Israel still golden after report

In Judge Richard Goldstone’s recent report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, he equated Israel’s defense tactics with Hamas’ terrorism, but it is believed that the investigation was predetermined due to the Council’s reputation for being notoriously anti-Israel.

The Report states, “While the Israeli government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in exercise of its right to self defense, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.”

This biased report fails to recognize Israel’s efforts to minimize civilian causalities. The Israeli Defense Force has dropped leaflets in civilian areas, sent text messages and risked the lives of their own soldiers to minimize causalities.

British Colonel Richard Kemp, an expert in counterinsurgency warfare, has said that “the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

Since the Council’s start in June 2006, it has passed 26 anti-Israel resolutions out of the 32 motions to censure countries; Israel is the only country listed on their permanent agenda.

Ambassador Susan Rice said, “It comes from a body whose track record and history is one of focusing unduly and excessively on one country, Israel to the exclusion of credible sustained treatment of the world’s most egregious instances of human rights abuses in places.”

Where do the U.N.’s values lie when almost 79 percent of its investigations focus on the Democratic state of Israel, instead of on countries that harbor terrorism?
The Obama Administration, along with members of the House, are speaking against the Goldstone Report.

“The mandate was unbalanced, one-sided and unacceptable,” Rice said. “A source of significant concern.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “Congress must demand better by enacting pending legislation that would leverage our contributions to the U.N. to produce sweeping, meaningful reform of that body.”

The peace process continues to be a difficult issue, and the U.N. has only detracted from these efforts with the deeply flawed Goldstone Report.