PM to ministries: Take steps to 'cancel' Goldstone Report
Peres says Goldstone owes Israel an apology; Barak: Apology too limited, too late; Oren: Goldstone Report "furnished a major victory for terror."
By JPOST.COM STAFFPrime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 311 (R)(photo credit: REUTERS/Charles Dharapak)Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday instructed the Justice, Defense and Foreign Ministries to examine steps that can be taken in order to cancel the Goldstone Report. The move came in light of a Washington Post op-ed published Friday by Judge Richard Goldstone refuting allegations that Israel had a policy of targeted civilians during Operation Cast Lead, Israel Radio reported.Speaking at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said he had asked the various ministries to "formulate practical and public diplomacy measures, in order to reverse and minimize the great damage that has been done by this campaign of denigration against the State of Israel."RELATED:Comment: Goldstone the belated penitentNetanyahu: Throw Goldstone Report into dustbin of historyLivni: Cast Lead was justified with or without GoldstoneShaath: Goldstone succumbed to pressure over reportGoldstone, in an op-ed Friday in the Washington Post op-ed, said that if he had all the information available today at the time he wrote his report on Operation Cast Lead, that it would have been a completely different document. He said that it is now clear Israel did not have a policy of targeting civilians and that Hamas clearly continues to commit war crimes.Addressing Goldstone's reversal, President Shimon Peres said that the retired South African jurist should apologize to the State of Israel for accusing it of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, Israel Radio reported on Sunday."Goldstone ignored the central reason for the IDF operation in Gaza," Peres said, "the firing of thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens."He added that the IDF acted in self defense, investigated its own actions and will continue to be one of the most moral armies in the world.Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the regret expressed by Richard Goldstone over his report was "too limited, and comes too late," reported Army Radio on Sunday.According to the report, Barak said the damage caused by the Goldstone report could not be undone."The state of Israel announced that the report was fundamentally distorted. The Goldstone commission was based, from the beginning, on blood libels. It did not pretend to determine whether there were in fact war crimes, but in advance meant to determine which war crimes that Israel allegedly led."
Barak also explained the Israeli decision not to cooperate with the Goldstone commission, saying "Goldstone wanted us to give him facts, however we didn't have facts, because at the time we hadn't conducted our own investigation."Added Barak, "there is no basis to the claim that Israel kept information from the committee, to the contrary- we submitted a report consisting of hundreds of pages that brought forth our opinions on every incident. The committee took our report into its hands, and instead used the our arguments against us."Barak concluded, "every country would have acted like Israel did if an international body came and blamed it."Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the steadfastness of Israel to its goals of justice and its willingness to pay the price caused Richard Goldstone to change his conclusions, in an interview on Israel Radio on Sunday.The foreign minister asserted that if Israel had cooperated with Goldstone's investigation, it would have set a dangerous precedent. He added that he doesn't want an apology from Goldstone. He did, however, continue his attack on Israeli left-wing organizations, "primarily the New Israel Fund," who he claimed gave information against Israel to the Goldstone Commission.US ambassador Michael Oren on Saturday said that the Goldstone report "must be utterly discredited," in light of the Washington Post op-ed."In this article, Judge Goldstone contrasts the deliberate targeting of civilians by Hamas and its refusal to investigate its own war crimes with Israel's efforts to avoid civilian casualties and to fully investigate charges of IDF misconduct. Unfortunately, Judge Goldstone reached these conclusions only now, after his report seriously impaired the ability of Israel--and of all democratic states--to defend themselves, and furnished a major victory for terror," Oren stated.
