Tashah
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Source: JPost.comGoldstone says he'll work to nullify report in UN
By JPost.com Staff - 04/05/2011
Author of the Goldstone Report, Judge Richard Goldstone, promised to work to nullify the contested report and has accepted an invitation to visit Israel, Army Radio reported on Tuesday. The invitation was extended in a phone call Monday by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, in order to visit Israel's southern communities that have endured years of sustained rocket fire from Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip. According to Yishai, Goldstone said that he would be happy to come and that there will always be love in his heart for the State of Israel.
Additionally, Yishai said that Goldstone made a promise to work towards retracting his UN report. Former ambassador to the UN Danny Gillerman, who also spoke with Goldstone, added that the judge would not act immediately to do so. He wants to "wait for the dust to settle" in the aftermath of an op-ed he penned in the Washington Post last week, in which he wrote that Israel, contrary to his famed UN report, did not target civilians in Operation Cast Lead as a matter of policy, AP reported. UNHRC spokesman Cedric Sapey told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that in order for the body to reconsider the report, that the judge would first need to write a formal letter to that effect.
In a related story, the US State Department also chimes in...
Source: JPost.comUS agrees: Israel did not commit Cast Lead war crimes
By Jerusalem Post Staff - 04/05/2011
Addressing Judge Richard Goldstone’s recent Washington Post editorial, US State Department Spokesman Mark Toner said the US long held that Israel did not engage in war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, in a press briefing Monday. Goldstone wrote last week that Israel did not have a policy of targeting civilians, and accused the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) of conducting itself with a bias against Israel. Toner added that the US concurs with Goldstone’s assertion that Jerusalem has “undertaken credible internal processes to assess its own conduct of hostilities.”
Toner also discussed the UNHRC, which Goldstone criticized for having a clear anti-Israel bias. The US remains concerned by “and will continue working to end... what we believe is anti-Israeli bias in the Human Rights Council,” he said.
I certainly hope that Judge Goldstone follows up on his intention to formally nullify his infamous Goldstone Report. According to Israel, the United States, and now Goldstone himself, the Report was birthed in UN bias and relied on hearsay and conjecture within an unreasonable and compressed investigative time frame. In short, a sham.
I encourage Mr. Goldstone to visit Sderot and the surrounding environs to see for himself the physical and psychological damage that Hamas has wrought with constant rocket and mortar attacks. Attacks on Israeli civilian communities that continue unabated to this very day... for no purpose other than to sow terror.
He should also see for himself the established and post-Report corrective measures undertaken by the IDF/IAF to minimize harm to civilians. Many of these measures go well beyond preventative measures employed by other Western military powers.