GOLDSTONE DOES NOT-DESCRIBE HIS OP_ED PIECE AS A RETRACTION OF THE REPORT

[johnaa]

  True to form 0000 you are intent on decieving.  The article I provided by the other members of the commision was disputing that op-ed submitted by Goldstone, after his family was harrassed and threatened, Goldstone later retracted what he said in that op-ed you found.

  Here is another article discussing Goldstones strange op-ed: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/04/goldstone-report-israel-rights                           

Where now for the Goldstone report?  

In short, there are no new facts that could possibly have led Richard Goldstone to change his mind.        ---------------------

  The op-ed makes very strange reading.

    It states that the Goldstone report would have been a different document "had I known then what I know now", but fails to disclose any information that seriously challenges the findings of the Goldstone Report.

  It claims that investigations published by the Israeli military and recognised by a follow-up UN committee report chaired by Judge Mary McGowan Davis, which appeared in March, "indicate" that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy". But the  McGowan davis report contains ABSOLUTELY no such "indication and instead seriously questions Israel's investigation finding them to be lacking in impartiality promptness and transparency"           ----------------Finally he claims that the McGowan Davis report finds that Israel has carried out investigations "to a significant degree", but in fact this report paints a very different picture of Israel's investigations of 400 incidents, which have resulted in two convictions, one for theft of a credit card, resulting in a sentence of seven months' imprisonment, and another for using a Palestinian child as a human shield, which resulted in a suspended sentence of three months.---

  Cold, calculated and deliberate  

       In short, there are no new facts that exonerate Israel and that could possibly have led Goldstone to change his mind. What made him change his mind therefore remains a closely guarded secret.     

              The Goldstone report was not the only fact-finding report on Operation Cast Lead. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the League of Arab States (whose mission I chaired) all produced thorough reports on the conflict.                    

    In all the reports, including the Goldstone report, there were ACCOUNTS OF THE KILLINGS OF CIVILIANS BY ISRAEL DEFENCE FORCES (IDF) IN A COLD CALCULATED AND DELIBERATE MANNER.  BUT THE PRINCIPAL ACCUSATION LEAVELED AT ISRAEL WAS THAT DURING THE ASSAULT ON GAZA, IT USED FORCD INDISCRINMINATELY IN DENSSSELY POPULATED AREAS AND WAS RICKLESS ABOUT THE FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES OF IT'S ACTIONS,                                                          

    In terms of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it is a war crime to direct attack so intentionally against a civilian population (Article 8(2)(b)(i)). Such an intention need not be premeditated: it suffices if the person engaging in such action meant to cause the consequence of his action, or "is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events" (Article 30).

-----Goldstone does not, like his critics, describe his op-ed piece as a retraction of the Goldstone report. This is not surprising. Richard Goldstone is a former judge and he knows full well that a fact-finding report by four persons, of whom he was only one, like the judgment of a court of law, cannot be changed by the subsequent reflections of a single member of the committee.---                                                                           -----------------This can be done only by the full committee itself with the approval of the body that established the fact-finding mission – the UN Human Rights Council. And this is highly unlikely, in view of the fact that the three other members of the committee – Professor Christine Chinkin of the London School of Economics, Ms Hina Jilani, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and Colonel Desmond Travers, formerly an officer in the Irish Defence Forces – have indicated that they do not share Goldstone's misgivings about the report.