Even Judge Goldstone can support Israel??!!

Most Israelis are suspicious of the UN Human Rights Council and its disproportionate focus on Israel. A good friend of mine wrote an op-ed in the American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/judge_goldstone_contradicts_th.html which debates this problem. In this article he draws some small comfort for support from non other than Richard Goldstone.

Israel has for years complained about the extreme bias of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) which has issued 35 resolutions condemning Israel since 2006 and only 15 against all other countries in the same period. At a press conference in Jerusalem on February 11, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay denied reports that the HRC unfairly targets Israel.

But Ms. Pillay's views are sharply contradicted by none other than Judge Richard Goldstone who headed the UN Mission to Gaza that produced the controversial Goldstone Report.

During a recent panel discussion on "Civilians in War Zones" at Stanford University, Judge Goldstone mentioned that Ms. Pillay had requested the HRC to establish a Mission to investigate crimes likely to have been committed during the conflict in Sri Lanka and it is indeed notable that he courageously stated publicly that "to their shame" a majority of HRC members refused to do so.


Judge Goldstone's bold statement that punishing war crimes should be "on the basis of the equality of all nations before the law" is encouraging in view of the disproportionate focus on every little wart in Israel while ignoring real gross violations of human rights elsewhere. He said that this indefensible action by the HRC:


"fueled the long-standing and repeated complaints by Israel that the Human Rights Council and the UN in general are biased against it. They repeatedly rush to pass condemnatory resolutions in the face of alleged violations of human rights law by Israel but fail to take similar action in the face of even more serious violations by other States. Until the Gaza Report they failed to condemn the firing of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian centers."