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Richard
Goldstone , THE JERUSALEM POST
Five weeks after the release of the Report of the
Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of
its critics to come to grips with its substance. It has been
fulsomely approved by those whose interests it is thought to serve
and rejected by those of the opposite view. Those who attack it do
so too often by making personal attacks on its authors' motives and
those who approve it rely on its authors' reputations.
Israeli government spokesmen and those who support
them have attacked it in the harshest terms and, in particular my
participation, in a most personal and hurtful way. The time has now
come for more sober reflection on what the report means and
appropriate Israeli reactions to it.
I begin with my own motivation, as a Jew who has
supported Israel and its people all my life, for having agreed to
head the Gaza mission. Over the past 20 years, I have investigated
serious violations of international law in my own country, South
Africa, in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and the alleged fraud
and theft by governments and political leaders in a number of
countries in connection with the United Nations Iraq Oil for Food
program. In all of these, allegations reached the highest political
echelons. In every instance, I spoke out strongly in favor of full
investigations and, where appropriate, criminal prosecutions. I have
spoken out over the years on behalf of the International Bar
Association against human rights violations in many countries,
including Sri Lanka, China, Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Pakistan.
I would have been acting against those principles
and my own convictions and conscience if I had refused a request
from the United Nations to investigate serious allegations of war
crimes against both Israel and Hamas in the context of Operation
Cast Lead.
AS A Jew, I felt a greater and not a lesser
obligation to do so. It is well documented that as a condition of my
participation I insisted upon and received an evenhanded mandate to
investigate all sides and that is what we sought to do.
I sincerely believed that because of my own record
and the terms of the mission's mandate we would receive the
cooperation of the Israeli government. Its refusal to cooperate was
a grave error. My plea for cooperation was repeated before and
during the investigation and it sits, plain as day, in the
appendices of the Gaza report for those who actually bother to read
it. Our mission obviously could only consider and report on what it
saw, heard and read. If the government of Israel failed to bring
facts and analyses to our attention, we cannot fairly be blamed for
the consequences. Those who feel that our report failed to give
adequate attention to specific incidents or issues should be asking
the Israeli government why it failed to argue its cause.
Israel missed a golden opportunity to actually
have a fair hearing from a UN-sponsored inquiry. Of course, I was
aware of and have frequently spoken out against the unfair and
exceptional treatment of Israel by the UN and especially by the
Human Rights Council.
I did so again last week. Israel could have seized
the opportunity provided by the even-handed mandate of our mission
and used it as a precedent for a new direction by the United Nations
in the Middle East. Instead, we were shut out.
As I stated in response to a recent letter from
the mayor of Sderot, I believed strongly that our mission should
have been allowed to visit Sderot and other parts of southern Israel
that have been at the receiving end of unlawful attacks by many
thousands of rockets and mortars fired at civilian targets by Hamas
and other armed groups in Gaza. We were prevented from doing so by,
what I believe, was a misguided decision by the Israeli government.
In Gaza, I was surprised and shocked by the
destruction and misery there. I had not expected it. I did not
anticipate that the IDF would have targeted civilians and civilian
objects. I did not anticipate seeing the vast destruction of the
economic infrastructure of Gaza including its agricultural lands,
industrial factories, water supply and sanitation works. These are
not military targets. I have not heard or read any government
justification for this destruction.
OF COURSE the children of Sderot and the children
of Gaza have the same rights to protection under international law
and that is why, notwithstanding the decision of the government of
Israel, we took whatever steps were open to us to obtain information
from victims and experts in southern Israel about the effects on
their lives of sustained rocket and mortar attacks over a period of
years. It was on the strength of those investigations that we held
those attacks to constitute serious war crimes and possibly crimes
against humanity.
The refusal of cooperation by the government of
Israel did not prevent us from reacting positively to a request from
Gilad Schalit's father to speak personally to our mission at its
public session in Geneva. No one who heard his evidence could fail
to have been moved by the unspeakable pain of a parent whose young
son was being held for over three years in unlawful circumstances
without any contact with the outside world and not even allowed
visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The
mission called for his release.
Israel and its courts have always recognized that
they are bound by norms of international law that it has formally
ratified or that have become binding as customary international law
upon all nations. The fact that the United Nations and too many
members of the international community have unfairly singled out
Israel for condemnation and failed to investigate horrible human
rights violations in other countries cannot make Israel immune from
the very standards it has accepted as binding upon it.
Israel has a strong history of investigating
allegations made against its own officials reaching to the highest
levels of government: the inquiries into the Yom Kippur War, Sabra
and Shatila, Bus 300 and the Second Lebanon War.
Israel has an internationally renowned and
respected judiciary that should be envy of many other countries in
the region. It has the means and ability to investigate itself. Has
it the will?
The writer led the UN-mandated Gaza Fact-Finding
Mission established to investigate alleged crimes committed during
Operation Cast Lead earlier this year. The mission released its
575-page report last month.
Oct. 18, 2009 |
