By Ramzy Baroud
Shocking is not a sufficient term to describe Justice Richard Goldstones decision to recant parts of the report, 2009 on alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Document, known as the Goldstone report was drawn up after a thorough investigation, led by the South African judge and three other famous investigators. The documented 36 events during the isrælske Operation Cast lead an unprecedented violent attacks against small, impoverished and besieged Gaza. It resulted in more than 1,400 Palestinians dead and injured more than 5,500.
Goldstone is both Jewish and Zionist. His love for Israel have been broad and lovingly conveyed. In this particular case he seemed completely torn between its ideological and tribal position and its commitment to justice and truth, as enshrined in the mandate of the UN's Human Rights Council.
After 18 months, what seemed a totally personal introspection, accompanied by an endless campaign of pressure and intimidation of Zionist and quietly Jewish groups from around the world, the man finally surrendered.
"If I had known then what I know now, Goldstone report would have been another document," he wrote in the Washington Post on 1 April. But what Goldstone learn anew when he issued his 575-page report in September 2009?
Suspected is Goldstones rethinking a follow-up report issued by the UN's Committee, chaired by retired New York judge Mary McGowan Davis. Her report was not a resumption of Isræls — and Hamas — alleged war crimes in Gaza, but a follow up on the Goldstone Commission's findings, which called for the submission of the matter to the International Criminal Court. McGowan Davis made this distinction clearly in a recent interview with the Jerusalem Post isrælske. According to the speech, she said, "our work was completely separate from the (Goldstone) work". She further stated, "our mandate was to take his report as given and start from there."
So how a probe, used Goldstones conclusions as a starting point, went on to inspire such a larger back view from one of the authors of the original report?
McGowan Davis ' report acknowledges only that Israel has carried out an examination of a possible "operational misconduct" in the so-called largely outside Israel as the massacre in Gaza. The UN's follow-up report recognised the alleged 400 studies, but does not bear out of their validity. These secret investigations led actually to slightly in disciplinary measures.
More claimed the UN team of experts there was "no indication that Israel has opened investigations of them designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the Operation Cast lead actions."
Israel is in fact known for exploration of themselves, and also for almost always find all but its own leadership. Isrælske studies are an obvious mockery of justice. Most of their results as those that came a second study of the isrælske war in Lebanon in 2006, from the simply failure to win the war and explain the isrælske action to the world. They said little about investigates death and wounding of innocent civilians. Is this what Goldstone meant when he used the words "if I had known then what I know now"? And could this added knowledge of the Isræls secret — and the largely farcical — studies be enough to such extreme conclusions such as "civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy"?
This was the confidence in the isrælske argument, which attempted to reduce a persistent policy based on collective punishment — used controversial and even illegal weapons against civilians — to the injudiciousness of individual soldiers. Goldstones calculated variance is an adoption of "the isrælske position, any misdeeds during the attack Gaza was caused by individual deviants not of policies or rules for the use of force commissioned by the military leaders," according to George Bisharat, a professor at Hastings College of the law (as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle7. April). Bisharat added, "even the original report never accused Israel of widespread deliberate attacks on civilians, and thus the Goldstone to an allegation that had never been done. Most of its significant results remain uncontested. "
John Dugard, professor of law at the University of Pretoria and earlier the UN's Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory will agree. "Richard Goldstone is a former judge and he knows perfectly well that a fact-finding report four persons, of whom he was the only one, like the judgment of the Court of first instance cannot be changed by subsequent reflections of a single member of the Committee.
Dugard, known for his principled in the past, is also known for his moral consistency. "It is sad that this champion of accountability and international criminal law should abandon the cause of such an ill-considered, but nevertheless extremely harmful op-ed," he wrote in the new statesman on April 6.
Not surprisingly, isrælske leaders gloating. "Everything we said was proved true," declared Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu answer on Goldstones moral collapse. New York Times reported on 5. April, Goldstone agreed to visit Israel in July during a phone call with Isræls interior minister Eli Yishai. "I will be glad to come," Yishai quoted Goldstone as saying. "I have always love for the State of Israel."
The fact is, Goldstones some of his rejection of the Commission's findings clearly have no legal validity. They are personally, and in fact the selfish motivated, and they prove that the political and ideological affiliations are of greater weight for Goldstone than human suffering, as well as international law and justice. There is no doubt, however, that will constitute the backbone Goldstones innovation in Isræls justification in its future attacks on Gaza. Goldstone, once regarded as an "evil, evil man" by a prominent Israel more in United States, sales argument for the Isræls future war crimes.
If the killing of more than 1,400 Palestinians is not a "policy", and the Hamas killings of four isrælere is "intentional" — as claimed by the Goldstone — then the sky is the limit for Isræls war machine.
In fact, "shocking" is not the right expression. "Shameful" may be more fitting.
-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally syndicated columnist and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is my father was a freedom fighter: Gaza Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available at Amazon.com.
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