UN sides with Gaza on Israeli war crimes report

Even Goldstone was disappointed with the results according to the latest news because they did not even bring up Hamas. BTW, this is just another effort to target and discredit Israel and only allows for another delay by the PA to deal with the issues at hand.

Besides accusing Israel of intentionally targeting anyone, especially civilians is just not true nor effective for a serious investigation of the war.

 Israel is fighting a war on terrorism and a non-standing army that  uses civilians, hospitals, and schools  as shields and forcing them to stand in the way of the oncoming army. The personal interviews were with either coerced civilians by Hamas or in fact Hamas operatives describing insane lies about Israeli soldiers and their actions.

There certainly were some mistakes made, after all, this was an invasion of an enemy that has sent thousands of rockets into Israel. In fact, some soldiers have been disciplined, sent to jail or discharged because their actions actions were not in accordance with the laws of engagement.

The UN commission and the General Assembly is stacked against Israel and any honest person knows it. Only Israels disappearance will placate the majority of countries in the UN. Frankly, I would suggest that Israel leave it and to hell with the consequences. Can't be any worse then this farce that tries to give the appearance of truth.

Certainly, if Hamas and/or Fatah are not in control, then Israel must be at fault.

If all of the Palestinians are "civilians, then Israel is certainly criminal.

In practice, tho, that is certainly not the case.

At least the report was unbiased......or not.

Read the report, examine the facts and get back to us. Neither side should get a blanket whitewash. The IDF sinned as did Hamas. The IDF has bigger and better weapons to sin with. The posturing that Israel cannot possibly make an mistake is tiresome, the facts in this instance actually are important. What the report has done is put the final nail in the coffin of Fatah who bent over and grabbed their ankles so fast it was embarrassing. That has helped Hamas which is not the result desired.

LOL. it is dry, but then it is a legal document. You have to look at the author - a Jew, pro-Zionist and with prior experience of investigating war crimes. Not a self-hater and with an impressive non-partisan history. If he says there were crimes, I certainly take his opinion seriously.

At a broader level, I also think Israel has lurched to the right under Netyanhu and Lieberrman whose political play book comes straight out of the FSU Moldovan heritage. Israel is getting more cold shoulders, even from countries that hadn't been as extreme of late such as Turkey. Gaza was a strategic blunder and a poorly executed Counter terror op using blunt mass destruction approaches in a densely populated environment. Even under strict supervision it was going to be difficult to control, with an IDF running rampant it became a massacre. If they won't pay the piper for this through the courts, they are paying a public opinion price that may be even more costly heading into the Iran scenario

World opinion has changed since Gaza - witness the Turkey positions of late. The Jewish hate card can be overplayed just like the race card can in the US. There is a lot of very specific anger over the Gaza, settlements and the new Knesset. It is not anti-Semetism it is anti-imperialism atht eh core of the change. Israel is calling out its fears about Iran, and there are some not listening quite as intently as before.

World opinion is that Iran should get its nukes and that Ahmadinejad's rantings are not that important nor are the piles of corpses important that his regime has already produced.

"World opinion" is an animus argument for Jungians. When we don't argue an opinion, and, instead, we leave it to courts of apparent experts who have our proxies for the "vote on the truth", we call this animus-possession, especially when it is something that overrides conscience, an outgrowth of Eros.

Let us say that Israel is out of line in Gaza.

How are the Jews treated in Arabic countries? Do they have temples and synagogues to go to? Do they pay a dhimmi tax to a Muslim government?

Has the opinion of Arab governments effectively changed since 1947?

In what way?

What is there in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, or any other Arab state that would let Israelis feel secure about their homeland's future existence?

Do the Muslims governments really renounce the call in the Q'ran to reclaim all lands once Muslim to become Muslim once again?

On what basis do we make peace?

I oppose the settlements, and I have opposed them since the winter of 1973 when, using American money, the settlements were first built, but I don't see an end to terrorism for Jews and Christians coming about with an end to settlements.

If Lebanon and Syria are considered, we see Christians and Jews threatened, killed and political strife from Muslim activists.

Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Turkey were Christian lands for centuries, by conversion, before the Arabic invasions and the conversion by force of Christian populations to Islam by the invaders.

Muslim armies attacked Constantinople for four hundred years before the Greek Orthodox Patriarch sought help from his Roman Christian counterpart and the Crusades began.

There is a combination of secular fanatics who run universities and Muslim politicians that still react with heat and sometimes with violence to the very notion that the Crusades were defensive operations.

This same combination of secularists in the West and the Muslims themselves see Israel the same way as a result of a similar "animus" to the Judeo-Christian West- as a problem to be "removed".

And, those same Muslim activists are at war with civilian governments all over the world.

Why exactly is Israel not supposed to "overreact" given what looks like a world order bent on doing nothing to stop an Iranian leader who promises another holocaust?

I just don't see all of you critics of Israel as being anywhere near balanced.

The UN is probably the most worthless organization on he planet.

Hamas is a terrorist group who have killed far more Gazans than Israel did, yet the UN idiots blame Israel for everything.

Goldstone is skewed? Really.

I just received this on facebook.:

Col. Richard Kemp on the U.N. Goldstone Report Share Today at 11:43am UN Human Rights Council: 12th Special Session

Thank you, Mr. President.

I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Governments Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.


Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Thank you, Mr. President.