Richard Goldston.. the judge who confronted the apartheid regime in South Africa and angered Israel in the Gaza Strip

Richard Goldstone is a South African jurist and lawyer, born on October 26, 1938, of a Jewish family,

Birth and upbringing

Richard Joseph Goldstone was born on October 26, 1938, in the Boksburg area near Johannesburg, South Africa, to a Jewish family of mixed English and Lithuanian ancestry, where his maternal grandfather was an Englishman and his paternal grandfather was a Lithuanian Jew who immigrated in the 19th century.

The apartheid system in the country of origin played a major role in the formation of Goldstone's personality and anti-oppressive tendencies, and therefore he was very popular among South African Jews, especially after the roles he played in the war courts in Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

Richard married Mrs. Nolen Goldstone, with whom he had two daughters and four grandchildren.

Study and scientific training

Goldstone received his primary education at Edward VII School in Johannesburg, then graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, in 1962 with a LLB with honors.

While studying, he practiced a student activity through his presidency of the Student Representation Council, and he was against the policy of apartheid in South Africa, and he communicated with the African National Congress, which was banned at the time.

He campaigned against the policy of excluding black students from his university, and then was elected president of the National Union of South African Students Abroad and in international gatherings.

practical experience

After graduating from university in 1963, Goldstone joined the bar, and joined the Bar, then took over the judiciary in 1980 at the Supreme Court of South Africa in the city of Transvaal, and at the time of his appointment he was the youngest judge in the Supreme Court of South Africa.

In 1982 he issued a ruling in the Govender case that evictions of non-whites were illegal, resulting in a virtual halt to the evictions.

In 1989 he was appointed to the Appeals Chamber, and from 1985 to 2000 Goldstone became National President of the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders in South Africa.

He worked as a judge in the Constitutional Court from 1994 to 2003, a period that witnessed the writing of the new constitution and the transition from the stage of racial discrimination to democracy.

Goldstone emerged as one of the liberal judges who agreed to take over the judiciary during the period of the National Party government, and saw that his presence in the judiciary was more useful than staying outside, with the aim of undermining the apartheid system, in addition to his interest in the independence of the judiciary, which earned him a distinguished national and international reputation.

From 1991 to 1994 he served as chair of the Commission of Inquiry on Public Violence and Intimidation, which became known as the Goldstone Commission, an independent judicial commission that investigated activities and people who posed a threat to the restoration of civil rights during the transition to post-apartheid South Africa.

Goldstone presided over the International Tribunal from 1994 to 1996 and investigated war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

In August 1997, Goldstone was selected as a member of the international committee set up by the Argentine government to monitor the investigation of Nazi crimes since 1938, after they transferred the victims' gold belongings to Argentina.

In the period between 1999 and 2001 he headed the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, and in 2004 the Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time Kofi Annan assigned him to supervise the independent international commission that investigated corruption related to the oil-for-food program in Iraq.

Goldstone was appointed in April 2009 as head of the United Nations fact-finding mission regarding the violations of the Israeli army during its war on the Gaza Strip from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009.

The Israeli war on Gaza, which lasted for 3 weeks, resulted in the killing of about 1,400 Palestinians, in addition to more than 5,000 wounded, most of them civilians.

The Goldstone report on the war, submitted in 2009 to the United Nations Human Rights Council, stated that "Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) are both guilty of war crimes during the aggression", which angered Israel and launched a massive attack against it.

Goldstone was Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg from 1996 to 2006, has served as a Visiting Professor of International Law at New York, Fordham, and Harvard Universities, Washington and Jefferson Colleges, and has participated in the Oxford George Washington International Human Rights Program.

Goldstone was named 2007 Beloit College Distinguished Professor of International Studies and has co-managed and served on the boards of several non-profit organizations that promote justice including Physicians for Human Rights, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, Legal Services South Africa, and Brandeis University Centre. Ethics, Justice, and Public Life, Human Rights Watch, and Center for Economic and Social Rights.

Between 1997 and 2004, Goldstone served as President of the Jewish Charitable Organization for Training and Education (World ORT), and an honorary member of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

literature

He has authored a number of books dealing with the international judicial institution, such as the book "International judicial institutions", as well as what is related to the investigation of war crimes, such as the book "For humanity" and the book "Do Judges Speak?"

(?Do judges speak out).

He has written numerous articles on international human rights law.

Richard Goldstone is the author of a set of books concerned with the (European) international judicial institution.

Awards and titles

Goldstone has received many local and international awards, including:

• 1994 International Human Rights Award from the American Bar Association.

• 2005 Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights.

• Richard E. Neustadt Award from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

• 2008 Global Peace through Law Award from the University of Washington.

• The 2009 Mark Arthur Prize for International Justice, and in the same year he was named The Hague Philosopher of Peace.

• Goldstone has also received honorary degrees from about 21 universities worldwide, most notably the Hebrew University and the universities of Notre Dame, Maryland, Cape Town, British Columbia, Glasgow and Calgary.

• He was an honorary member of the New York City Bar, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and was a member of the Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, South Africa.