UN Fact Finding Mission finds strong evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Gaza conflict; calls for end to impunityThe New York Times: The report called Israel's military assault on Gaza 'a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.'
The mission -- led by Richard Goldstone, a respected South African judge and once the lead war crimes prosecutor for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda -- did not attempt an exhaustive look at the war, instead focusing on 36 cases that it said constituted a representative sample. In 11 of these episodes, it said the Israeli military carried out direct attacks against civilians, including some in which civilians were shot 'while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags.' In all but one of these civilian attacks, the report said, 'the facts indicate no justifiable military objective' for them.
The report cited other possible crimes by the Israelis, including 'wantonly' destroying food production, water and sewerage facilities; striking areas, in an effort to kill a small number of combatants, where significant numbers of civilians were gathered; using Palestinians as human shields; and detaining men, women and children in sand pits. It also called Israel's use of weapons like white phosphorus 'systematically reckless'...
Judge Goldstone said the panel heard extensive testimony, conducting 188 interviews and reviewing 10,000 pages of documents and 1,000 photographs. After Israel refused to allow the investigators into the country, the Human Rights Council paid for Israeli witnesses to give testimony in Geneva.
The panel rejected the Israeli version of events surrounding several of the most contentious episodes of the war... Asked about accusations that he was anti-Israel, Judge Goldstone acknowledged he was Jewish and said, 'It is grossly wrong to label a mission or to label a report critical of Israel as being anti-Israel.
