Goldstone, Who Hanged 28 Blacks, to Receive Tikkun Award for Service of Human Rights and Social Justice

Tikkun magazine tells us that it is "dedicated to healing and transforming the world," and apparently, as part of its efforts to "heal and transform the world", Tikkun continues to seek new ways to venerate and celebrate Judge Richard Goldstone, who headed the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the 2009 Gaza Conflict, which quite expectedly denounced Israel for war crimes:

"Last week Judge Richard Goldstone (the South African jurist who authored the UN report showing prima facie evidence that during its invasion of Gaza in Dec 2008 and Jan 2009 which had resulated [sic] in the death of 1600 Palestinians, Israel--and Hamas--had committed violations of human rights and that they should do their own credible public investigation of the hundreds of pages of documentation he was submitting to the UN) was told that right-wing Zionists in South Africa would picket his grandson's bar mitzvah, and that the synagogue would not be able to vouch for his safety, so he should not attend.

Tikkun Magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives publicly invited Goldstone to the Bay Area where we would perfom a Bar Mitzvah for his grandson while honoring Goldstone.

When he told us that the Bar Mitzvah was taking place in a few weeks and so it would be impossible to shift the location for his grandson, we announced his agreement to receive the annual TIKKUN AWARD in 2011 for his work in service of human rights and social justice at the conference celebraton of Tikkun's 25th anniversary."

http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/20100423161156636

Meanwhile, however, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has revealed:

"that Goldstone sentenced at least 28 black defendants to death. Most of them were found guilty of murder and sought to appeal the verdict. In those days, he actually made sure he showed his support for the execution policy, writing in one verdict that it reflects society's demands that a price be paid for crimes it rightfully views as frightening.

In another verdict, in which he upheld the execution of a young black man convicted of murdering a white restaurant owner after he fired him, Goldstone wrote that the death penalty is the only punishment likely to deter such acts.

. . . .

Even when it came to far less serious offenses, Goldstone sided through and through with the racist policies of the Apartheid regime. Among other things, he approved the whipping of four blacks found guilty of violence, while he acquitted four police officers who had broken into a white woman's house on suspicions that she was conducting sexual relations with a black man – something considered then in South Africa as a serious crime.

In another incident, Goldstone sentenced two young black men merely for being in possession of a video tape showing a speech given by one of the senior officials in Nelson Mandela's party."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3885999,00.html

Goldstone's response was that he opposed the death penalty, but was forced to act in accordance with requirements of the South African legal system. This is what is known as the "Nuremberg Defense", i.e. he was only following orders, or in German, "Befehl ist Befehl."

Alan Dershowitz's rejoinder to Goldstone's attempt to justify this behavior:

"Richard Goldstone, author of the notorious Goldstone report, did not become a South African judge in the post-Apartheid Mandela Era, as The New York Times and other media have erroneously reported. He accepted a judgeship during the worst days of Apartheid and helped legitimate one of the most racist regimes in the world by granting the imprimatur of the rule of law to some of the most undemocratic and discriminatory decrees.

Goldstone was--quite literally--a hanging judge. He imposed and affirmed death sentences for more than two dozen blacks under circumstances where whites would almost certainly have escaped the noose. And he affirmed sentences of physical torture--euphemistically called "flogging"-- for other blacks. He also enforced miscegenation and other racist laws with nary a word of criticism or dissent. He was an important part of the machinery of death, torture and racial subjugation that characterized Apartheid South Africa. His robe and gavel lent an air of legitimacy to an entirely illegitimate and barbaric regime."

http://www.hudsonny.org/2010/05/legitimating-bigotry-the-legacy-of-richard-goldstone.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kramerlinks+(Linkage+by+Martin+Kramer)

So, will the Editor in Chief of Tikkun, Michael Lerner, proceed with the bestowal of the annual TIKKUN AWARD to Goldstone "for his work in service of human rights and social justice"? Meanwhile, there is no mention of Goldstone's work in service of the South African Apartheid regime on Tikkun's online home page, but only a reference to an "attack" (posters attached to the door and around the property) on the home of Rabbi Lerner "by Right-Wing Zionists".

Goldstone? Dante's spirit visited late last night while I was walking with my friend, Pancake, and informed me that a special place in hell has been reserved for this "jurist".