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Goldstone Report Undermines Faith in International Law

[Toronto Star] Ed Morgan - From a legal point of view, the Goldstone report is full of more holes than the tunnel-riddled strip along the Gaza-Egypt border. Despite its 574-page girth, the actual evidence compiled against Israel is rather thin. Justice Richard Goldstone himself said, "If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven." As Goldstone has described it, "We had to do the best we could with the material we had." The report describes the Israeli attack on Gaza's Islamic University, stating: "These were civilian, educational buildings and the mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility." The Islamic University was previously featured as the site of clashes between Fatah and Hamas gunmen, with Fatah soldiers identifying it as a weapons laboratory for the new and improved Kassam rockets that Hamas fires by the thousands into Israel. PA television had a full display of the weapons cache found in the Islamic University at the time. The report also finds no basis for the Israeli allegations that mosques were used as launching points for Hamas attacks and as weapons storage facilities. Israeli soldiers testifying at Tel Aviv's Rabin Academy after the war displayed first-hand photographs showing weapons stored in Gaza mosques and Hamas gunmen using mosques as firing platforms. Finally, the report condemns Israel for the many civilian deaths in Gaza, paying no attention to Hamas spokesman Fathi Hammad, who said the people of Gaza "formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine." Now that's a war crime. The writer is professor of law at the University of Toronto.
2009-10-23 06:00:00
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