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The Forgotten Factor that Skews Goldstone's UN Mission

[Jerusalem Post] Alan Baker - In reviewing the terminology used in the resolutions of the Human Rights Council that serve as the mandate of the UN Fact Finding Mission headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, one is led to assume that Israel suddenly attacked peace-loving Gaza for no reason and without any provocation. There is no reference to the Hamas terror organization that administers the area, or the slightest hint as to the nature of the eight-year, indiscriminate rocket barrage directed against southern Israel's population centers. There is also the false and misleading equivalence drawn between Israel - whose citizens had been under constant armed attack and which acted in self-defense - and a group of terror organizations that proudly and openly use terror to achieve their ideological objectives. The basic norm prohibiting attack on or bombardment of towns or dwellings which are undefended was laid down in article 25 of the 1907 Hague Rules respecting the laws and customs of war. Article 51 of Additional Protocol 1 of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions clearly determines that "The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack." The Protocol goes on to prohibit attacks not directed at specific military objectives. The writer served as former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and as ambassador to Canada.
2009-07-31 06:00:00
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