Anne Bayefsky - The other three members of Goldstone's UN committee - Christine Chinkin, Desmond Travers and Hina Jilani - published an article in The Guardian in which they complain: "We regret the personal attacks and the extraordinary pressure placed on members of the fact-finding mission since we began our work in May 2009. This campaign has been clearly aimed at undermining the integrity of the report and its authors." Indeed, the "integrity" of both the report and its authors is exactly what is in issue. On January 11, 2009, in the midst of the Gaza war, Chinkin, a law professor at the London School of Economics, signed a letter to The Times which stated: "Israel's bombardment of Gaza is not self-defense - it's a war crime." Allegedly, the purpose of the Goldstone mission was to investigate whether war crimes had been committed. No democratic state governed by the rule of law would ever have appointed Christine Chinkin to a Gaza war crimes inquiry after she signed that letter.
2011-04-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive