Pro & Con Critics Robert M. Goot, Goldstone's Report Seriously Flawed, The Australian
| Robert M. Goot, Goldstone's Report Seriously Flawed, The Australian |
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GOLDSTONE’S REPORT SERIOUSLY FLAWED   From the moment that the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) decided to establish a “fact finding†mission “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 aggressionâ€, it was obvious that it was not intended to nor would it be an impartial enquiry.  The terms of reference were crafted so as to ignore the hundreds of rockets deliberately aimed and fired by Hamas at civilians in Israel prior to the Gaza war and to pillory Israel for defending its citizens.  Even the head of the mission, Justice Richard Goldstone, has since denounced what he called a “one-sided mandate†that was “stacked against Israelâ€. He was so repelled by the bias that he only accepted his appointment on the basis of a verbal assurance by the President of the UNHRC that the mission would also be empowered to investigate violations of international law committed by Hamas during the Gaza conflict.   It is now clear that in accepting this assurance Goldstone allowed himself to be deceived. On 16 October 2009 when the UNHCR resolved, without the support of a single western democracy from amongst its 47 members, to refer the matter to the UN Security Council, the text of the resolution was directed exclusively at Israel and made no mention whatsoever of Hamas. It closely reflected the wording of the original mandate that Goldstone himself had rejected.  Little wonder that Goldstone complained bitterly to the Swiss paper ‘Le Temps’ that the recent UNHRC resolution “saddens me … there is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope the council can modify the text." Modifications were subsequently made, but there was still no mention of Hamas.  Not every member of the Goldstone Commission seems to have been troubled by its biased mandate.  Months before her appointment as a Commissioner, Christine Chinkin went on the public record to accuse Israel of “collective punishment of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants†and “aggression†and to condemn Israel for “prima facie war crimes†in Gaza. In such circumstances any reasonable person would have an apprehension that she was incapable of bringing an impartial mind to her task.  The actual evidence compiled against Israel in the 574-page Goldstone Report is extraordinarily thin. None of the material contained in the statements of “witnesses†has been tested in any way. Much of it is second, third or fourth hand hearsay.  Palestinians who spoke to the Commission knew that anything they said would ultimately get back to Hamas. Turning a blind eye, the Goldstone report merely notes that “those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups." Small wonder that Goldstone later conceded, "We had to do the best we could with the material we had."  The Goldstone Commission was at best a preliminary “fact finding†investigation, not a court of law. Goldstone himself has complained that his report is being treated as conclusive when it was never intended that way, stating "If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven".  He went on to say that his report was no more than a “road map†for real investigators containing no actual “evidence†of wrong doing by Israel and that he “would not consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turned out to be unprovedâ€.  Yet Goldstone has only himself to blame for the widespread misapprehension that his report is determinative. Notwithstanding his subsequent attempts to suggest to the contrary, many of the allegations against Israel are expressed as conclusive findings of fact.  The allegations against Hamas, in contrast, are perfunctory. Punches have been pulled and contrary evidence ignored. For example, in condemning Israel for the many civilian deaths in Gaza, the Goldstone report ignores or dismisses without reason photographs and video footage taken by Israeli forces during the Gaza operation showing Hamas gunmen using civilians as human shields and concentrating their forces in civilian areas.  Yet Hamas makes no secret of its policy of using Palestinian civilians as human shields. In 2008 Hamas spokesman Fathi Hamad went on the record to boast about his organisation’s use of “humans shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine." Incredibly, the Goldstone Commission considered this public admission of a war crime by a Hamas leader to be “irrelevantâ€.  In stark contrast, Colonel Richard Kemp, a British Commander in Bosnia and Afghanistan told the UNHRC that “the Israeli forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.†Kemp was comparing the actions of Israeli forces to those of NATO and other western forces in similar types of conflict. The Goldstone report interprets and applies the standards set by international humanitarian law in a way that no western or other military force accepts in practice.  The Report describes the Israeli attack on Gaza's Islamic University and concludes: "These were civilian, educational buildings and the mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility." No mention is made of the fact that this same University was featured on Palestinian television in 2007 as a site uncovered by Fatah in which Hamas had established a weapons laboratory for new and improved Qassam rockets. The footage included a full display of the weapons cache found in the University at the time.  The Goldstone commission also condemns the destruction of several mosques in Gaza by Israeli fire, finding no basis for Israeli allegations that mosques were used as launching points for Hamas attacks and as weapons storage facilities. Publicly available evidence to the contrary is simply ignored, including videos and photographs taken by Israeli soldiers during the Gaza operation that show weapons stored in Gaza mosques and Hamas gunmen using mosques as firing platforms.  And the Report blamed Israel for an attack on an UNWRA school in Jabalya, a false accusation that went around the world inciting violence against Israel and Jews, before the UN itself admitted that it was entirely false and that the school had not been shelled at all. The Goldstone Report repeated the false allegation and omitted the retraction.  Although the death and destruction in the Gaza war was a tragedy that deserves a proper and impartial investigation, it was miniscule compared to that of other contemporary conflicts elsewhere in the world, which remain uninvestigated by UNHRC or anyone else. The Israeli Government has nevertheless announced that it will conduct an independent investigation under an eminent jurist. The investigation will be in addition to those which the IDF had opened into over 100 allegations regarding the conduct of its forces during the Gaza Operation, most of which have been found to be baseless. Some 23 criminal investigations are ongoing.  Goldstone was probably sincere in intending to conduct an impartial legal investigation into the Gaza operation. But the report that bears his name has been perverted into a crude polemic, a blunt political weapon to be wielded solely against Israel, as the subsequent UNHRC resolution makes plain.  As Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Washington Post last month, “the fundamental problem with this particular report is it was hatched with a bias inherent in its mandate. It is as a consequence a product that largely reflects that imbalanceâ€.  Robert M Goot SC President Executive Council Â
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