Britain pledges continued support for Goldstone report against Israel, even as Goldstone retracts allegations
The UN Goldstone Report alleging Israel targeted civilians in Gaza is now in tatters, but so is the credibility of the countries that gave it credence
The British Government is standing by the United Nations Goldstone Report alleging that Israel committed "war crimes" in its Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 even though Justice Richard Goldstone has now distanced himself from his report’s most controversial conclusions.
On Friday, Goldstone wrote a piece in the Washington Post in which he stunned diplomats, politicians and analysts by withdrawing the allegation that Israel had deliberately targeted civilians during the 22-day conflict. He said: “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”
The Foreign Office, however, confirmed its continued support for investigations into Cast Lead and said it did not want to see the withdrawal of the Goldstone Report from the United Nations.
"Justice Goldstone has not made such a call, and he has not elaborated on his views surrounding the various other allegations contained in the report, allegations which we firmly believe require serious follow-up by the parties to the conflict," a Foreign Office spokesman told the Commentator on Monday evening.
In his piece, entitled “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and War Crimes”, Goldstone admitted that it was now clear that “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy”. With reference to evidence provided by Israel, he added: “…I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes”.
One diplomat told the Commentator that his retractions would cause acute embarrassment to countries such as Britain that stand accused by Israel and its supporters of adopting a reflexively anti-Israeli position in order to placate oil rich Arab states in the Middle East, as well as Britain's growing Muslim population.
But the Foreign Office appeared undeterred, saying:
"Allegations of breaches of International Humanitarian Law made against all parties to the Gaza conflict are not limited to the Goldstone report and have arisen from certain other credible organisations. We firmly believe that any and all such allegations must be met with credible and independent investigations by the parties to the conflict."
On Saturday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the UN immediately to cancel the report.
“Everything we said has proven to be true: Israel did not intentionally harm civilians, its institutions and investigative bodies are worthy, while Hamas intentionally fired upon innocent civilians and did not examine anything,” he said. “The fact that Goldstone backtracked must lead to the shelving of this report once and for all.”
Addressing his cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu reiterated his call referring to the report as “libel”.
"There are very few instances in which those who disseminate libels retract their libel. This happed in the case of the Goldstone Report. Goldstone himself said that all of the things that we have been saying all along are correct – that Israel never intentionally fired at civilians and that our inquiries operated according to the highest international standards. Of course, this is in complete contrast to Hamas who intentionally attacked and murdered civilians and naturally never carried out any sort of inquiry. This leads us to call for the immediate cancellation of the Goldstone Report.”
The UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, chaired by Richard Goldstone, submitted its report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva in September 2009. The report suggested that war crimes had been committed by all parties in the Gaza conflict. However, it has been used only against Israel and has served as the basis for an extensive anti-Israeli political and legal campaign in the international arena.
There have so far been three votes on the report in the United Nations. In the first, at the Human Rights Council, Britain absented itself. In the second, in the General Assembly, Britain abstained. In the third, also in the General Assembly, Britain voted in favour. All three votes were slightly different. The first asked countries to endorse the report’s findings; the second called for investigations on the basis of the report; and the third gave an extension to the time period in which those investigations should take place. But the move from abstention to outright support signaled a clear hardening of Britain’s position against the Jewish state.
Critics within Britain have accused the Foreign Office of undermining British national interests by giving credence to a report which could serve as a precedent for actions against British soldiers and officials involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As in Gaza, terror groups in the two countries embed themselves in the civilian population making it impossible for British and other allied forces to target them without the risk of hitting civilians too. In Iraq alone, the death toll stands at a minimum of 100,000. During Operation Cast Lead it was between 1,000 and 1,500 depending on whose figures are accurate.
With such considerations in mind, the Goldstone report has always been considered by Israel to be part of a campaign to delegitimise the Israeli state and label it as a war criminal.
“We face three major strategic challenges,” Netanyahu said last year, “the Iranian nuclear program, rockets aimed at our citizens and Goldstone.”
In a report published in 2010, the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based think tank warned that the deligitimisation campaignt “has already gained strategic significance and may evolve into an existential threat.” The Reut report said that Israel's freedom to act militarily against perceived threats has been limited as a result of the campaign.
On Sunday, the Israeli Prime Minister set up a committee to help formulate a response to “reverse and minimize” the great damage that followed the publication of the report.
An editorial in Israel’s leading newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, referred to the Goldstone Report as a modern day “Dreyfus trial” with Israel in the dock.
"Not only must Goldstone apologize but so too all those who intervened and contributed to creating the modern Dreyfus trial for the State of Israel,” the newspaper said. The editorial declared that, "For the past decade, Israel has been waging a war against modern anti-Semitism under the cloak of human rights, the goal of which, for the Israel-haters, has been to undermine the state's legitimacy as a home for the Jewish people.”
yes well one can hardly be surprised at the uk's response, so entrenched is their anti israel semitism that they no longer see the woods for the trees but when it came to israel did they ever?
This attitude is of course a shame, but not surprising at all. The Foreign Office is almost a kind of state within a state. But naturally the chairing politicians (now from the Tory party) are equally to be blamed. With its approach the British goverment communicates to the wider world, and most of all, the United States of America, the elected American gov't, and important people elsewhere, that not only it has no shred of decency, but basically it's on a countering course with the world's supreme moral power and liberal democracy, America. Good luck with that!
Would Israel gain anything if Britain did support the rescinding of the flawed Goldstone Report? The British government's stance on the issue is totally irrelevant bearing in mind it lack of standing and credibility in the region. Good article though, shows the FCO for the bores they are.
Israel again comes out as ever the victim. Quick send more arms aid to the the world's biggest breakers of UN resolutions and the world's biggest arms manufacturers (per-capita). A google for " Hasbara students " will be enlightening to most.
The FCO has always been irrelevant and William Hague has turned it into a farce. No-one sensible cares what it says one way or the other.
The Commentator has got off to a flying start with this scoop on the FO's sour reaction. Well done!
(It's good to see another Greg here.)
As soon as this story broke, I anticipated 2 possible reactions from Israel's detractors. The first is that they might go quiet and make some attempt to curb their enthusiasm to baiting Israel and even make some kind of apology. The second would be that those detractors would still try to justify the mistake in the report and start to appear like people who would fit in well at their local asylum than be able to hold on to responsible jobs.
We did not have to wait long did we!?
I liked Hague, I really did! I thought he would put a rocket up the arse of the FCO but dogged by scandal and what seems to be utter indifference to whats going on in the world has let Hague sink in my estimations, he is lower than Ken Clark was during the budget!
The FCO is in need of a huge clear out of the rot that fills the middle and lower echelons of the department and Hague isn't up to the job, if only Pickles remotely resembled a statesman.
Coming on to Israel's opinions of the FCO, do they care about what the FCO has to say? No, why would they?!
>Gregory Brassington
Two Gregs are better than one. Sorry, I'll get my coat.
I had hoped that when the Tories came into power they might at least carry out some of their promises with regard to Israel, such as action over Universal Jurisdiction.
Not only have they moved extremely slowly over that, but Cameron's outburst in Turkey re the Gaza flotillas, and Hague's comments (before the election) over Israel's 'disproportionate' response in Gaza, clearly define them as no real friends of Israel, no matter what they pretend to be.
And now, with Goldstone's retraction of his own, deeply flawed report, one would think that the FCO might draw breath before putting their foot in it yet again, but no such luck.
Not for nothing is the FCO known as the Camel Corps.
Congratulations on the new (and timely) blog.
So what would Goldstone need to do to persuade the British FO that he really, really, really, didn't mean what he said? Post a video on line of him burning his report one page at a time even if it results in murderous riots in Afghanistan?
A Foreign Office Spokesman can hide behind the fact Goldstone didn't actually ask for the report to be withdrawn all he likes; that's about as meaningful an argument as saying "The CPS won't put Peter Sutcliffe on trial because despite him admitting to several crimes because he hasn't asked to be locked up."
Goldstone himself has written an article that casts serious doubt on the contents of a report he wrote that has had a major impact on international relations. At the very least the FCO and others should be demanding the report be withdrawn from circulation until such a time as these doubts have been investigated and changes, if necessary, have been made.
Astute analysis. Disturbing conclusion. I wonder how long - and how much pressure it will take - before the FCO changes its tune. I also worry what it means if it does not - and what that will communicate to the international community (not to mention Israel) about its reliability.
Israel has to make its own judgements about what is morally justifiable in military self-defence. Letting the rest of the world make that judgement will cost the lives of many young Israeli soldiers.
The FCO can go jump in the lake.
I'm somewhat amused at "Allegations of breaches of International Humanitarian Law made against all parties to the Gaza conflict are not limited to the Goldstone report and have arisen from certain other credible organisations. We firmly believe that any and all such allegations must be met with credible and independent investigations by the parties to the conflict."
Which credible organisations? HRW & Amnesty Int? How can investigations by the parties to the conflict be independent?
What integrity do they have to demand credible investigations of others?
Isn't it uncanny that a S.African/Lithuanian Jew should suddenly decide that Israel is a victim not a perpetrator. Almost as weird as him being tasked with determining such about his very own alleged religious "homeland"in the first place.
Let's have crims as judges and jury, why not...
Superb blog. It makes a refreshing change to see the news reported, without any political, religious or cultural bias, by people capable of critical thinking.
We need to remember what kind of man Richard Goldstone is. Since his last pronouncement he is back pedalling like mad. He is an unashamed narcissist and manipulator. Remember, this is the man whose neocon sympathies enabled him to support and enable the Balkan betrayal - where the US and its allies cut their WWII allies, the Serbs, loose, to be wrongly reviled by the world for their treatment of Muslims. These very same Muslims are now enabling the rise of Islamism in the Balkans, in the form of Salafist jihadis who are arming and training to flood Europe. Goldstone lies when he says he was anti-apartheid in South Africa - he hung many black people in the days when he was a judge there.
I'm reasonably sure that the Foreign Office sees no danger whatsoever of the Goldstone Report's ever being invoked against British servicepeople who may be accused of war crimes since FCO knows that Israel is an easy mark, while Araby and Islam have a fifth column within Britain, as well as economic and diplomatic leverage.
@ Okey: You'll find that the fifth column actually consists of the Israel fanatics. Most MPs are members of "...Friends of Israel" clubs and the Labour Leader Milliband actually stated that “My Jewish identity was such a substantial part of my upbringing that it informs what I am,” Even Gordon Brown's father went to Israel every year. As for "economic leverage" you'll find that the west's banking systems are run and owned by Jewish banksters, as is large part of the media.
SCOOP!!! Listen to this SHOCKING video, folks! It will blow your mind! EU rep. in Israel giving an interview - the juicy part is the first two minutes! (This is hardly an agreed upon position between 27 member states, but word by word the the line of the British gov't and the ever so vile "Lady" Ashton. This is untenable and indifensible and unacceptable.)www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/143424
Dear site manager/moderator! Yesterday I commented on the Shepherd - BBC thread, senta reasobly moderated and mild comment while the site was under maintanance. Unfort. it didn't appear and I assume that all because of that stage of maintenance. Please improve or correct this problem so as not to have a bad luck for others in the future. Thnx.
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I think people should pay more attention to what exactly Goldstone did say - he was careful to give the impression that Israel and Jews had intimidated him.
As for Hague's comments - twas ever thus. Britain is a notorious fence sitter on these matters.