Nadene Goldfoot
He'll only be 62 on April 14, and served in Afghanistan as a British soldier, but Col. Richard Kemp is the bravest man in England as far as I'm concerned. He dared to speak his own mind for what he knew as the truth by defending Israel's IDF against the UN's Goldstone Report in April 2009, done by the Jewish Richard Goldstone of South Africa. Why is it so often one of our own Jewish people who can't manage to see the need and goodness of Israel? We're too quick to convict our own instead of giving Israel the same judgement we'd give any other country other than our own?
Richard Joseph Goldstone is a South African former judge. After working for 17 years as a commercial lawyer, he was appointed by the South African government to serve on the Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 to 1989 and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa from 1990 to 1994. After the Gaza War between Israel and Hamas in December 2008 – January 2009, The UN attacked Israel with the Goldstone Report in April.
Kemp had a career in the British army for over 30 years that included tours of duty in Northern Ireland, Germany, Cyprus, Kenya and Iraq. He was attached to the British Cabinet Office from 2001-2006 and worked for the Joint Intelligence Committee and COBR. In 2003, he was the Commander of British forces in Afghanistan when 44 years old and promoted to colonel a year later before retiring from the army in 2006.
Kemp explained that he had experience in dealing with the IDF and Israeli intelligence services during his military career and developed a good understanding of how the IDF operated, their rules of engagement, and how they fight. He turned to the Israelis for guidance in Afghanistan. They sent their #1 expert, a brigadier general, to London to brief me on Israeli procedures for dealing with suicide bomb attacks, something we were facing then. The British Army didn't have a procedure for dealing with or the means of training soldiers to counter suicide bombers. Kemp took their advice.
Many, many British soldiers' lives have been saved by Israeli battlefield technology, as well as the sharing of intelligence, Kemp told interviewer Paul Alster.
So, in October 2009, the UN Human Rights Council examined the controversial Goldstone Report of the Judge, Richard Goldstone of South Africa who had accused Israel of "war crimes and possible crimes against humanity" during the war in Gaza earlier that year. This is again happening in 2021 by another judgmental organization, the ICC, 12 years after the fact who are again trying Israel with the same accusation. Perhaps they're hoping that the facts have disappeared.
Kemp, age 50, stood up and gave evidence defending Israel when the whole world was so quick to condemn the Israel Defense Forces. "Of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes. Based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in the combat zones than any other army in the history of warfare."
Operation Cast Lead: Israel strikes back against Hamas terror in Gaza-On Saturday, 27 December 2008, Israel launched an attack against the Hamas terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. On 17 January 2009, Israel announced that it would hold its fire.
Kemp said he was quite horrified after he left the army to see how the media accounts of what they were doing were being distorted, and how they were coming under attack, in my view unfairly, as a result of political bias rather than objectivity. I knew it was wrong, and I felt I had to stand up and try and redress the distortions.
Kemp was possibly the highest profile non-Jewish advocate of Israel when it comes to defense matters and the manner in which the country's various security services and intelligence agencies go about their work of protecting a nation surrounded by enemies. He's a rarity. Others, not as brave to stand alone, find it easier in life to go with the flow, follow the crowd and keep your head down well beneath the parapet. That's what most people do, regardless of whether or not the agree with the direction the flow is taking them. The UN accused and people believed they knew what was actually happening without any malice. Goldstone couldn't be wrong. The fact is that Goldstone wasn't there like Kemp was. He was relying on the written reports that were handed in.
Kemp's testimony was warmly applauded in Israel, but dismissed as bizarre by many states, NGOs and others around the world that preferred to base their opinions on Goldstone's "evidence." It was more palatable to accept the image of Israel as the wicked aggressor, and of the Palestinians as helpless, innocent victims of a bullying, far more powerful neighbor.
Goldstone later retracted his allegations and apologized for a biased and unfair report. Kemp's testimony appeared vindicated, but those who prefer to believe only bad things about Israel were anything but appeased.
Kemp came under huge criticism from many quarters because of his much publicized defense of Israel in the media. The question remains; why do so many people in Britain and elsewhere choose to overlook his firsthand knowledge and understanding of Israel's fight against terrorism? "As for the British media, there is institutionalized anti-Israel bias", Kemp pointed out. People automatically assume within the media is that Israel is in the wrong, and the people that are trying to bring Israel down like Hamas and other group are in the right. Most Britishers know nothing about a very, very complicated situation. They take their opinions from media that is, on the whole, opposed to Israel.
Britain has had an uncomfortable negative history with Jews by holding the 30 year mandate over Palestine and favoring the Arabs during it when they were told to help create the Jewish Homeland instead. Then there is the Marburg Files that only the few in England knew about where the Duke of Windsor, who had given up the kingship in favor of the woman he loved, was in cahoots with the Nazi high command. The Marburg Files, also known as the Windsor Files or Duke of Windsor Files, are a series of top-secret foreign minister archives discovered in Germany, May 1945 near the Harz Mountains and compiled at Marburg Castle, Hesse. Some documents are alleged to confirm he sympathised with their ideologies. Quite by accident, he had given up the crown because of how his wife was being treated, allowing Elizabeth's father, his brother, to be king instead. You'd think WWI had been enough.
However, Kemp believe the overwhelming majority of British military people share his views because they, too, have faced radical Islamic militias in Afghanistan and Iraq and they all understand what's going on and how it's handled and that's the big difference between the military perspective and the non-military perspective.
There was a time when Israel had widespread support from the international media, but that now seems like a distant memory. What has caused such a change of direction?
Kemp feels it's because Israel was once seen as the underdog in the Middle East, being attacked by the massed Arab armies. Lately as Israel has defeated the Arabs, gained significance, and economic and military power, they are no longer the underdog. Now people have shifted, seeing the Palestinians as the underdogs. The media is almost plagued by imperial guilt. They wrongly see Israel as an imperialist country, an extension of Western imperialism.
Anti-Semitism plays a big factor, both in the media itself and among certain British government institutions. All this can be said to happen in the USA as well. In both countries there has been the desire to appease militant Islam as well. There is an increasing Islamic population in the UK and USA, and the overwhelming majority of them are anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Politicians and opinion leaders wish to appease those in order to prevent them from carrying out attacks against us.
Europe also has the attitude which dominated a Europe with an increasing Islamic population. The Muslims living in Europe are mostly opposed to Israel and are anti-Semitic. Just look at the attacks that have happened in France,, Denmark, London and Sweden.
Kemp's views that challenge people of their view of a demonic Jewish state and the British media's biases have set him up as a target for verbal and physical attacks. He's had many threats. His name is on the Al Shabab jihadist terrorist group death list.
During the summer of 2015, Kemp was in Israel during the summer's Gaza conflict. Very few British media stations came to interview him. He was considered a military expert and analyst who was interviewed before on Iraq, Afghanistan and many other security and defense issues. Kemp felt they still had a very strong anti-Israel agenda and know that is perspective on Israel would be objective.
British army fighting the Taliban in Helmand Province Afghanistan 2006 3 para from 14 air assault brigade.
- Image ID: DNHM8DThe UN Human Right Council seems to Kent to be an instrument to attack Israel. They seem to devote a disproportionate amount of their efforts into trying to undermine Israel and that is partly as a result of many of the member states being vehemently opposed to Israel. I think Israel is right to be concerned about that.
Who was behind the original accusation? This is how it all came about.
On 3 January 2009, in response to the Gaza War, the Organization of the Islamic Conference's executive committee asked UNHRC to send a fact-finding mission to Gaza. On 12 January, UNHRC adopted Resolution S-9/1:
- to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission.
- It just so happens that by 22 September 2005, Israel's withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip to the 1967 Green Line, and the eviction of the four settlements in Samaria, was completed. In June 2007 Hamas took over the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority. Hamas were terrorists now with political power.
Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland from December 1990 to September 1997, was asked by UNHRC President Martin Uhomoibhi to lead the Mission but expressed disappointment with the mandate and refused to head the Mission for that reason. She stated that the UNHRC resolution was one-sided and "guided not by human rights but by politics". She later expressed full support for the report.
Richard Goldstone initially refused the appointment for the same reason, calling the mandate "biased" and "uneven-handed". In January 2011, Goldstone said that UNHRC "repeatedly rush to pass condemnatory resolutions in the face of alleged violations of human rights law by Israel but fail to take similar action in the face of even more serious violations by other States. Until the Gaza Report they failed to condemn the firing of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian centers". Following Goldstone's objection, the mandate was informally widened to cover activities by Palestinian militants as well, and the revised mandate, as quoted by the final report, became:
- to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.
Speaking at Brandeis University, Goldstone noted that the widened mandate was presented by UNHRC President to a plenary session, where it did not encounter a single objection. He later described as "tiresome and inept" allegations made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the mandate had not been broadened to cover violations by all parties. Despite Uhomoibhi's verbal commitment that there was no objection to the revised mandate, UNHRC never voted to revise the mandate, and resolution S-9/1 remained unchanged. Goldstone could only find fault with Israel but could not say a word about the Hamas terrorists.
Resource:
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-icc-court-attacking-israel-for-war.html
The Jerusalem Report, June 1, 2015, p.23-25
Netflix, The Crown- Marburg Files, Duke of Windsor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_Files
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Goldstone
https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/terrorism/pages/israel_strikes_back_against_hamas_terror_infrastructure_gaza_27-dec-2008.aspx
https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/maps/pages/israels%20disengagement%20plan-%202005.aspx#:~:text=By%2022%20September%202005%2C%20Israel's,Strip%20from%20the%20Palestinian%20Authority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Robinson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Fact_Finding_Mission_on_the_Gaza_Conflict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kemp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_Files
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