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Israel Tries to Gather Allies

To help shake off the Goldstone Report

by
Michael Weiss
September 17, 2009

Following the international fallout of the Goldstone Report—a UN-commissioned study on the Israeli incursion in Gaza last winter headed by South African Judge Richard Goldstone that concluded the IDF was guilty of war crimes—Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has reached out to the Obama administration as an act of first-response damage control. According to Haaretz, Israel is seeking the support of the U.S., Russia, and other nations still mired in counterterrorism wars abroad. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has also assembled a team of attorneys to combat possible war crimes indictments by the International Criminal Court. The attempt by the Jewish State to shore up as many moral and legal bolsters as possible has already taken the form of denouncing the Goldstone Report as the equivalent of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which stated that Zionism was a racist ideology. The only good news coming out of Jerusalem, it seems, is mutual congratulations by Israeli officials for refusing to cooperate with the Goldstone investigators because of the perceived inevitable bias in any UN-prompted human rights analysis. A joint panel of the Israeli Justice Ministry, IDF, and Foreign Ministry has instructed officers who fought in Gaza not to travel abroad for fear of possible subpoenas or arrests. As for the actual allegations raised by the Goldstone Report, Israel has not responded.