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Goldstone Commission Military Expert's Anti-Israel Bias Documented

(Ha'aretz) Anshel Pfeffer and Danna Harman - The Goldstone Commission's military expert, Col. Desmond Travers, formerly a senior officer in the Irish army, has said that Hamas fired only two rockets at Israel prior to last winter's conflict, according to a new report compiled by Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi and published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on Wednesday. Travers ignored the fact that in three days alone during the month before the IDF campaign, Hamas had fired 32 rockets at Israel and that, according to Hamas spokesmen, Hamas had resolved to end the cease-fire. The report also noted that Travers rejected any possibility that Hamas had been using mosques to hide weapons, despite Israel's evidence to the contrary and the testimony of British army Col. Tim Collins, who visited Gaza and found clear signs that a mosque had been used for this purpose. In an interview last week with Middle East Monitor, Travers said the IDF had used drones that could detect people inside of buildings by their body heat and did so in attacking houses in which dozens of Palestinian civilians had taken shelter. Neither Travers nor other commission members asked Palestinian interviewees who said their houses had been blown up by the IDF whether they were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or whether weapons had been stored in their homes. When Travers interviewed two Palestinian psychologists, he asked them how Israeli soldiers could kill children in front of their parents as if it were a fact. Travers gave an interview in which he accused Israel of murdering many Irish soldiers of the UNIFIL contingent in South Lebanon, and charged that "Britain's foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists." Jerusalem Center President Dore Gold called on Judge Richard Goldstone, the commission chairman, to condemn Travers' remarks.
2010-02-11 09:01:47
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