Goldstone Report Author Rethinks Findings On Israel And Gaza War Crimes

JERUSALEM — The head of a U.N.-appointed expert panel that investigated the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas in the winter of 2008-2009 said in a newspaper article that new accounts by Israel's military indicate that it did not deliberately target civilians, his report's central and most inflammatory accusation.

Israel's prime minister said the military was vindicated by Richard Goldstone's acknowledgment in an op-ed piece published Friday by The Washington Post that his conclusion appeared to have been wrong. The Goldstone Report's findings, released in September 2009, triggered outrage in Israel, which refused to cooperate with the investigation on the grounds that the panel he led was biased.

"We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war," Goldstone wrote. "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

The Goldstone Report concluded both sides committed potential war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

It accused Israel of using disproportionate force, deliberately targeting civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure, and using people as human shields. It also accused Hamas of deliberately targeting civilians and trying to spread terror through its rocket attacks.

The report called on each side to conduct independent investigations into the allegations.

In Friday's article, the South African judge wrote that a follow-up report by a separate U.N. committee of independent experts found that Israel has carried out investigations into more than 400 allegations of misconduct in Gaza.

Those investigations, he said, indicate that "civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy," though they backed the validity of some cases involving individual soldiers. Hamas, by contrast, has not carried out any investigations, according to the follow-up committee.

In the article, Goldstone regretted the loss of civilian life in Gaza, even if it was not intentional. He also said "it goes without saying" that Hamas commits war crimes by aiming rockets at civilians and continues to do so.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Goldstone Report should be formally nullified.

"Everything we said has been proven to be true," Netanyahu said. "Israel does not purposely target civilians and its investigative institutions are competent, while Hamas intentionally fires at innocent civilians and doesn't investigate anything."

"The fact that Goldstone has backtracked means the report should be buried once and for all."

Israel launched its military offensive, known as "Operation Cast Lead," in December 2008 in response to years of almost daily rocket fire from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel. During the three-week campaign, some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of civilians, drawing harsh international condemnations and the war crimes accusations in Goldstone's report.

Goldstone's team traveled to the Gaza Strip to collect evidence but Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation, accusing the panel of investigators of bias. Goldstone agreed in his op-ed that the U.N. Human Rights Council that set up the panel has a "history of bias against Israel."

In one example he cited of a new view of events, Goldstone recalled one of the most serious attacks his panel investigated, the killing of 29 members of the al-Simouni family by Israeli shelling that hit their Gaza home.

He wrote Friday that Israel's own investigation into the incident found the shelling was apparently the result of an Israeli commander's mistaken analysis of a drone image and that an Israeli officer who ordered the attack was under investigation.

"I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes," he wrote.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who also held the post at the time of the Gaza war, said Goldstone should "also publish his current findings before all the international forums where he showed the slanted and twisted report he authored."

Comments

[worker beenumbed]

03:44 PM on 05/28/2011

the report states that the idf bombed a mosque during the day when it was full of people who were at prayer in order to destroy weapons.It believed nitetime would have worked just as well

[cseper]

01:05 PM on 05/28/2011

Richard Goldstone is Jewish.

'nuff said!

[Amir Mizroch]

11:48 AM on 04/08/2011

http://amirmizroch.com/2011/04/07/can-israel-avoid-its-own-looming-nakba/

Richard Goldstone can’t stop what he’s started. The brilliant, yet naïve jurist thought he was helping to make the world a better place, thought he could bring human rights to one of the world’s most intractable conflicts, thought he could get Hamas to abide by international law [he was so proud he got the mandate to include Hamas violations of human rights]. He was terribly wrong, and now he knows it, and wishes he could change it. It remains to be seen how far he’ll go to make amends. Goldstone may have retracted his war crimes charge against Israel, but his report has a life of its own. The damage has been done and will continue to be done.

[Accouder]

02:05 AM on 04/07/2011

For a more reasoned analysis from Jews who do not tread the Zionist party line

http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2011-04-05/kenneth-roth-gaza-the-stain-remains-on-israels-war-record/

[Thelonius]

11:06 PM on 04/06/2011

http://www.jeremiahhaber.com/2011/04/judge-goldstone-to-associated-press.html

"Judge Goldstone to Associated Press: The Goldstone Report Stands as Written"

"After two days of misrepresentations in the press, and after a conversation between the judge and Minister of Interior Eli Yishai that was grossly misunderstood by the latter, Judge Goldstone had to break the silence that he had decreed on himself since the publication of his Washington Post Op-Ed..."

"...as presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the [UN] report needs to be reconsidered at this time."

"Judge Goldstone stands behind a report that found Israel guilty of war crimes. After two years he appears not to have changed his mind on that charge.

"Judge Goldstone stands behind a report that found Israel guilty of intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure. After two years he appear not to have changed his mind on that charge.

"Judge Goldstone stands behind a report that called upon Israel to launch a public judicial inquiry. Two years later he still makes that call.

"He is willing to consider the alternatives that faulty intelligence plus bad judgment was responsible for the al-Samouni family bombing, and that this deliberate attack may indeed be a war crime, should the commanding officer be found to have been negligent.

"Judge Goldstone has not expressed regret, apology, nor has he recanted the report...[H]e has 'no reason to believe that any part of the report need be reconsidered...' "

[Fein]

07:41 PM on 04/06/2011

Due to all the 'rumors', Goldstone's confirmed ;

"Goldstone says he will not retract report"

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/04/06/3086754/goldstone-says-he-will-not-retract-report

[tramagrama]

08:40 PM on 04/05/2011

Brainwashed Zionists commentators behave like serial robots programmed to deny everything.
And when you confront them with incontestable evidence, they always display the same kneejerk instinctive reaction, regurgitating their prepackaged talking points untill their hasbara batteries die of natural causes.
Goldstone's words ((or what they want to believe that Goldstone said) are making them look more delusional than ever, but just as predictable as always. I wonder if they ignore that the whole world is witnessing firsthand, not only their ongoing atrocities to the Palestinians, but also taking notes of the odious and outrageous declarations of Zionists religious leaders that say the offspring of non-Jews possess "genetic traits" of "cruelty and barbarism", or that no-Jews are donkeys, or authorizing the killing of non-Jewish children and babies for Jews, since "it is clear that they will grow to harm us..."
Racism, cruelty, humiliation, persecution, ethnic-cleansing, all are part of the core policies of zionism terror. A non-stop supremacist agenda against their neighbours.
Do they really believe they can continue to deceive the rest of the planet with their "we are the victims" crying song?

[JacksonJones]

08:30 PM on 04/05/2011

Given the number of times for which the Goldstone report has been cited on these fora and elsewhere as evidence that Israel did in fact target civilians during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, I am rather taken aback at the position some of the inveterate "pro-Palestinians" posting to these fora now appear to take in the midst of what looks to be a bit of a "strategic retreat" in light of Goldstone's retractions, i.e., they claim that they never ever actually took the Goldstone report to be an accusation that Israel targeted civilians during that campaign.

While I am rather surprised to find out that such people, having long assured me that I was wrong to take the opposite position, now find that they agreed with me, and now apparently Judge Goldstone as well, that Israel didn't actually do that.

Wonders never do cease. One expects that next week I will be treated to similar reversals about other basic matters like the right to self-determination for the State of Israel.

(e.g.: "....the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing (humiliating and terrorizing) the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population."

[Shingo]

10:12 PM on 04/05/2011

>> While I am rather surprised to find out that such people, having long assured me that I was wrong to take the opposite position, now find that they agreed with me, and now apparently Judge Goldstone as well, that Israel didn't actually do that.

I hiope you enjoyed knocking down that straw man that you just created.

There is no evidence that refuted the allegation Israel targeted civilians during that campaign. The IDF has investigated the IDF and come up with a clean sheet, but of course, they have not shared their evidence with the public.

What a surprise!!

[JacksonJones]

02:12 PM on 04/06/2011

You can't seem to make up your mind as to what the report did or didn't charge Israel with. Nevertheless, on the subject of targeting civilians, Judge Goldstone apparently disagrees with you.

[tramagrama]

08:19 PM on 04/05/2011

Samouni family responds to Goldstone turnaround on Israeli war crimes.
They say the attack was not accidental.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXxL0lg4mxs

[califlefty]

01:28 PM on 04/06/2011

another "massacre myth" you've bought into.

the facts here: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=55&x_article=1754

[Fein]

07:46 PM on 04/06/2011

A little info about your 'source' ; 'The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to the Washington Post's coverage of Israel's Lebanon incursion, and to the paper's general anti-Israel bias".[4]'

[Thelonius]

11:09 PM on 04/06/2011

Anyone who uses Camera as a source cannot be taken seriously.

[tramagrama]

08:11 PM on 04/05/2011

The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/goldstone-report-unanswered-questions-editorial

"The report did not in fact claim that Israel set out deliberately to murder civilians. It said that Operation Cast Lead was "deliberately disproportionate" and intended to "punish, humiliate and terrorise". That charge stands unanswered. Indiscriminate warfare, as opposed to deliberate killing, was undoubtedly state policy. Shooting the messenger is always easier than dealing with the message itself. This time, the messenger had the grace to shoot himself. It does not change what happened in Gaza, nor what will happen the next time war breaks out."

"The Goldstone report was a fact-finding mission, not a judicial inquiry. It was not a document of verdict, but put forward evidence for further investigation. So which facts caused Mr Goldstone to retract? Three, principally: that the shelling of a home in which 22 members of one family died was the consequence of an Israeli commander's erroneous interpretation of a drone image; that the officer was still under investigation; and that Israel has since investigated over 400 allegations of operational misconduct. Had he known then what he knows now, he concludes, the report would have been very different."

[JacksonJones]

08:14 PM on 04/05/2011

"That charge stands unanswered­."

Apparently, to Judge Goldstone, the charge has now been answered to his satisfaction and in the negative, innit?

[tramagrama]

08:27 PM on 04/05/2011

Read the Report.

[Shingo]

10:13 PM on 04/05/2011

>> Apparently­, to Judge Goldstone, the charge has now been answered to his satisfacti­on and in the negative, innit?

Not to his fellow commissioners it hasn't.

And how can it have been anwered to the satisfaction fo an investigator, when the investigation (ie. the IDF investiogting the IDF) has not shared any of it's evidence with the public?

[hjalmar]

06:57 PM on 04/05/2011

Interesting info the article did not contain:

Goldstone's shameful U-turn
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2011

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11895.shtml

""If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document." Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone's much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: "If I had known then that the report would turn me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all." And if that wasn't the original sentence, it is certainly the subtext of Goldstone's article.

This shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the judge, a campaign whose like in the past destroyed mighty people such as US Senator William Fulbright who was shot down politically for his brave attempt to disclose AIPAC's illegal dealings with the State of Israel."

[JacksonJones]

05:53 PM on 04/05/2011

Given the front-page play this report received when it was issued, one "wonders" why the stories about the retraction of its central claims gets none.

[tramagrama]

06:49 PM on 04/05/2011

The Report is a massive 1,979 paragraph document that Goldstone is neither retreating nor denying, except for the item discussed in paragraphs 704-885. It consists of one heading among thirteen dealing with violations of international law perpetrated by Israel.

[JacksonJones]

07:02 PM on 04/05/2011

Riiiight....He's "only" retracting the most serious, the most egregious, the signature allegation in the report. But to you....not so important to tell that side of the story.

[Shingo]

08:09 PM on 04/05/2011

>> one "wonders" why the stories about the retraction of its central claims gets none.

Largely becasue the Independent Committee of Experts’ conclusions that the Israeli investigations are structurally flawed and unlikely to yield effective measures of accountability and justice.

[JacksonJones]

06:12 PM on 04/06/2011

But the story is about Goldstone retracting his claims from the report.

[Fein]

05:44 PM on 04/05/2011

What's the fuss about?

Goldstone DID NOTt refute the war crimes allegations against Israel and Hamas.

He only said, ""We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war," Goldstone wrote. "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

[JacksonJones]

05:59 PM on 04/05/2011

Er.....yeah he did retract allegations of war crimes. He retracted the biggest, the most serious, the signature allegation of war crimes in his report. That is the difference he was speaking of.

[tramagrama]

06:51 PM on 04/05/2011

You're inventing nonsense.

[Shingo]

08:10 PM on 04/05/2011

>> Er.....yea­h he did retract allegation­s of war crimes.

Er.....no he didn't. He cleaimed that there was no evidence that civoians were targeteed as a matter of Israeli policy, which interestingly enough, was never claimed by the report.

[JacksonJones]

05:37 PM on 04/05/2011

Wow, the "pro-Palestinians" are tossing Goldstone overboard faster than the GOP tosses overboard a climate scientist who admits the possibility of global warming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/opinion/04krugman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[Fein]

05:46 PM on 04/05/2011

They're confused then. Despite the pro-Israelis' howls, Goldstone did not refute the accusations of war crimes. He just said, 'it would've been a different report.'

You're not confused, are you?

[JacksonJones]

05:52 PM on 04/05/2011

He certianly did. He retracted the signature allegation of war crimes in his report. That is the difference he was speaking of.