US Senate to UN: Rescind Goldstone Report

Senate unanimously passes resolution calling on UNHRC "to reflect the author's repudiation of the Goldstone report's central findings."

By JPOST.COM STAFF, TOVAH LAZAROFF, HERB KEI
Goldstone 311 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Goldstone 311
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The US Senate unanimously approved a resolution on Thursday which called on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone Commission's report on Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009, AFP reported.
The resolution called on the UN Human Rights Council "to reflect the author's repudiation of the Goldstone report's central findings, rescind the report and reconsider further Council actions with respect to the report's findings."
RELATED:Premium: Another Tack: A Goldstone in the forestBirds of peaceAnti-Jewish cartoons emerge after Goldstone retractionThe resolution urged UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon to "do all in his power to redress the damage to Israel's reputation" and to "reform" the HRC "so that it no longer unfairly, disproportionately and falsely criticizes Israel on a regular basis."
Earlier Thursday, three co-authors of the report on Gaza said they stood firmly behind their work and rejected recent calls to reconsider or retract the document.
“The report of the [2009] fact-finding mission contains the conclusions made after diligent, independent and objective consideration of the information related to the events within our mandate, and careful assessment of its reliability and credibility,” they said. “We firmly stand by these conclusions,” the trio wrote in a letter they published in The Guardian newspaper.
The three mission members, attorney Hina Jilani of Pakistan, Prof. Christine Chinkin of Britain (she also holds Australian citizenship), and Col. (ret.) Desmond Travers of Ireland, spoke out after their former chairman, Judge Richard Goldstone, wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post on April 1 saying that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”
In that piece, Goldstone wrote that the report erroneously accused Israel of intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza during Cast Lead.
He also wrote that he concurred with a follow-up UN report that stated that Israel had investigated, transparently and in good faith, allegations made in the Goldstone Report, while Hamas “has done nothing.”