Does Criticism of the Goldstone Report Pass the “NGO Monitor Test”

Torrents of criticism have rained down upon the Goldstone Report. Some are by enthusiastic bloggers and journalists; others by law professors; even some of them expert on international law.

What's a fair-minded individual, who is no expert in international law, to think?

Well, I suggest that we judge the critics of the Goldstone Report by using the same methodology that NGO Monitor uses to judge the reports of the human rights NGO's. That is to say, we examine the authors of the criticisms, find out their ideological leanings, and, without actually analyzing the content of their criticism, dismiss them as hopelessly biased.

What follows is a partial list of the critics, according to a list provided by NGO Monitor here.

Ed Morgan, Yisrael Medad, Aharon Leshno Ya'ar, Alan Dershowitz, Benjamin Pogrund, Ben-Dror Yemini, E. B. Solomon, Harold Evans, Melanie Phillips, Robert O. Freedman, John Bolton, Haviv Rettig Gur, RW Johnson, Yisrael Harel, Irwin Cotler, Hillel Neuer

Almost all Jews, almost all Zionists, almost all center right, and in some cases, famous for having moved to the right. Centrist Zionists like Cotler and Pogrund have increasingly been spending their time defending Israel and avoiding criticism. Why can't they be like Michael Walzer, another liberal Zionist, and avoid the fray?

Where are the non-Zionist writers who sharply critique the Goldstone Report? Is the world really divisible into sonei yisrael (anti-Semites) and pro-Israeli apologists? Surely Gerald Steinberg and Co. could find unbiased critics of Goldstone, those without solidly center-right Zionist credentials?

Since these are precisely the folks we would have expected to blast the report, the NGO Monitor test says that there is no reason to take their criticism seriously.

I am still waiting for the law professors who couldn't care less about Israel and Gaza to weigh in. NGO Monitor cannot cite as evidence Jessica Montell's criticism of the Goldstone Report here. After all, she is the Executive Director of B'Tselem.

And, NGO Monitor never tires of telling us, we surely can't take B'Tselem seriously.

Of course, using NGO Monitor's methodology, we can't take it seriously, either.