In 2009, Richard Goldstone led a fact-finding mission created by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the Gaza War. The mission's findings that Israel and Hamas had both committed serious violations of the laws of war led to a major controversy. You can find the whole report here on the UN site.
Today, it appears that Mr Goldstone is tempering that initial report. Last Friday, April 1, the Washington Post published an op/ed with Mr Goldstone's byline:
Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes
By Richard Goldstone, Friday, April 1,
We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.
The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”
Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.
The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.
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The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel. I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within. Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted....
There is much more, and it IS worth the read here.
I have written many times about Israel. For some of those columns go here, here, or here.
I found a YouTube video put out by the IDF on the historical background of what brought Israel to Operation Cast Lead. Go here to watch that and many other videos documenting the terrorist acts that Israel contends with every.single.day.
In response to Goldstone's op/ed, Israel National News had this to say:
Goldstone Recants: No Deliberate Targeting of Civillians by IDF
by Chana Ya'ar and Gavriel Queenann"If I had known then what I know now," Judge Richard Goldstone wrote on Friday in The Washington Post. "The Goldstone Report would have been a different document."
"While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy," Goldstone wrote.
The comment marks the recanting by Goldstone, who chaired the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, of charges that Israel deliberately targeted civilians during Operation Cast Lead. The operation, which commenced on 27 December 2008 and concluded on 18 January 2009, was aimed at stopping terrorist rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli civilians in southern Israel. Most military observers regard the operation as having had only limited, short-term success.
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...our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report. McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree; Hamas has done nothing."...
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Netanyahu Responds
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has called on the United Nations to cancel the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead following an op-ed piece written by the author of the report, retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone.
“Everything we said was proven to be true,” said Netanyahu. “Israel did not willfully harm civilians. Israel's investigating institutions are trustworthy, while Hamas investigated nothing.
“The fact that Goldstone withdrew his conclusions must lead to the cancellation of the report once and for all. We expect this farce to be rectified immediately."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak added that in order to repair the damage done by the report, the judge should present his current conclusions to all the international bodies to whom he presented the original report – and not merely give his opinion in an op-ed piece.
The IDF is “a moral army that operated according to international law,” Barak said.
( Read the rest here at IsraelNationalNews.com)
“The fact that Goldstone withdrew his conclusions must lead to the cancellation of the report once and for all. We expect this farce to be rectified immediately."
As noted above by Barak, enormous damage was inflicted on Israel because of this report, and it is NOW (long overdue) for the UN to reverse their rubber stamping of the ongoing antisemitism that is rampant - on a daily basis - not only in Gaza, but around the world. Of course, would be only fitting for the msm to also admit what lemmings they were, and ARE, in their rush to condemn Israel at every turn. Front page story, anyone?
Waiting...waiting.