My letter to the NY Times

To the editor,

Richard Goldstone reveals his (and his "committee's) bias immediately in his article yesterday.  The blatant lie that his mandate was to address issues on all sides of
Israel's defensive in Gaza is in direct contradiction to the UN Mandate which established his commission.

UN Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-9/1 of 12 January 2009 which established his commission makes NO mention of investigating Hamas, or the so called Palestinians.
In fact, every clause calls on Israel, condemns Israel, etc.

The "action" clause reads as follows:

14. /Decides/ to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, *to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory*, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission;

(as a note - the continued reference to an occupation is telling.  Who is occupying Gaza?  Israel pulled out 4 years ago, and if it was occupied, it was occupied from Egypt)

There is not even a request of Hamas to cooperate.
What Goldstone fails to mention is that ALL of his interviews were supervised by Hamas terrorists.  That many of the interviews were of these same murderers.

The idea that Hamas did not use civilian shields is belied by the Palestinians themselves who OPENLY brag about it.  These videos are readily available.

Worse, Goldstone implies that an Israeli Supreme Court, which regularly finds against its' own government, is biased in the way that some non existent Hamas review would be.  This would be comical if
it were not so sad coming from an attorney.

The bias of the rest of the members of the commission was clear as at least one of the four, Christine Chinkin, wrote an article in the Sunday Times of London last January already declaring that Israel had committed war crimes.

Goldstone himself is severely compromised by his association with Human Rights watch, whose recent activities have included fund raising in Saudi Arabia by bragging about their anti -Israel bias and the recent suspension of their "military analyst" because of his sick preoccupation with collecting Nazi memorabilia.

The absurdity of the report and the accusations against Israel can be seen in common sense.  Israel could have leveled Gaza, but instead made 200,000 PHONE CALLS to residents to warn them, dropped HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS Of leaflets to do the same thing, opened field hospitals not for IDF soldiers but for Palestinian residents, sent in TONS of humanitarian aid to a population determined to kill them.

Finally, the idea of "proportionality" is the most absurd.  What Goldstone and other critics are essentially saying is that Israel, rather than using surgical strikes and modern GPS based missiles, should randomly fire 8,000+
missiles into the heart of Gaza to equalize what had been done to them.

Can you imagine the outcry if that had been their choice?

Please, we need to bring rationality to this discussion.

It is quite simple.  When Israel is held to standards that NO other nation is held to (where is the UN Commission investigated the US for the recent civilian deaths in Afghanistan) than there is only one explanation.