The Goldstone Report: The UN Blood Libel

Articles and Reports: Responding to the Libel (page 2)

"A biased war report" Baltimore Sun, October 20, 2009

To understand how this report, which is clearly biased against Israel, came about, it is necessary to consider three factors: the nature of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which has displayed a long-term bias against Israel dating back to its previous incarnation as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights; the context of the Israeli invasion of Gaza; and the dynamics of military combat in urban areas against guerrilla forces.

1. The nature of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Originally formed to protect human rights throughout the world, the UNHRC has instead chosen to single out Israel for blame. Despite an estimated 400,000 civilians having been killed in the Darfur region of Sudan, and tens of thousands of civilians killed in conflicts in Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Iraq and Afghanistan, the UNHRC regularly castigates Israel for human rights violations, while other countries killing civilians during armed conflicts escape such condemnation. One must ask why Israel, which has been defending itself against terrorist attacks since it was created in 1948, merits such criticism from the UNHCR...

2. The context of the Israeli invasion. The Goldstone Report concentrates on a number of cases where it accuses Israel of "disproportionate" force and "deliberately targeting civilians" - both violations of international law. What was missing from the report was a detailed analysis of the reasons why Israel decided to invade Gaza, where it allegedly committed the crimes of which the Goldstone Report accuses it.

After suffering no fewer than 8,000 rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza since 2001, and a sharp escalation of the attacks after Hamas unilaterally terminated a six-month cease-fire in December, Israel chose to invade Gaza. Israel had no choice but to enter Gaza to suppress the rocket and mortar attacks that were making life unbearable in southern Israel from the Gaza border to Be'ersheva, as "red alerts" forced inhabitants of the region under threat from the attacks to flee to shelters on a regular basis, thereby disrupting normal life. Under these circumstances, an impartial commission, looking at the causes of the Israeli invasion, might well have found it to be a justified act of self-defense. However, as noted above, the Goldstone Commission was far from impartial.

3. War in urban areas. Urban areas are among the most difficult in which to wage war, especially against guerrilla forces who often hide among civilians. In the case of Gaza, there are numerous pictures and reports of Hamas fighters firing rockets from civilian areas such as houses and schools.

Any commander leading his troops into combat has two central tasks: successfully completing his mission and protecting his soldiers. In the fighting in Gaza, where Hamas fighters hid out in houses and had fortified positions near schools, each Israeli commander faced a very difficult choice - destroying the Hamas fighters with tank or artillery fire, or risking increased casualties among his own troops by getting involved in close-in combat. In the so-called "fog of war," therefore, it is not surprising that Palestinian civilians got killed as Israeli soldiers fought their way into Gaza, despite clear reports that Israel did, in fact, try to minimize civilian casualties.

However, there is a larger moral issue here that was not covered at all in the Goldstone report. Which of the two sides bears the greater moral onus: Hamas, which deliberately fired mortars and rockets from Gaza at civilians in Israel, or Israel, which sought to suppress such fire at its civilians by invading Gaza and, in the process, killed Palestinian civilians - not deliberately, as the Goldstone report alleges, but as part of the military operations aimed at stopping the rockets?

"Open Letter From Trevor Norwitz" GoldstoneReport.org, October 19, 2009

"In a nutshell, your Report is a deeply flawed document that is not only unbalanced and inflammatory, but reflects a procedurally deficient rush to judgment incapable producing any meaningful findings, least of all charges as grave, politically loaded and emotionally laden as those of 'war crimes' and 'crimes against humanity'.

"I understand that you and your fellow Commissioners were outraged by Israel's decision to snub you (as is evident in the numerous references to their refusal to cooperate throughout your Report – I stopped counting at forty) but if your investigation was truly seeking to uncover the truth, you quite simply could not have reached conclusions and made such momentous and awful accusations based on one-sided evidence...

"Moreover, your Report shows virtually no effort to look beyond the evidence presented to you (overwhelmingly from the Palestinian side) to find out what really happened in Gaza and – most crucially – why: why Israel launched the (unfortunately named) 'Operation Cast Lead' and why individual officers and soldiers took the actions they did in the heat of battle...

It is also telling that you and your fellow Commissioners even felt compelled – in the context of a fact-finding mission regarding the war in Gaza – to call into question Israeli laws that are central to its identity as the Jewish homeland, including the so-called Law of Return that guarantees Israeli citizenship for all of Jewish ancestry...

"One of these fundamental assumptions that permeates your entire analysis is that Hamas is a nonviolent political organization distinct from its military wing. This characterization of Hamas is entirely implausible. It requires more than naiveté to reach that conclusion...Because it openly embraces terrorist tactics, Hamas is widely condemned as a terrorist organization. In light of all the readily available evidence, the suggestion that Hamas can be neatly separated from its military wing is spurious...

"My point here is not to refute as a substantive matter that highly troubling aspect of your Report – I shall leave that to others – but simply to observe that a critical assumption underlying many of your claims of 'war crimes' is that Hamas should be considered independent of its infamous military wing. To the extent that this assumption is flawed, the conclusions on which it is based are invalid. But the very fact that you approached your fact-finding mission with this as a basic assumption indicates a perspective that calls the conclusions drawn by your Mission into question.

The above examples show that the way you chose to characterize your Mission and the scope you established for your investigation and Report reflect a biased and political effort. What did you do when the 'very lopsided unfair resolution' of the HRC commissioned your group to find facts to support their determination of human rights violations by Israel? You did that and more: you decided to use your Mission as a political vehicle to 'draw attention to [the victims']' plight; you established new legal standards that you then found Israel did not live up to; you gratuitously (and ironically) lambasted Israel for repressing dissent and freedom of the press and association; and you even gratuitously raised questions concerning Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state...

Perhaps the most fundamental and flawed assumption underlying your Report is the position that the tragic situation of the Palestinian people, and especially those in Gaza, is all Israel's fault...

I could go on but I think the point is clear that the historical context you adopted and with which you approached your assignment is a biased and ahistorical one, which reflects a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel political world-view that dictated the tone and preordained the outcome of your investigation.

"Human wrongs at the UN: World's worst try to put Israel in the dock" The NY Daily News, October 17, 2009

Ever since Israel's 2005 pullout from Gaza, innocent Israelis were battered by thousands of mortars and missiles launched by Hamas in its war to destroy the Jewish state and kill its people.
And, straight from the devious terrorist textbook, Hamas was assembling and launching its rockets from civilian neighborhoods, near mosques, near schools, near hospitals.

For this, the Human Rights Council - already infamous for its anti-Israel bias - ginned up an investigation, producing a report calling the terrorists and the Israeli defense forces equally culpable. Equally guilty of crimes against humanity.
The Council has now formally ratified this libel...

Only five nations stood with the U.S. in opposition: Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine. Good for them. We have to ask, again, what's the use of Americans sitting on the Council, spitting into its hurricane-force winds.
And 25 nations are party to the crime. Among them are, this is rich, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia. Shame on them.
France and Britain were among the abstainers. Unlike the dictatorships, the democracies should have known better, so double shame on them.

As Elie Wiesel once said, "Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor."

"Goldstone Report a disgrace to justice' The Jerusalem Post, October 15, 2009

The chief rabbi of South Africa, Warren Goldstein, has blasted fellow countryman Judge Richard Goldstone's report on Israel's assault on Hamas last winter as "a disgrace to the most basic notions of justice, equality and the rule of law."

In an op-ed for The Jerusalem Post, Goldstein, who also holds a PhD in human rights law, notes that the report "uses the veneer of respectability that comes with legal methodology, and with the presence of an internationally respected judge, to gain credibility."...

In the case of the Goldstone mission, the chief rabbi writes, "careful analysis reveals that the legalities utilized are merely a cover for a political strategy of delegitimizing Israel... Any civilized legal system requires that justice be done on two levels: procedural and substantive. The Goldstone mission is replete with procedural and substantive injustices."

Remarks by Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Special Order on the UN's Goldstone Report on Israel's Conduct of Operation Cast Lead, U.S. House of Representatives, October 14, 2009

[Mr./Madam] Speaker, this week at the United Nations, another assault is being launched on the democratic, Jewish State of Israel – an assault that the United States must unequivocally oppose and defeat. Predictably, this assault has its roots in the UN's so-called "Human Rights Council," an institution hijacked by dictatorships and gross human rights violators...

This mission's mandate had nothing to do with fact-finding, and everything to do with persecuting Israel for defending itself. The mandate prejudged Israel's guilt, authorizing the mission to investigate only assumed human rights violations by Israel. The mandate did not include, or even mention, the thousands of rocket and mortar attacks, spanning eight years, by Hamas and other violent extremist groups in Gaza, against civilian targets in southern Israel...

The report made baseless accusations that Israel's military had deliberately attacked civilians. The report disregarded extensive evidence that violent extremist groups in Gaza used civilians as human shields, operating from schools, mosques, and hospitals. It ignored the Israeli military's extraordinary efforts to target its operations in order to minimize civilian casualties. It gave a free pass to the Iranian and Syrian regimes, which provide material and financial assistance to Hamas and other murderous groups in Gaza. Finally, this report recommended further persecution of Israel through follow-up action by the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, and the International Criminal Court, among others.

"The U.N.'s Anti-Israel Crusade Continues," by Nile Gardiner, American Spectator, September 21, 2009

This is yet another example of the U.N. publishing a supposedly neutral report written by a panel of "experts" that includes key members who have already reached their own conclusions well before the investigation has even begun. The United Nations receives more than $5 billion a year from U.S. taxpayers, whose money is all too often squandered on highly politicized projects targeting close American allies such as Israel.

"Blocking the Truth of the Gaza War: How the Goldstone Commission Understated the Hamas Threat to Palestinian Civilians," Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 9, No. 10, September 18, 2009

  • Was the UN commission's approach one-sided against Israel, or unbiased and objective as commission chairman Richard Goldstone contended? Statements of Palestinians recorded by the commission and posted on the UN website provide authentic evidence of the commission's methodology and raise serious questions about its intentions to discover the truth.
  • Commission members did not ask the interviewed Palestinians questions about the activities of Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip which could be classified as war crimes or that were potentially dangerous to innocent Palestinians. Furthermore, there was no serious consideration of Palestinian "friendly fire" incidents, and we can only guess how many Palestinian civilians were killed or wounded by Palestinian fire.
  • Reports issued by the Palestinian terrorist organizations themselves detailed the fighting in a way that often contradicted the Palestinian witnesses. In addition, the witnesses hid vital information from the commission regarding the presence of armed terrorists or exchanges of fire in their vicinity.
  • On June 28 and 29, 2009, the Goldstone Commission recorded Palestinian statements at the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City. [This report is] analysis of the four main statements, the way the commission interpreted them, and reports from other Palestinian sources which contradict the testimony presented to the commission.

"When Goldstone Indicted a Fictional Character (and a Dead Man)," by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, Arutz Sheva, September 29, 2009

Judge Richard Goldstone, whose recent United Nations Human Rights Council investigation purported to find evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, once indicted a fictional Serbian character and a dead man for war crimes as well. As in Gaza, those indictments were also allegedly based on "eyewitness testimony."

...The problem for NATO forces in tracking down the serial rapist was that Gruban from Bijelo Polje, also known as Gruban Malic, is a fictional character from Hero on a Donkey, a famous Serbian novel about World War II by Miodrag Bulatovic.

...After the indictment of "Gruban" became known, Jevric capitalized on his countrymen's bemused fascination with Goldstone's "investigation" and wrote a book called Hero on a Donkey Goes to The Hague. In the book he detailed how his comment to an American reporter took on a life of its own.

"IDF Videos Disprove Goldstone Report" Arutz Sheva, September 12, 2009

"...[The first] video shows a Hamas terrorist repeatedly attempting to use innocent bystanders, including children, as human shields. The terrorist approaches a group of three children who run away from him, and then the terrorist lies on the ground feigning an injury. Afterward the terrorist walks into a civilian compound and approaches a man who pushes him away, he then enters a civilian building.

The [second] video...shows a Hamas terrorist firing a rocket from the roof of a house and then calling to a group of children accompanied by an adult to come to the entrance of the house to escort him out."

"In rebuking Israel and letting Hamas off the hook, the UN's Goldstone Report is a gift to world terrorism" Telegraph.UK, September 19, 2009

Last winter's conflict between the IDF and Hamas began after the IDF decided it had to put a stop to the near daily rocketing of their Southern towns. Rockets had killed and maimed children and adults; they regularly hit schools, kindergartens, and homes. The barrage of approximately 8,000 rockets began – I have to repeat this – began, after Israel withdrew its soldiers and dissolved all of the Israeli communities in Gaza in one of the biggest "land for peace" gestures in its history.

In Operation Cast Lead, the IDF employed drones, intelligence, and made every effort to mount a surgical attack, but was faced with an opponent who used homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals as military bases. Israel escaped large casualties largely because of it has invested in civil defence, in training to its citizens to move quickly into shelters and to live there if need be. Hamas has had the means to build a system of bomb shelters for its citizens, but as a Palestinian friend of mine put it, "They don't want to. Civilian casualties are too useful to them."

The report actually touched on Hamas's strategy of using human shields when it cited Hamas leader Fathi Hammad, who boasted that:

    "For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed humans shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death like you desire life.'"

But the report went on to conclude that "it does not consider [this admission] to constitute evidence [of the deliberate use of human shields]".

If the world community does not greet this kangaroo court's report with the sceptism it deserves, it rewards the use of human shields. And we cannot complain if we see more terrorism and more innocents put in front of missile launchers.

"Goldstone Report: 575 pages of NGO 'cut and paste,'" NGO Monitor, September 16, 2009

The 575-page Goldstone report is primarily based on NGO statements, publications, and submissions (70 references each for B'Tselem and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and more than 30 for Al-Haq and Human Rights Watch). In its analysis of NGO submissions and testimony, NGO Monitor found numerous false and unsubstantiated allegations. Nevertheless, the Goldstone committee simply copied the NGO biases, flawed methodology, and false claims, rendering the entire report invalid.

Goldstone's press conference in New York and the report's recommendations constitute another step in the Durban Strategy, crystallized at the 2001 NGO Forum, using the language of human rights and international law as weapons in the political war to isolate and demonize Israel, and restrict legitimate responses to terror.

Still no "human shields" in Gaza. Following HRW and Amnesty, paragraph 495 ignores evidence that contradicts Goldstone's predetermined conclusions: "Although the situations investigated by the Mission did not establish the use of mosques for military purposes or to shield military activities, the Mission cannot exclude that this might have occurred in other cases."

The report copies NGO distortions of international law, including:

  • Promotion of the false legal claim invented by the PLO Negotiation Affairs Department (and promoted by NGOs such as B'tselem, HRW, Amnesty) that Gaza remains "occupied" after the 2005 disengagement (p. 9). The political objective of this distortion is to manufacture humanitarian obligations that do not exist under international law. (The ICRC, in contrast, had acknowledged that Gaza is an "autonomous territory." However, after the release of the Goldstone report, the ICRC changed its website to promote the biased conclusion of the Mission.)
  • The classification of the Gaza police force as "civilian" (paras. 33-34) even though independent studies have shown that more than ninety percent were members of Hamas' military wing and active combatants.
  • The claim that under the Geneva Convention (para 28) Israel has a duty to supply food to Gazans. No such duty exists and the Commission does not cite to any specific provision of the Convention to support its claim. For more on NGO distortions of international law regarding Gaza, see NGO Monitor's report on the topic.
  • Paragraph 493 claims that the failure of armed Palestinian groups "to distinguish themselves from the civilian population by distinctive signs is not a violation of international law in itself." This is patently false. The adoption of civilian dress is a violation of the IHL obligation against perfidy.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Goldstone's report asserts that the "data provided by non-governmental sources with regard to the percentage of civilians among those killed are generally consistent ..." (para. 30). There is no such "consistency" -- the numbers claimed by these organizations differ by the hundreds. Goldstone also fails to note the major lack of credibility in PCHR's data, such as characterizing two leading Hamas military figures, Nizar Rayan and Siad Siam, as civilians. And as researchers have shown, the B'Tselem data, while different from PCHR's, is also unreliable.

Prior to the report's release, Goldstone made several public statements that the Commission's work was "not judicial. This is not a court." (This claim was used to defend Prof. Christine Chinkin's membership on the committee, who should have recused herself because of prejudicial comments made during the war.) In contrast, the report draws legal conclusions, asserting (without basis) that "the normative framework for the Mission has been general international law, the Charter of the United Nations, international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international criminal law" (para 15). But these legal judgments are issued without any evidentiary procedures in place, including the right to cross-examination or guarantees of due process.


"Ros-Lehtinen Comments on New Anti-Israel UN Report as General Assembly Begins New Session Under Libyan Presidency" (Press Release), September 16, 2009

    "It would appear the UN is continuing its relentless anti-Israel bias, accusing the Jewish state of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    Given that this report's mandate came from the despot-controlled Human Rights Council, we should not be surprised.

    Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly kicks off another year of anti-U.S., anti-Israel, and anti-freedom activism – transferring its gavel from a defrocked Sandinista to a Qaddafi shill.

    Congress must demand better by enacting pending legislation that would leverage our contributions to the UN to produce sweeping, meaningful reform of that body."

"Israel Prepares for the Next Round," Brett Joshpe, American Spectator, September 11, 2009

"The report is likely to direct disproportionate criticism at Israel and its military for its conduct during the Operation.

After all, the Goldstone Commission's original mission was "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression." One of the members of the Goldstone Commission, Christine Chinkin, even signed a letter earlier this year condemning Israel for committing war crimes. Knowing that the Commission had already reached it conclusion, Israel refused to participate in the investigation."

"The Goldstone Mission - Tainted to the core (II)", Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post, August 21, 2009

    "...it was Hamas that fired deliberately on Israeli civilians. It was Hamas that boasted - only days before the conflict exploded in December - that Israel was "hopeless and desperate" when faced with its attacks. It was Hamas that promised to continue firing rockets, that painted Israel and Jews as the sons of apes and pigs and that called for their murder in its charter and publicly incited to their genocide. Once the war began, it was Hamas that continued to target Israeli civilians - not infrequently but as part of a systematic, widespread attack. It was Hamas that chose to position its fighters in Palestinian civilian areas. It was Hamas that decided to misuse humanitarian symbols - such as using an ambulance to transport fighters - to launch attacks. It was Hamas that recruited children into armed conflict. These are all indisputable war crimes. ...the legitimacy of the report cannot be determined solely based on whether Hamas's heinous and significant crimes are revealed; the legitimacy of the report also rests - perhaps primarily - on the fairness of its findings with respect to Israel. And this fairness, in turn, is compromised not only by the tarnished mandate, but by the witness testimony and documentary evidence controlled by the Hamas terrorist government..."

"REQUEST TO DISQUALIFY PROF. CHRISTINE CHINKIN FROM UN FACT FINDING MISSION ON THE GAZA CONFLICT", Legal Brief by UN Watch, August 20, 2009

    "UN Watch requests that Prof. Christine Chinkin recuse herself from the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict on the grounds that she has already pronounced herself on the merits of the particular question to be decided by the Mission, thereby giving rise to actual bias or the appearance thereof, or that she be disqualified by the other Mission members or by the UN Human Rights Council president.

    Under international law, the minimal rules of due process require that fact-finders in the human rights field be impartial. The members of the Mission have themselves repeatedly emphasized that their terms of reference, as received from the president of the UN Human Rights Council, are impartial, in contrast to the original, one-sided Council mandate of 12 January 2009. The Mission has pledged to impartially assess "all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed" in the recent Israel-Gaza conflict. Yet prior to seeing any evidence, Prof. Chinkin publicly declared that one of the parties-Israel-was guilty of both charges. The Mission cannot claim to be operating with an open mind when one of its members has already made up her mind.

    The facts are straightforward and undisputed. On 11 January 2009, during the recent Israel-Gaza conflict, the Letters section of the Sunday Times published a joint statement signed by Prof. Chinkin (Exhibit A) that declared Israel to be the aggressor, and a perpetrator of war crimes. The letter began by "categorically rejecting" Israel's right to claim self-defence against Hamas rocket attacks, "deplorable as they are." While the end of the statement includes one passing reference to crimes committed by Hamas,the entire rest of the statement is devoted to the thesis that Israel was guilty-of the very accusations that the Mission is meant to impartially examine.

    Asked about this during a May 2009 meeting with Geneva NGOs, Prof. Chinkin denied that her impartiality was compromised, saying that her statement only addressed jus ad bellum, and not jus in bello. But this was untrue. In fact, her statement not only determined that "Israel's actions amount to aggression, not self-defence," but additionally that they were "contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law," and constituted "prima facie war crimes."

    The impartiality requirement under international law, as applicable to international human rights fact-finders, is unequivocal. Scholars of international law list impartiality as the first principle of fact-finding. Impartiality as a requirement is further set forth in Articles 3 and 25 of the UN Declaration on Fact-Finding. Finally, precedents from analogous international tribunals are equally clear. In the 2004 case of Sesay, the Special Court for Sierra Leone disqualified a judge who had published statements on the culpability of an organization connected to the defendants. This precedent applies a fortiori to the case of Prof. Chinkin, whose prior determination of guilt directly concerned one of the parties under examination.

    The remedy applied in Sesay should apply here. Never in the history of international tribunals and fact-finding panels has there been a more overt case of actual bias in the form of an arbiter's prior determination of the merits of a particular case in controversy. Even if, somehow, one were to conceive of an argument as to how Prof. Chinkin has not demonstrated actual bias, there is nevertheless the objective appearance of bias.

    The reasonable person would consider Prof. Chinkin to be partial after she publicly declared the guilt of one of the concerned parties on the very case and controversy under consideration.
    Therefore, if justice is to be done-and to be seen to be done-the only remedy is Prof. Chinkin's recusal, or her disqualification by the Mission or the Human Rights Council president.

"The Goldstone Mission - Tainted to the core", Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post, August 16, 2009

    "As it happens, I was invited to participate in one of the UN Council's exercises in Alice in Wonderland justice - where the conviction is secured even before the hearing begins - in 2006. The context was a fact-finding mission to investigate the Israeli "wilful killing of Palestinian civilians" in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, without reference to the targeting of Israeli civilians in Sderot, Israel. Then, as now, the mandate was one-sided from the start. Then, as now, the conviction preceded the investigation. Then, as now, the mission was designed less as a true independent inquiry than as an imprimatur of legitimacy on the Council's own, biased declarations."

"The folly of Goldstone", Businessday.com, August 13, 2009

    "Judge Richard Goldstone is mistaken, letting an intellectual arrogance get the better of him, if he thinks he can produce and have released an unbiased report on the Israeli Gaza operation for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)... Every experienced businessman knows not to contract with a crook, since no amount of legal drafting or brain power will save him, and the UNHRC is just that: a crooked enterprise with no integrity whatsoever... Perhaps Judge Goldstone should have looked into the wider picture to see how he is being used, since any report, however narrowly unbiased, can only present a biased outcome in the context that only Israel is being investigated following violence, and not Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan or a dozen others. Any negative findings, even if fair criticism, will therefore be trumpeted as proof that Israel is a unique abuser of human rights."

Submission of B'nai Brith to the Goldstone Inquiry, prepared by David Matas

    Conclusion

    There is no law prohibiting "disproportionality" of the sort which Israel is accused of violating. How does one avoid or minimize civilian casualties? Not by arguing, as UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk has done, that Israel cannot defend itself against terrorist attacks, because to do so involves unavoidable civilian casualties.

    Nor by inventing or distorting a law of disproportionality. When Hamas shoots rockets at civilian targets in Israel, when Hamas uses children and adults of all ages as combatants, when Hamas fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants, when Hamas uses schools, mosques and hospitals for military purposes, when Hamas uses civilians as shields, when Hamas holds its own population hostage, and what we hear is criticism of Israel for violating a standard of disproportionality which does not exist, then the concern is something different from protection of civilians.

    Inventing or distorting a law of disproportionality, arguing that there is no lawful self-defense to terrorist attacks, has the opposite effect. It makes civilian casualties more likely regionally and internationally, by engendering disrespect for both the laws of war and the laws in war.

    The Mission should be wary of abandoning principle in order to criticize Israel. In the final analysis, it is respect for law, institutional mechanisms and standards which will be the victim.

    Avoiding civilian casualties in Gaza is simple and straightforward and already set out in the international instruments. Terrorist attacks should cease. Children should not be used as combatants. Civilians should be distinguished from combatants. Civilian structures should be distinguished from military structures. Civilians should not be used as shields.

    Refugees should be resettled both locally and internationally. Only when we see a focus on these principles, instead of false charges of disproportionality against Israel, can we say that the concern for avoiding civilian casualties is real and meaningful."

"UN's Gaza war crimes investigation faces obstacles", Ben Hubbard, The Washington Post (accessed on June 10, 2009), June 9, 2009

    "Hamas security often accompanied [Glodstone's] team during their five-day trip to Gaza last week, raising questions about the ability of witnesses to freely describe the militant group's actions....A Hamas official, Ahmed Yousef, said he hoped the group's report would be "like ammunition in the hands of the people who are willing to sue Israeli war criminals."

"The United Nations Kangaroo "Investigation" of Israeli "War Crimes"", Alan Dershowitz, Huffington Post, June 30, 2009

    "The very mandate that authorized the Gaza investigation reveals its bias against Israel. The council has already concluded, without any pretense to an investigation, that Israel is guilty of "grave violations of human rights... due to its... military attacks."... The very idea of the UN Council conducting an "independent" or objective investigation of Israel is preposterous. It would be as if an all white Mississippi court were investigating a black man's self-defense in response to years of lynchings by whites and limiting its investigation to the event following the lynchings. There is simply no way of an investigation conducted under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council and be fair. Its history of bias and bigotry should not be legitimated by men and women of decency who care about real human rights.. Goldstone was selected to head this investigation precisely because he is Jewish. Let there be no mistake about that cynical reality...

    Oh yes, Goldstone will be "even-handed". That is precisely what the Council wants: equivalent condemnation of Israel and Hamas for unequivalent actions.

    Hamas admits -- indeed boasts -- that it has committed multiple war crimes: first it boasts about firing rockets at Israeli school children; it fires its rockets primarily at times when Israeli children are on their way to and from school; it has hit several kindergartens, elementary schools and playgrounds (fortunately, the children had been sent home); it celebrates every civilian death and injury it causes. Targeting civilians is a war crime.

    Second, Hamas boasts of hiding behind human shields, which is also a war crime. A prominent Hamas legislator has boasted of the fact that Hamas: "...[has] formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death like you desire life.'"

    Third, since Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, every rocket attack from Gaza is a violation of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which authorizes member nations to defend itself against "armed attack."

    Fourth, these attacks are part of a long term strategy to destroy a member nation of the United Nations, as the Hamas charter clearly proclaims."