CAIRO - South African Judge Richard Goldstone has recently written a controversial article in the Washington Post commenting on the report he issued on the devastating Israeli 22-day war on Gaza, in December 2008 and January 2009. As head of the fact-finding committee of the UN Human Rights Organisation, Goldstone condemned the barbaric Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip and accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes. However, in his recent newspaper article, Goldstone wrote: “If I had known then what I know now, the report would have been a different document.” Goldstone, who adopted his new stand in response to the results of the Israeli investigation into this war, stated that he “no longer believed it was army policy to target civilians”. This sentence was immediately picked up by the Israeli government to launch a wide propaganda campaign to whitewash its bad image in the world caused by the war on Gaza and Goldstone report. It has even called on the UN to withdraw the report. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak commented on the article, saying: “This is an extremely important development and right now we are multiplying our efforts to get this report rescinded." It is no secret that Israel, which had never been previously subjected to such wide international condemnation, exerted tremendous pressure on Goldstone over this report, as was written recently in the British newspaper The Telegraph. “The judge, who headed a war crimes inquiry into the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, has come under intense pressure over his report, particularly because he is Jewish. Prominent figures in the American Jewish community called him ‘evil' and a ‘traitor',” the newspaper reported. Hopefully, Goldstone's reversal will not change the viewpoint of world public opinion, especially given that he had continued to defend his stance in different forums, one of which was in the US at Brandeis University in Boston. During this forum, Goldstone said his central criticism of Israel was that it intentionally used disproportionate force in Gaza to inflict widespread damage on the civilian population. He added that the Israeli air and ground attacks destroyed 5,000 homes; put 200 factories out of operation, including the only flour factory in the country; systematically destroyed egg-producing chicken farms; and damaged sewerage and water systems. "If that isn't collective punishment, what is?'' Goldstone rhetorically asked. He also said Israel's destruction of the American School in Gaza City "screams out for investigation.'' On its part, the US dismissed the report, calling it unbalanced with a one-sided mandate. Accordingly, the US intended that discussion of the report would stay within the confines of the Human Rights Council, and not taken up by other UN bodies such as the Security Council. Some experts have suggested that Israel means to make the best use of the Jewish judge's new stand to embellish its image or even find an excuse to launch a new assault on Gaza as its recent raids ominously signal. Goldstone might lose his global credibility if he failed to provide the evidence to support his new stand, especially given that it was based on the Israeli self-conducted inquiry on the Gaza war, of which no one had ever expected a fair result. In common with all other previous inquiries made by Israel into its alleged war crimes against the Palestinians and Lebanon, Israel came up with the conclusion that it wasn't deliberately targeting civilians and it was in a position of self-defence. Goldstone now has to spell out exactly what he thinks about all the other charges he listed in detail in the report that was published on September 15, 2009 by the UN Gaza Fact Finding Mission. In this report, the UN commission stated that “the targeting of industrial sites, water installations, houses, government buildings and other civilian infrastructure was "deliberate and systematic". The report investigates several cases in detail. These include the "direct" and "intentional" shelling of Al-Quds Hospital with white phosphorous shells and the "intense artillery attacks", including the use of white phosphorous shells, on Al-Wafa Hospital and a flechette bomb attack on a crowd of family and neighbours in a tent set up to receive condolences. There was also the destruction of Gaza's only working flour mill "for the purposes of denying sustenance to the civilian population" and the "systematic", "deliberate" and "wanton" destruction of chicken co-ops housing tens of thousands of chickens, which supplied over 10% of Gaza's egg market. Further charges made in the Goldstone Report included the "deliberate and premeditated" attack on a sewage lagoon” and placed them in the context of "a broader pattern of destruction". Two hundred and eighty schools were destroyed, the "intensive shelling" of residential neighbourhoods occurred and hospitals and ambulances were repeatedly targeted "in the absence of any link to combat" these attacks. There was "systematic destruction of civilian buildings", "widespread destruction of private residential houses, water wells and water tanks", repeated "intentional attacks on civilians" and the "systematically reckless" use of white phosphorous in densely populated civilian areas. The wilful destruction of "a substantial part" of Gaza's economic infrastructure included hundreds of factories (17 out of 27 cement factories were reportedly destroyed or damaged), nearly one-fifth of Gaza's greenhouses, its only cement packaging plant and its largest private fish farm (killing 20,000 fish in the process). The above charges will ensure that the Goldstone reversal will enable Israel neither to beautify its image nor to erase the image of horror and devastation the world watched via the satellite TV channels. It was seen at first hand by various foreign visitors, some of whom described the condition of the Gaza Strip following the war as if it has been subjected to an intensive earthquake razing all its buildings. Dear readers are invited to contribute their comments, views and questions via 111-115 Ramsis St., Cairo or e-mail: ([email protected]).
