GOLDSTONE .. AN "OOPS" WHICH IS BEING EXAGGERATED

Richard Goldstone, the South African judge, who chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate on the claims that war crimes had been committed during the Israeli war against Gaza between 2008 and 2009. The findings which produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. The report stated that there is evidence of "potential war crimes" and "possibly crimes against humanity" by both Israel and Hamas. This finding unleashed back then, the wrath of Israel. Most of this wrath had been directed at the chairman of the mission, Goldstone himself.


In April's fool day, The Washington post published a column  written by the Judge himself titled "Reconsidering the Goldstone report on Israel and war crimes". His reconsideration, as he mentioned in his column, was based on:

“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.”

 He went on to explain that:

“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. 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.”

Looking at these two quotes from his column, oneself might conclude that what the judge is trying to say is: if Israeli authorities cooperated with his mission, the report might be a different document. He, though, repeated his condemnation to Hamas for not conducting any investigation regarding their military actions. But, still, Judge Richard pointed that the intention from the Israeli army is still questioned, adding that the validity of claims against the behavior of individual soldiers is established. He, in the quote above, used the verb "established" for the validity of the intention of individual soldiers. And used the verb "indicate" for the "matter of policy". 


Away from this "terminology game", it is true that Judge Goldstone's column undermined the credibility of the Goldstone report, and its future lays now on the decision of the UN secretary general. And it is also true, that Israel started a media campaign to exaggerate a personal column by the chairman of a UN commissioned mission to crush the credibility of the mission itself. Their aim "Israel's",  as Netanyahu put it, is to throw a report condemning them, into the "dustbin of history". And it is also a fact that no one in the Arab world seems to care to back the report or the mission. Not the Palestinian Authority itself. After all, they were the ones who asked for the report not to be voted in the first place.