Thursday, July 22, 2010

Another Error In The Goldstone Report--When Will Goldstone And Travers Deign To Respond?

Back on January, Elder of Ziyon wrote a post entitled: Goldstone ignored his own UN-supplied evidence--about the contradictions in the Al Badr flour mill incident which Goldstone claimed was a prime example of Israel targeting civilians

Now after Israel's release of it's second report in response to the Goldstone Report, the error made by the Goldstone Report in this case is even clearer.


Elder of Ziyon has a new post: It looks like the El Badr flour mill bomb was planted. In addition to the discrepancy between Goldstone's claim of an air attack versus the UN report indicating a tank shell, there is another contradiction.

According to the UN and Human Rights Watch, here is the remnants of the bomb that Israel dropped on the El Badr flour mill--a 500 lbs bomb:


And here is the hole it made coming into the mill--the only hole in the structure indicated by the UN and HRW:

In addition to the question as to why a bomb being dropped on the mill did not put a hole in the roof instead of in the side, there is the additional question of how a 500 lbs bomb left such a relatively small sized hole.

After having already investigated the incident in January, following the claims that there was proof that Israel had indeed dropped an aerial bomb on the El Badr mill, Israel investigated further and found:
143. Upon reviewing these reports, the MAG requested and received additional evidence from the U.N. and ordered the IAF to re-open its investigation of the incident. The MAG also initiated a meeting with U.N. representatives, who had visited the site of the mill, to discuss their findings. The follow-up investigation confirmed the earlier finding that the mill had not been targeted by the IAF in the course of a pre-planned attack. The new reports, photographs taken by U.N. officials, and video footage examined appeared inconsistent with an airborne strike, particularly given the absence of entry holes in the roof of the mill; the lack of trace marks on the floor where the shell was allegedly found (such trace marks would normally be expected when such a munition penetrates a building); and the fact that the fire which damaged the machinery in the mill broke out on the second floor while the ordnance was found on the first floor.
Perhaps Richard Goldstone and Colonel Desmond Travers--who have both brazenly claimed repeatedly that there has never been a rebuttal of the report--will deign to explain the sloppiness of their conclusions regarding the El Badr flour mill, as well as the other points mentioned in the multiple critiques of their military, legal and factual findings.

But don't count on the media to mention any of this. Yaacov Lozowick notes that the Guardian reports on the report released by Israel, but somehow misses the mistakes it finds in the Goldstone Report and only writes about the lessons that Israel can learn for the future.

You mean like the unreliability of UN Commissions and the media that covers for them?

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2 comments:

NormanF said...

From those who made up their minds Israel was guilty, you should not expect to ever see an apology forthcoming.

Daled Amos said...

Nevertheless, it is important to clearly show that the Goldstone Report's aura is in error.