From Tuesday night’s Fox News All-Stars.
On Richard Goldstone’s retraction in a Sunday Washington Post op-ed of the central finding of his U.N. report charging Israel with war crimes:
That Amnesty International reaction [reaffirming Israeli war guilt] is an indication of how much the Goldstone op-ed, this retraction, this weasely, excuse-laden retraction, is too little and too late [to undo] what he did in this report, the one that he’s now saying wasn’t true — [it] did incalculable damage to Israel by accusing it [of war crimes]. Remember, the only Jewish state on the planet is accused of carrying out a war in which it deliberately, as a matter of policy, attacks innocents — which was never true.
In its 62 years, Israel has been under continual attack by terrorists and by large armies, and has conducted itself with more restraint, more humanity, and more care about civilians and combatants than any army anywhere in the world. That’s what makes the original report a blood libel, ranking with the libels of the 19th century in which Jews were accused of ritually slaughtering children in order to use the blood in [religious] rituals.
This [the original Goldstone report] ranks with that because it delegitimizes Israel as a war-crime state, and once it’s delegitimized, [the report] legitimizes all those who want to destroy Israel.
He [Goldstone] should spend the rest of his life undoing the damage and changing and retracting that report. A single op-ed is certainly not enough.