Judge and UN report author says report would have been different if he’d known what he now knows
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Israel will ask the United Nations to revise the Goldstone Report on the 2008-2009 Gaza war, following publication 1 April of an Op-Ed article by judge Richard Goldstone in the Washington Post.
Goldstone says that the conclusions drawn by his fact-finding report for the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which included allegations that Israel may have intentionally targeted civilians, were based on less information than is now available.
“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.”
Goldstone does not go as far as “retracting” statements made in his report, as the Jerusalem Post reports, but he does say that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” The Guardian qualifies his article as having “expressed regret that his report may have been inaccurate.”
Apology, retraction, and greater documentation in the future
A senior Israeli defense department officer told the Jerusalem Post that Goldstone’s remarks will not be enough alone to stop a future investigation, and that Israel must document every action in Gaza in order to avoid another investigation.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Saturday said he will insist the UN rescind the report, according to Bloomberg and Israeli media, and South Africa’s IOL (Independent Online) news reports Monday that President Shimon Peres says he wants an apology from Goldstone.
US Jewish groups, notably the influential American Jewish Committee, over the weekend called for Goldstone to retract his report and ask the UN to approve a revised version, according to the Jerusalem Post. “‘The Washington Post is not the place for Judge Goldstone to recant the biased and damaging UN report he wrote on the Gaza conflict,’ said AJC Executive Director David Harris.”
Background story on Goldstone report and the UN Security Council, and initial report, October 2009 GenevaLunch
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UN Human Rights Council, meeting in a special session 15 and 16 October, has approved the report into possible war crimes during the December 2008-January 2009 incursion by Israel into the Gaza Strip. The council will forward the report to the UN General Assembly for consideration. At the end of the session countries voted, 25-6, to approve the report, and 11 countries abstained.
Israel argued that the report was one-sided and ignored the attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians which precipitated the war. The US voted against approval, saying that it would hamper Mideast peace efforts.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva will reopen a debate Thursday 15 October on the conduct of both sides in last winter’s brief war in Gaza, Palestine, between Israel and Hamas, the Gaza strip’s political authority. A report by former South African judge Richard Goldstone suggests both armed groups may have committed war crimes. It recommends that they conduct their own impartial investigations within six months or have the case referred to the International Criminal Court. A call by Libya for the UN in New York to take up the report by strongly rebuffed by Israel which said late Wednesday 14 October that as long as the report is “on the table” there can be no peace negotiations with Palestine.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), the nominal representative of the Palestinians, initially asked for the debate on the report to be deferred, but it came under sharp criticism from Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza strip since elections in 2007 forced out Fatah and the PA.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UN Human Rights Council is this week debating whether to take action on the 557-page report on the Gaza conflict produced for it by South African judge Richard Goldstone and published 15 September. The report has been the subject of accusations of bias from Israel and Palestine, both of which are accused, by the report, of serious crimes. The United States jumped into the fray Tuesday 29 September with Michael Posner, US assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, calling the report “deeply flawed” and saying the US disagrees “sharply with its methodology and many of its recommendations.”
