UNDERSTANDING
THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

Questions from Ricki Hollander of CAMERA to Judge Goldstone which Goldstone refuses to answer; here about the Al Maqadmah Mosque incident.

Questions regarding the al-Maqadmah mosque and the military use of mosques

During the Brandeis debate, you cited the firing on the al-Maqadmah Mosque as another attack that affected you and convinced you that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians. You described with complete certitude – despite Israel's denial – that civilians who had gathered for prayer inside a mosque were intentionally targeted during a large (combined) service by a missile fired "by IDF ground forces." (You even corrected your use of the qualifier "presumably" to present this definite accusation.) There was no question, you said, of any secondary explosions that would suggest the mosque had been booby-trapped or used to store explosives.

The Report, similarly, devotes 27 paragraphs (a 21 paragraph section, plus an additional 6 separate paragraphs) to this incident, making it the linchpin of the theory that Israel was guilty of committing war crimes by targeting places of worship. While the Report refers to allegations of mosques being used for military purposes and notes that it cannot rule out the inappropriate use of other mosques by Palestinians, the Mission nevertheless chose not to further investigate these possible war crimes by Palestinians and dismissed or ignored the readily available pictorial and testimonial evidence indicating that this was indeed the case. Instead, the Report concluded (Paragraph 486) that "The Mission is unable to make any determination on the general allegation that Palestinian armed groups used mosques for military purposes," and further attempted to cast doubt on this possibility by noting that "in the one incident it investigated of an Israeli attack on a mosque, it found no indication that the mosque was so used."

According to the Report, the conclusions about the al-Maqadmah mosque are based on testimony from witnesses who had been inside the mosque at the time it was struck and relatives of victims who provided testimony about the chaos surrounding the event. In addition, the Mission visited the site six months after the event to document evidence of destruction and was given photographs purportedly taken immediately after the event. (Why were these photographs deemed reliable by the Mission, while at the same time photographic evidence of a weapons cache located in a Jabaliyah mosque were not considered reliable enough to determine that mosques were utilized as weapons storehouses?)

However, regardless of how reliable the testimony and evidence were, it is evident that there was considerable lack of clarity regarding the circumstances of the event. The eyewitness testimony and evidence described by the Mission pertains to the damage in the mosque and the injuries of the people.

There was no evidence regarding who shot the projectile, where it was shot from, or even what weapon was used. (The witnesses, of course could not determine this from their standpoint. The Report, in Paragraph 828 vaguely refers to "something" which had "penetrated the concrete" outside the mosque's doorway and, in Paragraph 829, to "small metal cubes" lodged in a wall in the mosque. It acknowledges in Paragraph 836, "The Mission is not in a position to say from which kind of aircraft or air-launch platform the missile was fired." And based on your own reference at the debate to firing by ground troops, apparently the Mission was not even clear whether it was an air-to-ground missile or a ground-fired projectile that caused the damage in the mosque.)

A) Given the chaos and confusion surrounding the event and the lack of knowledge of the weapon, its location and who fired it, how can you possibly express such certainty about the circumstances of the event, much less the motive of the shooters?

There are other pertinent facts to consider:

1) Hamas is believed to be in possession of advanced anti-tank weaponry, such as the Konkurs, Kornet, and Sagger missiles.

2) Of the15 people portrayed by the Report as innocent civilians killed in the event, five were ascertained from Hamas Web sites to have been operatives for Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's terrorist wing, while two others were ascertained to have been operatives for Al Quds Brigade, Islamic Jihad's terrorist wing – that is, almost half of those killed were fighters against Israel. One of them, Ahmed Abu Ita of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was reported to have gone to the al-Maqadmah mosque at the time of the event in order to "meet friends".

(The Hamas Web Site postings include personal histories, militant histories, and details about the fighters' specific anti-Israel missions, which included the preparation and firing of mortars and rockets toward Israel, preparing tunnels for the Brigades' use, fighting IDF forces, etc. See  "How the Goldstone Commission Understated the Hamas Threat to Palestinian Civilians" by Col. Jonathan Halevi and the Hamas sources cited there. The level of detail about these fighters rules out the possiblity of their having been "adopted" as "martyrs" after the fact.)

B) More specifically, given the above, how can you be so positive:

i. that it was Israel and not a Hamas or Islamic Jihad fighter who fired or (misfired) the projectile?

ii. that assuming it was an Israeli missile, it was not targeting fighters who may have been congregating outside the mosque? Given that so many of the dead were Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighers and that the mosque was designated as a meeting place, how can you rule out the possibility that fighters were not meeting near (outside the mosque)?

iii. that the shooters were aware that the mosque was full of worshippers, or that any type of prayer service taking place at the time?

C) Given the Report's insistence that "the precision and sophistication of the Israeli armed forces" were taken into account to determine that Israel had deliberately targeted the mosque, and given the Report's own description that the missile did not hit the mosque directly – according to the Report, it hit outside the mosque, a finding that completely supports Israel's denial that it fired on the mosque, how can you conclude the people within the mosque were targeted?

Surely, if this were a case of Israel deliberately targeting worshippers, the  precision missile would have hit the mosque itself and not  outside the mosque.

D) Why has the Mission avoided coming to a definite conclusion about other mosques being used by Hamas armed groups for military purposes and ignored or dismissed evidence of this?

i. More specifically, why was the Mission "not able to investigate the allegation of the use of mosques generally by Palestinian groups for storing weapons"? And why did they ignore freely available video evidence of secondary explosions in mosques, suggesting the storage of weapons there?

ii. Given that the Mission considered statements by graduates of the Rabin Pre-Military Academy to constitute "strong corroboration" of "trends" demonstrating alleged IDF misdeeds, why were their accounts of "coming under fire from Palestinian combatants positioned in a mosque" not similarly considered strong corroboration of the fact that Palestinians launched attacks from mosques? (Again, while the Mission did not rule it out, it declined to make any determination that this was the case.)