with attempting "verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order." As in Syria, this is an "emergency decree" disguised as protecting public security. It carries a sentence of 10 years.

And activist Abdallah Abu Rahmah:

Abu Rahmah, a high school teacher at the Latin Patriarch School in Ramallah, began organizing Bil'in's protests in 2004, even as the violence of the Second Intifada was beginning to wane. Every Friday after prayers, Abu Rahmah would lead a group of Bil'in residents on a protest march towards a local settlement--and every Friday his march would be intercepted by the IDF.

In one demonstration, an IDF sniper used a .22 caliber rifle to disburse the protesters, killing a Palestinian boy. Twenty-one unarmed demonstrators, among them five children, have been killed in nonviolent West Bank demonstrations since the beginnings of the movement.

So when do the TV cameras arrive, Tom Friedman?

What's the Israeli government's new "plan" for peace? Reading the New York Times doesn't help your understand where they stand. Earlier this week, the Times' Ethan Bronner (5/17/11) praised a speech by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for exhibiting "greater flexibility on territory." Bronner wrote that he showed "more willingness to yield territory than he had before, strongly implying that he would give up the vast majority of the West Bank." As Matthew Taylor wrote at Mondoweiss (5/17/11), there was little actual evidence that there was much going on here--just some "implying" and "suggesting."

A Times article today (5/19/11) from Bronner and Helene Cooper makes things more confusing. The piece describes Netanyahu as wanting three things: Israeli military along the Jordan River, control of Jerusalem and holding on to West Bank settlements. His other "condition" is that the Palestinian government cannot include Hamas; the Times notes that "Netanyahu knows that the Palestinians will find this condition unacceptable.... But since the United States labels Hamas as terrorists, Mr. Netanyahu is betting that he will appear more forthcoming than ever."

Well, he's already appeared that way in the pages of the New York Times. Though the piece today also says this:

Whether Mr. Netanyahu's offer, first outlined in a speech to Parliament on Monday, is a genuine attempt to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, or to make it appear that the Palestinians are the ones blocking progress, is not yet clear.

This is hard to square with Bronner's earlier report praising Netanyahu's supposed flexibility. Now it sounds like the Times isn't so sure that it's a sign of much of anything. But to help clarify things, the paper granted anonymity to an Israeli official in order to get the truth:

"On the one hand, the Palestinians are moving toward Hamas while on the other, the prime minister is showing a real willingness to make far-reaching territorial compromise," a top Netanyahu aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

What would be the condition for this? The official needed anonymity in order to more effusively praise his or her boss?

The New York Times has a piece today (5/18/11) previewing Barack Obama's Israel/Palestine speech, calling it a "chance to reshape the debate," whatever that's supposed to mean. One thing to always pay attention to in coverage of this issue is the language used to frame the discussion. The piece mentioned Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas' recent op-ed in the Times concerning the Palestinian drive to gain United Nations recognition for the Palestinian state. Abbas defined the state as "the lands framed by the 1967 border." In most of the world this is a rather uncontroversial starting point. But look how the Times described it:

In an Op-Ed article in the New York Times on Tuesday that analysts interpreted as the diplomatic equivalent of a declaration of war on the status quo, Mr. Abbas said flatly that he would request international recognition of the state of Palestine, based on the borders of Israel before the 1967 Arab/Israeli war.

Such a move would most likely get a lopsided majority of votes in the General Assembly, diplomats said, with Latin American, African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries all expected to vote in favor of it.

Unnamed "analysts" believe Abbas is declaring war on the "status quo"-- though the resolution he is suggesting would be endorsed in a lopsided U.N. vote. So the "status quo" is really a massively unpopular policy forced on the world. Which would seem to be much closer to the truth--and which apparently cannot be described as such.

At FAIR's 25th anniversary, Noam Chomsky tried to imagine a future where the New York Times, in a remarkable change, described this debate accurately.  In his hypothetical example, the "peace process" is being led by a truly neutral state, and the debate is understood as the view of the world's majority on one side, and the U.S.-backed minority view on the other. We're still a long way from that.

At Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah challenges the skewed history coming from Ethan Bronner in the New York Times (5/15/11). In trying to explain the context for the recent Palestinian protests, Bronner wrote:

After Israel declared independence on May 15, 1948, armies from neighboring Arab states attacked the new nation; during the war that followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by Israeli forces. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were also destroyed. The refugees and their descendants remain a central issue of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Abunimah replied:

This is standard Zionist propaganda that bears little resemblance to the facts. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist forces began in late 1947, so that by 15 May, 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had already been expelled from their villages and cities before a single soldier from any Arab army had intervened. The exodus from, for example, Jaffa began in early 1948 after Zionist terrorists belonging to the Stern Gang set off a massive car bomb destroying the Jaffa municipality building on 4 January. (This is all well-documented in books by right-wing Israeli historian Benny Morris, among others.) Many villages in the north of Palestine were also depopulated around that time.

Abunimah adds that the Deir Yassin massacre happened in April 1948--before Israel declared its independence.

This skewed history seems to be fairly common. NBC's Richard Engel presented it this way on the Today show on Monday (5/17/01):

What sparked this is Palestinians were commemorating what they call the Nakba, it's the Arabic word for "catastrophe," which is how many Palestinians describe the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

The "catastrophe" is not the establishment of the state of Israel, it's the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that accompanied that establishment. It's an important distinction.

The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick filed a report today (4/29/11) on one apparent problem with the move towards democracy in Egypt--the country might pursue policies more in line with what the Egyptian public supports. The most important news here is that Egypt doesn't want to maintain a blockade on its border with Gaza. In the Times, this news is filtered through the perspective of Israel-- thus the headline:

In Shift, Egypt Warms to Iran and Hamas, Israel's Foes

And then there is this  description of the crippling economic blockade that was enforced with the help of the Mubarak regime:

Israel had relied on Egypt's help to police the border with Gaza, where arms and other contraband were smuggled to Hamas through tunnels.

The blockade was about far more than that: blocking access to food, medicine and construction material necessary to rebuild what Israel destroyed in the recent war. (See Extra!, "Gaza's Ongoing Crisis Is Not News," 8/10.)

The Israeli government would like people to think blockading Gaza is just about weapons and tunnels contraband; the New York Times is doing its part to help that effort.

A headline in yesterday's New York Times (4/10/11):

Violence Rises as Israel and Hamas Trade Blows

This "blow trading" has resulted in 18 deaths, all in Gaza--roughly half civilians and half militants. On the Israeli side, one boy was seriously injured. The Times account tells us:

The Israeli military said that if civilians were hit, it was because militants shot from among them.

But the deaths on Friday of 19-year-old Nidal Qudeh, who was studying to be a medical secretary, and her mother, Najah, 40, outside the southeastern city of Khan Yunis did not fit that pattern, witnesses said.

It would be difficult to imagine how to present such fighting as somehow "balanced," but the Times manages to pull it off.

In a story in today's Times (4/11/11), Isabel Kershner presents the timeline of the current violence, which--as is often the case--we're told began with an attack from the Palestinian side:

The most recent escalation began when the military wing of Hamas fired a Kornet antitank missile at the school bus from a distance of about two miles. It was the first time the group used an advanced, laser-guided weapon against a civilian target.

To make things more confusing, the very next paragraph would seem to undermine that:

Hamas said the attack was meant to avenge Israel's killing of three of the group's militants on April 2, an act that Hamas said violated an earlier cease-fire.

That would suggest that the "escalation" did not begin with a Hamas attack, but with an Israeli attack that broke a week-long cease-fire. But, as FAIR once pointed out, "In U.S. Media, Palestinians Attack, Israel Retaliates."

The big Israel-Palestine news of the week is Richard Goldstone's op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday (4/3/11). The short version you pick up from the media is that Goldstone has "retracted" his UN-sponsored report on war crimes during Israel's Operation Cast Lead war in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

The "retraction" language is fairly common--as in the  New York Times headline (4/4/11), "Israel Grapples With Retraction on UN Report."

But is there any real retraction?

Goldstone, a retired South African judge, chaired a four-person fact-finding commission investigating crimes committed by both sides. As he explains in his Post column, the Israelis refused to cooperate, which obviously affected the report's findings:

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.

Goldstone writes that he now believes that "civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy."  He sides with a follow-up report from the UN, which credits Israel for launching some investigations of their Gaza war--though he added:

I share the concerns reflected in the McGowan Davis report that few of Israel's inquiries have been concluded and believe that the proceedings should have been held in a public forum. Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn't negate the tragic loss of civilian life, 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.

At CounterPunch, Jonathan Cook notes (4/5/11):

Israel would certainly like observers to interpret Goldstone's latest comments as an exoneration. In reality, however, he offered far less consolation to Israel than its supporters claim.

The report's original accusation that Israeli soldiers committed war crimes still stands, as does criticism of Israel's use of unconventional weapons such as white phosphorus, the destruction of property on a massive scale and the taking of civilians as human shields.

Cook adds that some observers see this as a mostly misdirected debate over intentionality--whether Israeli forces meant to kill civilians, or merely disregarded the fact that their actions would kill civilians. As Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch put it at the Guardian (4/5/11):

Goldstone has not retreated from the report's allegation that Israel engaged in large-scale attacks in violation of the laws of war. These attacks included Israel's indiscriminate use of heavy artillery and white phosphorus in densely populated areas, and its massive and deliberate destruction of civilian buildings and infrastructure without a lawful military reason. This misconduct was so widespread and systematic that it clearly reflected Israeli policy.

Roth also tweeted some criticism of the New York Times' coverage:

NYTimes wrong on Goldstone oped. He said intentional killing wasn't policy. No retraction on indiscriminate warfare.

And:

NYT wrong again. Goldstone says Israel didn't intend to kill but its policy was still crime of indiscriminate warfare

So what has happened then? Goldstone--who has been under tremendous pressure to distance himself from the report that bears his name--now says that there may have been cases where the Israeli military was not behaving with intent to kill civilians. Left unchallenged is the fact that many civilians were actually killed in attacks where little was done to prevent such killing.

But those details may not matter, if Richard Cohen's column in the Washington Post today (4/5/11) is any indication. Cohen writes that it was "shocking" that "Israel was accused of deliberately targeting civilians during its brutal 2008-09 war with Hamas." But now comes vindication:

Goldstone has retracted his findings. He no longer believes that Israel intentionally targeted civilians during the Gaza war (although he still believes Hamas did) and says that any deaths were inadvertent--the usual fog of war, the usual panicked decision.

The report focused on Israeli actions that were "either reckless, disproportionate or deliberate." There is nothing to suggest that most of the report's findings are in serious dispute. But to Cohen, it's now all "the usual fog of war." Cohen also claims:

As Goldstone acknowledges, Israel has looked into every charge of war crimes--incident by incident. Some soldiers have indeed been punished because some awful things happened.

It is not clear where Goldstone says or implies this in his brief op-ed. As Roth and other writers have pointed out, the Israeli investigations have yielded few indictments.

Cohen closes by writing:

Those who gleefully embraced the Goldstone report have to ask themselves why. They may hate the answer.

One might assume that he's suggesting anti-Semitism on the part of Goldstone's "gleeful" champions. Ironically in a piece admonishing those who rush to judgment, Cohen recalls that

a West Bank settler family of five was recently murdered in their home by what are universally thought to be Palestinians. This, too, has put Israel on edge.

As I noted before, there is plenty of speculation that a Palestinian committed those murders--but no evidence to date to that effect. Apparently speculation is enough for Richard Cohen. He should ask himself why. He may hate the answer.