Judge Richard Goldstone, who headed the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, has recently retracted, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, the serious accusations aimed at Israel's military conduct during Operation Cast Lead. The heart of the article was Goldstone's acknowledgement that Israel had no intended policy of targeting Palestinian civilians, meaning that Israel did not commit war crimes – which may amount to crimes against humanity – as had been accused in the report.
What made Goldstone change his mind? Goldstone says that if he had known then what he knows today in light of the investigation conducted by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), the final report would have been totally different. Goldstone is right. There is no doubt that any new information contributes to a better understanding of what happened during Operation Cast Lead. However, at the time the members of the UN fact-finding mission were gathering evidence, they preferred to ignore a huge amount of easily available information. When such information was brought to their attention, they dismissed it as unreliable or meaningless.
The question of Palestinian fatalities well illustrates the mission's bogus standards. Goldstone says in his article that it only recently became clear that the number of Hamas operatives killed during the military operation corresponds to Israel's figures. I personally prepared a detailed report on Hamas casualties with similar conclusions, and submitted it to the UN mission through the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The mission doubted its credibility, even though it was based on Palestinian sources and mainly on Hamas accounts.
Grave flaws were revealed in the recorded materials published by UN the mission. For unknown reasons, while interrogating Palestinian eye witnesses, a mission member refrained from posing any questions on terrorist activities or the presence of gunmen in areas that were subject to Israeli attacks. In the al-Maqadmah Mosque case, all members of the committee, including Goldstone himself, totally relied on testimonies of people inside the mosque and showed no interest in exploring whether terrorists were present outside of the mosque. Goldstone (and his counterparts) had no need to wait for the Israeli investigation to find the truth. All he had to do was read the official announcements from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to confirm that Palestinian terrorists were at the scene at time of the attack.
The extremely one-sided and biased approach adopted by the UN fact-finding mission is not surprising, since Colonel Desmond Travers served as its military expert and was responsible for probing the IDF's actions in war. Travers' statements left no room for mistake, proving that the committee took a judgemental, unprofessional approach, relying on baseless reports and a tendency to accept Hamas' accounts without question.
Travers, with no evidence whatsoever, accused Israel of using drones with thermal sensors to spot people in residential areas in order to inflict mass killing of civilians. Needless to say, such technology does not exist in the Israeli drones. Travers also falsely argued that only two rockets were launched at Israel during the month before Operation Cast Lead; that the IDF operated a special plain-clothed assassination unit targeting civilians, and that Hamas was involved in significant fighting only in two cases during the war.
Although the committee only visited two mosques in Gaza, Travers rejected Israeli-documented reports of Hamas' use of mosques as military posts, attributing the accusation to Israel's anti-Islamic agenda. The Goldstone committee's senior military expert outdid himself by contending that it is highly unlikely that mosques were used for military purposes, and in his own words: “We also found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions. Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion.”
Between the lines, Goldstone's real motive for publishing the repentant article is exposed. Goldstone writes: “At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case… In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise.”
Goldstone also explicitly expressed his disappointment that the UN Human Rights Council failed to “condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.”
It seems that Goldstone strongly believed he was leading a true human rights mission that would make a historic impression on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and eventually help stop the prolonged mutual bloodshed. However, in retrospect, Goldstone acknowledged that he was duped by his senders and by the Hamas terrorist organization, which he believed could be appeased into changing its spots. The article also reflects Goldstone's sobering up from the extreme misuse of the human rights agenda against democracies, while ignoring the war crimes of those who systematically violate international law.
Leading Israeli and international human rights organizations demonstrate a double standard regarding Israel and other democracies that face similar challenges in the war on terror. They unrelentingly demand strict limits on the defending democracies, asserting that any military action in an urban area that risks civilians life is a violation of international law. In fact, this high moral standard gives immunity to terrorist organizations to use urban areas to launch attacks aimed at civilians. One can hope that Goldstone's repentant article will open a thorough discussion on the issue of warfare against terrorism under evolving modern conditions.
Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi is the research director for the Orient Research Group and a research fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Halevi previously served as a senior adviser for political planning in Israel's Foreign Ministry and as head of the data and information branch in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.
