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Why Did Goldstone Change His Mind?

(Canada-Israel Committee) Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi - Judge Richard Goldstone says that if he had known then what he knows today in light of the investigation conducted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), his final report would have been totally different. 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. Goldstone says in his article in the Washington Post 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. For unknown reasons, while interrogating Palestinian eye witnesses, mission members refrained from posing any questions on terrorist activities or the presence of gunmen in areas that were subject to Israeli attacks. All Goldstone had to do was read the official announcements from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to confirm that Palestinian terrorists were at the scene at the time of the attacks. The writer is the research director for the Orient Research Group and a research fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2011-04-14 00:00:00
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