[Jerusalem Post] Haviv Rettig Gur - The UN Human Rights Council and its recent Goldstone report are either biased or mistaken in some of their fundamental accusations against Israel, according to Jessica Montell, director of the Israel human rights group B'Tselem. "There's no question that the HRC, which mandated the Goldstone [mission], has an inappropriate, disproportionate fixation with Israel," she said, adding that the Council was "a political body made up of diplomats, not human rights experts, which means that the powerful states are never going to come under scrutiny the way the powerless will. So China, Russia and the U.S. will never have commissions of inquiry, regardless of how their crimes rank relative to Israeli crimes." Furthermore, the Goldstone report is "disagreeable" and mistaken in some of its gravest accusations against Israel, she believes. These include the claim that Israel intentionally targeted the civilian population rather than Hamas, and the "weak, hesitant way that the report mentions Hamas' strategy of using civilians [in combat]."
2009-10-23 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive