Forget What's In The Goldstone Report--What Did They Leave Out?!

In a memorandum he sent to the UN Human Rights Council, Maurice Ostroff notes the evidence available to the fact-finding commission that was rejected:

1. Rejection of credible relevant evidence
The Report omits, without explanation, a great deal of highly relevant, credible information that would certainly have a bearing on the HRC's evaluation. In fact it could be considered that the Mission had a duty to at least disclose in the Report, the existence and contents of such available evidence even if it disagreed with the contents. For example

1.1. Memorandum from Australian lawyers.
A professionally prepared document submitted by a group of 15 eminent Australian lawyers earned only the briefest mention in footnote 297. See
http://maurice-ostroff.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/australianlawyers.pdf

1.2. Colonel Richard Kemp (see Appendix A)
That highly significant evidence was totally ignored, not even earning a footnote, on the grounds that "there was no reliance on Col. Kemp mainly because the Report did not deal with the issues he raised regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers in the fog of war. The Mission avoided having to do so in the incidents it decided to investigate". This explanation is completely unacceptable, since it is a sine qua non that investigating alleged war crimes essentially involved investigation of the military operations in civilian areas. See http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id199.html.

1.3. Reluctant witnesses
The Mission failed to take advantage of leads to trace some critical witnesses, as well as to view video presentations in which Palestinians who had fled from Hamas described Hamas' abuse of hospitals and ambulances.
(See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLFAJK5LtwY
The report must be considered incomplete unless such evidence is included.

Read the whole thing.

To this list we can add Dr. Mirela Siderer:

Judge Richard Goldstone, in July you invited me to testify. I told you my story. I am known by my patients -- including many women from Gaza. For me, every human being is equal.

...Judge Goldstone, I told you all of this, in detail. I testified in good faith. You sent me this letter, saying, "Your testimony is an essential part of the Mission's fact-finding activities."

But now I see your report. I have to tell you: I am shocked.

Judge Goldstone, in a 500-page report, why did you completely ignore my story? My name appears only in passing, in brackets, in a technical context. I feel humiliated.

Read the whole thing.

Then, there is Prof. Elihu D. Richter, who writes:

...I submitted Elena Bonner's eloquent statement on behalf of Gilad Schalit, data on Israel providing ever more medical permits to Gazans during a period of increasing rocket attacks, and documentation of Hamas' and Iran's incitement to genocide using the dehumanizing metaphors of Mein-Kampf type hate language. Iran, as is well known, is a supplier, enabler, instructor and enabler of Hamas, and its government is now the world's epicenter for incitement to genocide.

The Goldstone Commission ignored all the above. In short, the Commission was not driven by the evidence, but by its preset agenda and rigged mandate.

According to an advance transcript of Goldstone's speech to the UN Human Rights Council today in Geneva, Judge Goldstone will say:

We relied on reports from others where they corroborated the views we had formed.

So the question is not only what the Goldstone Commission left out, but why.

Technorati Tag: Richard Goldstone and Goldstone Commission Report and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead.