Then, to the ANC's delight, just before the 1994 election Goldstone made allegations of illegal behaviour against three police generals, effectively ending their careers. Yet he had made no attempt to put these allegations to the men. Goldstone made no bones about the fact that his decision to publicise these allegations was based not on judicial grounds but on a desire for political publicity. The ANC loved it: when they won, he was given a seat on the Constitutional Court. 

His international reward came when he was appointed Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and hurried to secure prosecutions. Seizing upon the illegal detention and kidnapping of General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Alexsa Krsmanovic by Muslims in Sarajevo, Goldstone suggested that there were grounds for a prosecution and the men were flown to The Hague. Thus he broke the rules of procedure of the ICTY, for he failed even to ask the High Court in Belgrade, which had already instituted proceedings against the two men, for a deferral of competence to the ICTY. Moreover, by accepting them as de jure prisoners, he legitimised their undoubtedly illegal kidnapping. In his eagerness for prosecutions, Goldstone was now on very thin ice. Realising that he had acted illegally, Goldstone quickly changed the status of his prisoners from accused to witnesses. He then broke the rules again by indicting Djukic and thereafter suggested that the two men testify against their accomplices or face the alternative of being handed back to the Muslim authorities, who would doubtless torture them. This was indeed Krsmanovic's fate, but Djukic was dying of cancer and Goldstone withdrew the indictment. 

The Gaza inquiry was always going to be suspected of bias, having been commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, itself packed with notorious human rights violators. Both Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Mary Robinson, the former Irish President, turned down the mission for that reason. The accusation is that, having decided that to gain international advancement at the UN, Goldstone must run with the Islamist hounds, even though this is at the expense of the Israeli (and Jewish) hares. There is no doubt that the fact of his Jewishness makes his testimony doubly precious to the anti-Israel side, a fact acknowledged by Hamas, which has publicly thanked him. Small wonder that such fury is now being expressed against Goldstone throughout the Jewish world.