Richard Goldstone responds to Israel: “In Gaza, I was surprised and shocked by the destruction and misery there. I had not expected it. I did not anticipate that the IDF would have targeted civilians and civilian objects. I did not anticipate seeing the vast destruction of the economic infrastructure of Gaza including its agricultural lands, industrial factories, water supply and sanitation works. These are not military targets.”
Goldstone Report
[T]he [Gaza] victory was a Pyrrhic one. Israel did not realize that the rules have changed with Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president… the Gaza campaign continues being fought – in the diplomatic arena and in public opinion – and Israel must cope with its consequences in a less-friendly Obama era.
IOA Editor: This is a useful, Israel-centric analysis in that it reflects Israel’s concerns for its ability to maintain an upper hand in view of global opposition to the Occupation. Benn’s implied assertion that there is a profound change toward Israel under the Obama administration is, at best, premature; more likely, it is simply unfounded. So far, there is no evidence of US pressure on Israel to ‘change its ways’, and this ‘would-be’ pressure can only be added to the long list of theoretical, invisible Obama changes of past US ME policies – widely assumed, incorrectly.
Also, unlike Benn, some pointed to Israel’s failed Gaza attack soon after it took place. To cite the obvious, see Gideon Levy’s Everyone Agrees War in Gaza Was a Failure – aside from its profound immorality, which Levy has been pointing to repeatedly from day one.
Over 750 individuals and organizations from around the world signed on to the US Palestine Community Network’s letter to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, demanding the full implementation of the Goldstone report into Gaza war crimes. Sign letter.
Cast Lead is what is bringing down Israel’s standing, not the reports written in its wake. Those are intended to prevent another Cast Lead, of the kind that the Goldas monstrously characterize as creating “an infrastructure of stability.” Nearly 1,400 were killed and tens of thousands were maimed and left homeless for an “infrastructure of stability,” which is neither an infrastructure nor stable.
[British Ambassador to the UN said that] he supports the findings of the Goldstone commission, and called for both Israel and the Palestinians to investigate its conclusions… The [Israeli] Foreign Ministry convened an emergency meeting in light of Sawer’s comments, and told ministers not to issue any official response.
In looking for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then, we should once and for all stop looking to governments and officials (elected or otherwise), in the US, Israel, or among the Palestinians themselves. As the Obama administration has already demonstrated, the US government, in the present political conjuncture, will never put peace and justice in Palestine ahead of internal domestic pressures and politics; the Israeli government will not for one moment back down from its continually expanding colonization plan in the West Bank and East Jerusalem until it is compelled by outside pressure to do otherwise; and the Palestinian government — well, there is no such thing.
Even supporters of the Palestinian Authority admit that it was clearly outmanoeuvred by the Israelis and the Americans, and was seen to be totally out of touch with its own public and the Arab and international supporters.
IOA Editor: Illuminating coverage of the background to the Abbas’ decision, and valid practical advice to the PA. However, stating that the Israeli government stood up to “tremendous US pressure” is not supported by by facts: there is no evidence of any actual US pressure.
We strongly urge the leadership to reconsider its decision, and to begin to forge an independent path of diplomacy based on respect for international law that can lead to genuine justice and durable peace.
In a single phone call to his man in Geneva, Mahmoud Abbas has demonstrated his disregard for popular action, and his lack of faith in its accumulative power and the place of mass movements in processes of change.
“[A]fter deliberations among President Abbas and members of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad [and] President Abbas issued a decree to form a committee to find the reasons behind postponement of the debate on Goldstone’s report at the UN Human Rights Council.”
IOA Editor: Why does this smack of a Whitewash Committee?
Amnesty, HRW: US intervention to quash a vote on the report “obliges the United States and other governments blocking action at the council to press Israel and Hamas to commence credible investigations.”
The establishment of a state commission of inquiry to investigate the Goldstone report’s allegations of Israeli war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza is the only appropriate response the Israeli government can make.
The report’s findings demand action by the international community, including the United States. The importance of U.S. action is elevated because the U.S. currently holds the Presidency of the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. body charged with enforcing the report’s conclusions.
‘We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the era of impunity,’ Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, was quoted by IPS in response to the findings of a 574-page report by a four-member United Nations Fact finding mission.
Following the release last week of the Goldstone commission findings which accused Israel of committing war crimes during its offensive in the Gaza Strip, [Israeli] diplomatic officials feared that the report would weigh heavily on the agenda of this week’s United Nations General Assembly meeting. Israel’s fears proved to have no basis in fact as the report was cited by just a few world leaders.
“I was driven particularly because I thought the outcome might, in a small way, assist the peace process,” he told the Forward. “I really thought I was one person who could achieve an even-handed mission.”
Israeli democracy functions for Jews, who are well represented, but has been denying any representation to 4 million people for 42 years. It allows itself to do whatever it wants with them in the name of the democratic “national consensus.” Who will protect them?
I ACCEPTED with hesitation my United Nations mandate to investigate alleged violations of the laws of war and international human rights during Israel’s three-week war in Gaza last winter. The issue is deeply charged and politically loaded. I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed Palestinian groups. I accepted because my fellow commissioners are professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation. But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.
“I deny that completely,” Judge Richard Goldstone said… “I was completely independent, nobody dictated any outcome, and the outcome was a result of the independent inquiries that our mission made,” he said.
Netanyahu’s message is that the Goldstone Commission report hinders the United States’ war on terror. The Foreign Ministry decided Wednesday to focus their efforts to combat the report’s accusations on the United States, Russia and a few other members of the United Nations Security Council and the Human Rights Council that are involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
IOA Editor: The Israeli propaganda machine is going full blast. To protect democracy from terrorism, the UN report deserves every possible rejection, naturally.
See also Norman Finkelstein’s interview and Gideon Levy’s commentary on the UN report.
There’s a name on every bullet, and there’s someone responsible for every crime. The Teflon cloak Israel has wrapped around itself since Operation Cast Lead has been ripped off, once and for all, and now the difficult questions must be faced. It has become superfluous to ask whether war crimes were committed in Gaza, because authoritative and clear-cut answers have already been given. So the follow-up question has to be addressed: Who’s to blame? If war crimes were committed in Gaza, it follows that there are war criminals at large among us. They must be held accountable and punished. This is the harsh conclusion to be drawn from the detailed United Nations report.
IOA Editor: The time to “avert disgrace” was a year ago, before launching the Gaza attack. The Hague is the proper place for states that behave criminally – deservedly, to use Levy’s own language.
Had Richard Goldstone not served as the head of the UN inquiry into the Gaza war, the accusations against Israel would have been harsher, Goldstone’s daughter, Nicole, said in an interview conducted in Hebrew with Army Radio on Wednesday.
Israel “punished and terrorised” civilians in Gaza in a disproportionate attack in its three-week war on the territory earlier this year, a United Nations report has found. Judge Richard Goldstone, who led the inquiry, said he found evidence Israel targeted civilians and used excessive force in the assault, which was launched on December 27. “The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly in some respects crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defence Force,” Goldstone, a former South African justice, said. More than 1,400 Palestinians – about a third of them women and children – were killed in the war. Thirteen Israelis died.
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