From the moment the Goldstone Report was published in September 2009, its opponents have worked tirelessly to undermine it. The 452-page investigation of the 2008–09 Gaza conflict by a United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes for attacks on civilians, but its overall thrust was harshly critical of the Israeli onslaught, which took as many as 1,400 Palestinian lives, including those of more than 300 children.

The US Congress denounced the report for allegedly denying Israel’s right of self-defense (it didn’t); Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortlisted the report, along with Hamas rockets and a nuclear-armed Iran, as one of the three main threats to the Jewish state; and Alan Dershowitz accused the report’s chief author, Richard Goldstone, of being a traitor to the Jewish people.

As recently as March, Eli Yishai, Israel’s bellicose interior minister, wrote to Goldstone charging his report with giving “legitimacy” to terrorist organizations and “calm[ing] murderers without a conscience” when they murder children.

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Within hours of Goldstone’s op-ed, those who had been gunning for the report all along gleefully pronounced its demise. They characterized the judge’s essay as a recantation, and they declared the report mortally flawed. Netanyahu demanded that the UN cancel the document.

The State Department followed suit, with UN ambassador Susan Rice stating that she wanted the report simply to “disappear.” The Israel Action Network, a multi-million-dollar effort led by the Jewish Federations of North America to massage Israel’s image and rebut “delegitimization” efforts, promptly launched a campaign to circulate the op-ed to as many “opinion molders” as possible.

Eminent figures have stepped up to affirm the validity of the original document, including, most notably, the three commissioners who co-authored the report with Goldstone: retired Irish colonel Desmond Travers, Pakistani lawyer Hina Jilani, and legal scholar Christine Chinkin.

In a devastating rebuke published in the Guardian on April 14, the three commissioners defended the validity of the report and dismissed critics who have sought to capitalize on Goldstone’s essay as cynically misrepresenting the facts.

South African jurist Richard Goldstone said Tuesday that he did not plan to seek nullification of his highly critical U.N. report on Israel's 2008-2009 offensive in the Gaza Strip and asserted that claims to the contrary by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai were false. . .

"As appears from the Washington Post article, information subsequent to publication of the report did meet with the view that one correction should be made with regard to intentionality on the part of Israel," the judge said. "Further information as a result of domestic investigations could lead to further reconsideration, but as i presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time."

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On 6 January 2009, during the military operations in Gaza, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai stated:

“It [should be] possible to destroy Gaza, so they will understand not to mess with us.” He added that “it is a great opportunity to demolish thousands of houses of all the terrorists, so they will think twice before they launch rockets.”

“I hope the operation will come to an end with great achievements and with the complete destruction of terrorism and Hamas. In my opinion, they should be razed to the ground, so thousands of houses, tunnels and industries will be demolished.” He added that “residents of the South are strengthening us, so the operation will continue until a total destruction of Hamas [is achieved].”

In 2002, following terrorist attacks on Israelis, Lieberman called for military attacks on Palestinian civilian and commercial targets, saying:

"If it were up to me I would notify the Palestinian Authority tomorrow at ten in the morning we would bomb all their places of business in Ramallah, for example."..."I would not hesitate to send the Israeli army into all of Area A [the area of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control] for 48 hours.

Destroy the foundation of all the authority's military infrastructure, all of the police buildings, the arsenals, all the posts of the security forces... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything."

The failure of the U.N. to hold to account the militants firing rockets into Israel and indiscriminately killing anyone in the way, while condemning Israel for protecting themselves from attack is preposterous, especially after numerous pleas this year alone.

Originally posted by dontreally
reply to post by infowarrior9970

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Israel may be the ethnic-nation state of Jews, but since it's a liberal democracy, all other groups of people are welcome to live in it, thrive in it, and have full democratic and human rights within it.

The implementation by Jewish supremacists of Talmudic hate literature has caused untold suffering throughout history and now, in occupied Palestine, it is used as a justification for the mass murder of Palestinian civilians. The Talmud specifically defines all who are not Jews as non-human animals.

Sanhedrin 57a . When a Jew murders a gentile ("Cuthean"), there will be no death penalty. What a Jew steals from a gentile he may keep.

Baba Kamma 37b. The gentiles are outside the protection of the law and God has "exposed their money to Israel."

Moed Kattan 17a: If a Jew is tempted to do evil he should go to a city where he is not known and do the evil there.

Baba Kamma 37b. "If an ox of an Israelite gores an ox of a Canaanite there is no liability; but if an ox of a Canaanite gores an ox of an Israelite...the payment is to be in full."

Baba Kamma 113a. Jews may use lies ("subterfuges") to circumvent a Gentile.

Yebamoth 98a. All gentile children are animals.

Rosh Hashanah 17a. Christians (minnim) and others who reject the Talmud will go to hell and be punished there for all generations.

Sanhedrin 54b. A Jew may have sex with a child as long as the child is less than nine years old.

Baba Mezia 59b. A rabbi debates God and defeats Him. God admits the rabbi won the debate.

No, he has not. He just referred to the "limited scope of the fact-finding mission, noting that it was not a judicial proceeding".

How do you put the words "limited scope" in the same sentence with "fact-finding mission"?

Goldstone admitted that his report would never stand up in a court of law due to the failure to prove intent.

I didn't, Goldstone did, for very specific reasons.

Yes, those reasons being that he knew he had limited facts from his "limited scope".

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimated Palestinians at mid year 2009 as 10.7 million persons as follows: 3.9 million in the Palestinian Territory (36.6%), 1.2 million (11.5%) in Israel; 5.0 million in Arab countries (46.2%), 0.6 million in foreign countries (5.7%).[1]

According to an article in Guardian
(2008) using PCBS census figures, thePalestinian
 territories have one of the fastest growing populations in the world, with numbers surging 30% in the past decade (2008). There was 3.76 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, up from 2.89 million 10 years earlier.[2]