Goldstone’s mea culpa! “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

An op-ed by Judge Richard Goldstone in the Washington Post, author of the infamous “Goldstone Report” on Israel’s war in Gaza (Operation Cast Lead), represents a clear and stunning victory for everyone involved in the effort to demonstrate the egregiously biased and careless nature of the report which bears his name.

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.

he 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.

Read the rest of the essay, here.

Written By
More from Adam Levick
What Harriet Sherwood won’t report: PA kindergarten students sing “Martyrdom for kids”
The following story provides some much needed context in light of Harriet...
Read More
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *