Glaring Omissions in Goldstone Report

There has been much discussion lately about the United Nations Human Rights Council's Goldstone Report on Gaza, which claims to have "found evidence that both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants committed serious war crimes."

Throughout the United States and abroad, the report has been denounced as one-sided and charged with pre-conceived conclusions. Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., recently expressed "very serious concern with the mandate that was given by the Human Rights Council ... which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable."

And so it was with great disappointment that I read Rabbi Brant Rosen's op-ed in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday that gives credence to the spurious conclusions of the Goldstone Report, omits significant details and is another excuse to vilify Israel.

Where is the recognition of Israel's right to self-defense when it is bombarded by thousands of rockets and mortars aimed at its civilians? Twelve thousand rockets have struck Israeli towns over the past eight years! When I was in Israel last summer, we learned of the severe trauma associated with the frequent "color red" loud speaker announcements that give children and families 10 seconds to take shelter when a rocket has been fired. Who in the United States would tolerate even two enemy rockets being fired at their homes, threatening their loved ones?

Where is the rebuke over Hamas' deliberate strategy to turn its own civilian areas into battlefields? Hamas has exploited the Palestinians in Gaza by the launching of rockets from populated areas, the use of civilian homes for arms and explosives manufacturing and the use of civilians as human shields against anticipated air strikes.

Where is the repudiation of Hamas' refusal to recognize the State of Israel? How can Israel negotiate for a two-state solution when one Palestinian partner is bent on its destruction?

The report mockingly calls on both sides to conduct "internal investigations" into war crimes. How can there be moral equivalence between a democracy protecting its citizens and the terrorists who target them? Israel has already opened more than 100 investigations into specific soldier actions, some of which have indeed led to prosecutions. That is the very definition of democratic responsibility. Can anyone say Hamas did the same?

The U.N.'s Goldstone Report belongs in a larger context, exposed just last week: Hamas is trained and armed by Iran, now driving toward nuclear weapons at breakneck speed. The discovery of another nuclear plant in Iran, deliberately hidden from inspectors, is but the latest in a long line of Iranian deception and there can be no doubt as to its intentions.

A nuclear Iran is the single greatest threat not just to Israel's security but to global stability. Crippling sanctions need to be the starting point. I helped lead a 2007 initiative in the Illinois General Assembly to require our state pension funds to divest holdings from those who invest in Iran's energy sector, and to date roughly $133 million has been stripped from Tehran's coffers.

We must all petition our elected leaders in Washington to arm the administration with the economic and diplomatic arsenal it needs to ensure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.

State Representative Julie Hamos (D-Wilmette) is a candidate for Congress for Illinois' 10th district.

Comments

[Cars345]

Taken off the UN web page for the Sixty-third General Assembly: Israel’s ‘enormous web of unlawful practices’ devastating Palestinian society” - Calling this “proportionate” is unacceptable

“Even under the aegis of a peace process, Israel continued to breach all human rights standards; killing, injuring, imprisoning, displacing and collectively punishing Palestinian civilians with impunity, she said. The humanitarian suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people also included destruction of their homes, property, infrastructure and land. Israel simultaneously continued its unlawful colonization campaign; building and expanding settlements, the wall, bypass roads, checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem –- all aimed at altering the Territory’s character, status and demographic composition, entrenching its presence on the land and advancing its expansionist agenda. She said Israel had relentlessly pursued a two-dimensional policy for decades, namely the brutalization and oppression of the Palestinian people and the confiscation and colonization of the land. Those policies had involved an “enormous web of unlawful practices” that entailed gross and systematic human rights violations, many of which amounted to war crimes, causing severe devastation and damage to Palestinian society. During the reporting period, occupying forces used excessive and indiscriminate force against civilians through extrajudicial killings, violent military attacks and destruction of homes, with hundreds injured and 68 children killed in the first six months of this year. The rights of life, liberty and personal security were also violated by armed, extremist Israeli settlers illegally transferring to the Occupied Territory

The Goldstone report must be accepted in full.

[Cars345]

In the first attack of the war, the bombing of the graduates of the Gaza Police Academy, Israel killed more people than the Hamas killed in 8 years of rockets.
So much for justifiably self defence!

On top of that Policemen (unless organized and equipped like military) according to international law are considered non combattants. Only if they use their weapons in fighting do they become unlawful combattants.
Hardly possible when they died in the first action of Operation Cast Lead before they even had a chance to use their arms!

According to Israeli rules however even a doctor operating inside a Hamas run hospitable is taking the risk of being considered a combattant.

[Glacial]

"Where is the repudiation of Hamas' refusal to recognize the State of Israel? How can Israel negotiate for a two-state solution when one Palestinian partner is bent on its destruction?"

... Because the report is an investigation of war crimes and potential crimes against humanity committed by Israel and Hamas during Operation Cast Lead, not a comment on the peace process. Why would it?

[Macready]

she can't answer Glacial . . she is just spouting received opinion . . she's not a thinker . . . notice how she completely ignores israel's nuclear weapons and the its use of white phosphorous in civilian areas . . .

[StCuthbert]

LOL, you agree when the State Rep. talks about something irrelevant and then bring in something equally irrelevant: Israel's nuclear weapons. What, because Israel might have nucelar weapons that means their actions are unjustified?