Camera.org, a highly recommended site for bias against Israel in the media, reports on the retraction of the Goldstone Report that needs to be inculcated into the psyche of bloggers in preparation to answer the liberals who still cite this report which most rejected when it came out (save the liberal U.N. backers and anti-Semites around the world). As Camera comments on this about-face:

In examining the New York Times’ record on the Goldstone report, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that the newspaper is more interested in promoting as credible an investigation that even its leader has repudiated than in objectively reporting on its shortcomings. Unfortunately, this is unsurprising coming from a media outlet that is increasingly moving from objective news reporting to advocacy journalism.

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Richard Cohen weighs in on Goldstone’s retraction in the Washington Post after mentioning that Israel, in contradistinction to its cultural mores, was “accused of deliberately targeting civilians during its brutal 2008-09 war with Hamas.” He continues:

That accusation was contained in a report to the United Nations by Richard Goldstone, an eminent South African judge who had been used by the international community previously to investigate war crimes. That Goldstone was also a Jew and a Zionist made the charge all the more powerful.

Now, though, 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. For Israel, it’s like the governor has called the warden — it’s been reprieved and taken off death row.

Once again, rockets are being fired into southern Israel from Gaza, some of them going up the coast as far as Ashkelon, a major city and port. Before the last war, from April 2001 to the end of 2008, 4,246 rockets and 4,180 mortar rounds were fired into Israel, killing 14 Israelis and wounding more than 400. The rockets have since been improved. Should more than the occasional rocket actually make it all the way to Ashkelon (one came close Monday) or should one of them come down on a school, another war with Hamas would start a moment or two later. Israel has already hit back, but not in force. In addition, 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.

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This resending of the report has consequences reverberating towards the Obama Administration that should be highlighted in the 2012 Elctions. In fact, it has even caused the likes of Rabbi Schmuley Botech to comment on Samantha Powers (someone whom I just blogged on as well), he says the following:

On my recent lecture tour in South Africa the subject of Judge Richard Goldstone came up quite a lot. Whether it was the dinner in Johannesburg at the home of Chabad head Rabbi David Masinter where acquaintances of the judge were in attendance, or at Sea Point Synagogue, South Africa’s largest, where I lectured and whose Rabbi, Dovid Weinberg, had officiated at Goldstone’s grandson’s Bar Mitzvah in Johannesburg, or my speech for Chabad of Cape Town and later in Pretoria, the man whom the media describes as a ‘respected international jurist’ and who had falsely accused Israel of war crimes was never far from anyone’s lips.

South Africans are among the world’s proudest Jews and most ardent Zionists. So it was understandable that they would detest Goldstone, viewing him as a traitor to his people, a man who engaged in a blood libel against the Jewish state in order to enhance his standing at the United Nations.

I have personally never agreed with this assessment of Goldstone, seeing him instead as one of Lenin’s ‘useful idiots,’ a man so full of his own pomposity and self-righteousness as to be utterly blind to simple notions of right and wrong. Like Jimmy Carter before him, Goldstone is one of those well-meaning ignoramuses whose view of morality is that whichever is the party without tanks and an air force must be the party who is just. This knee-jerk reaction to always champion the underdog, notwithstanding their evil actions explains the shockingly obvious statement in Goldstone’s recent Washington Post apology to Israel in which he wrote, “In the end, asking Hamas to investigate [its own crimes] may have been a mistaken enterprise.” It took a famous judge three years to come to the conclusion that asking a terrorist organization hell-bent on exterminating Israel to impartially report its own atrocities was not his brightest idea.

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Much more troubling, however, are the comments attributed to Samantha Power, the rising star of the Obama Administration who is being discussed as a replacement for Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. I am a huge fan of Power’s 2002 book A Problem from Hell, detailing how America refused to intervene to stop repeated genocides in the twentieth century. I have repeatedly extolled the Pulitzer-prize winning book in lectures and columns and believe it should be required reading by every American High School student. I was also not surprised to read that it was Power who was instrumental in persuading an always reluctant President Obama to intervene in Libya to stop Gaddafi from slaughtering his people. It was therefore with considerable sadness that I learned of Power’s troubling statements on Israel, comments that require her immediate clarification lest she compromise her own moral credibility. American Thinker and other publications have reported that Power said that the United States should send in a massive military force to protect the Palestinians from Israel. And that she maligned the American pro-Israel lobby with her advocacy of “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import [the pro-Israel lobby] and… sacrificing…billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the state of Palestine.” Is Power really arguing for greatly reducing or eliminating American military aid to Israel and channeling it instead to the Palestinians who have repeatedly used foreign aid to foster hatred of Jews in schools, line the pockets of corrupt officials, and promote terrorism?

There is more, with Power seemingly criticizing the New York Times in 2003 for being insufficiently critical of Israel after it attacked terrorist-saturated Jenin. Of Israel’s presence in Lebanon, Power wrote in her book, Chasing the Flame, that what sparked Israel’s invasion of Lebanon was “dispossessed Palestinians and Israeli insecurity,” where in truth Israel invaded Lebanon to stop the incessant stream of rocket attacks that terrorized its northern cities. The phrase ‘Israeli insecurity’ implies that Israel is paranoid rather than reflecting the reality of a Lebanon dominated by Hezbollah, whose genocidal aim is the destruction of Israel.

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One should take note that while the New York Times is about as bad as they get, it is not taxpayer funded like NPR (National Public Radio)! Here is an example of the bias found at NPR on this matter, followed by a video of the European Union voting on March 10th of 2010, adopting the Goldstone Report:

NPR:

• 18,321 words in pro-Arab only segments;
• 4,934 words in pro-Israel segments.

Bias in number of Arab-only vs Israeli-only segments:

• 63-percent Palestinian/pro-Arab only segments;
• 37-percent Israel/pro-Israel segments.

You may contact this European Parliment member, Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck, via email to enquirer why she supported such bad reporting and took the positions she did in the above video – “knowing now what we did then [at least reasonable people].” – annemie.neyts-uyttebroeck@europarl.europa.eu