BREAKING NEWS Israel Finance Minister: Goldstone Is 'Anti-Semite'

by Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Richard Goldstone, the head of a United Nations commission that accused Israel of war crimes during last winter's Gaza operation, is a Jewish "anti-Semite," according to Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz.

"Not all Jews are perfect," Steinitz told The Jewish Week Wednesday when asked about Goldstone, a prominent South African judge. "Some people can be unfair, unjust, unbalanced and even of bad character. So it is with Jews. Just as a non-Jew can be anti-Semitic, a Jew can also be anti-Semitic and discriminate against our people and despise and hate our people."

"It has nothing to do with the origin of the investigator," Steinitz continued during an interview here after a visit to NASDAQ market site in Midtown. "Evidently this person committed some kind of crime because

he used double standards against the Jewish state, which he would not use - and nobody would order him to use - against the United States, Britain, France or Russia in similar circumstances."

Steinitz's assessment is in sharp contrast to Goldstone's daughter Nicole, who told Israel Army Radio Wednesday from her home in Toronto that her father is a "Zionist and loves Israel."

"It wasn't easy for him to see and hear what happened," she said. "I think he heard and saw things he didn't expect to see and hear, and I am 100 percent sure he [conducted the investigation] in the hope that the Israelis would come to cooperate, and he wanted to help find a long-term solution for the state of Israel."

The report, issued this week by the UN Human Rights Commission, concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the Gaza conflict. It issued a harsh rebuke of Israel's conduct of the war, saying it didn't do enough to protect civilians.

Israeli officials strongly denounced the report. The Foreign Ministry said the report "effectively ignores Israel's right of self-defense."