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The Goldstone Report and Israel's Moral Standing
(Washington Post) Richard Cohen - Judge Goldstone has retracted his findings. He no longer believes that Israel intentionally targeted civilians during the Gaza war (although he still believes Hamas did) and says that any deaths were inadvertent - the usual fog of war. Once again, rockets are being fired into southern Israel from Gaza, some of them going up the coast as far as Ashkelon, a major city and port. Before the last war, from April 2001 to the end of 2008, 4,246 rockets and 4,180 mortar rounds were fired into Israel, killing 14 Israelis and wounding more than 400. The rockets have since been improved. Goldstone is a symptom of something larger. That his report was accepted in much of the world testified to how much Israel's moral standing has plummeted. Much of the world believed Israel would purposely kill civilians. As Goldstone acknowledges, Israel has looked into every charge of war crimes - incident by incident. Overall, Israel adheres to a morality we all recognize and admire - and its enemies, Hamas in particular, do not.