Jewish & World News

Israel - In the wake of the heavy criticism leveled at the IDF following Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter, the military has written, for the first time, an operational doctrine for how forces should operate when fighting within a civilian-populated area, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Israel - When Dr. Mirela Siderer picked up Yedioth Ahronoth's "7 Days" supplement on Friday, she saw on its cover the judge she had tried to convince that Israel did not commit war crimes in Gaza. "Had I known who this man was," she says, "I would never have gone to testify." Dr. Siderer, a gynecologist from the southern city of Ashkelon, was severely injured when a Grad rocket hit a local mall. When Judge Richard Goldstone was appointed to investigate the Israel Defense Forces' activity in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead, Dr. Siderer was one of the only people to testify in favor of Israel. She flew to Geneva and spent hours telling her story and the story of southern Israel's rocket-stricken residents to the Goldstone committee. But in the final report released by committee, she was mentioned in only four lines. After reading the Yedioth Ahronoth investigation, which revealed Goldstone's dark past as a South African judge u...

Judicial decisions Richard Goldstone made in South Africa that resulted in sending black South Africans to their deaths under the apartheid regime have nothing to do with his report on the Gaza war, he told Haaretz yesterday.

The UN General Assembly approved Friday an Arab League proposal by which Secretary-Genral Ban Ki-moon will report on progress made by both Israel and the Palestinians in independent investigations of Operation Cast Lead, following the Goldstone report on the conflict.

It all began with an innocent enough request for an interview about the Goldstone report and my 49-page response to it. ( www.alandershowitz.com/goldstone.pdf ) The Israeli Army radio station asked to interview me. The interview was conducted by an experienced host, Razi Barkai. Unbeknownst to me, Barkai had an agenda. He wanted to get me to say that I thought that Goldstone was a "moser." He wanted me to use this Hebrew word, whose meaning I did not understand, because in Israel, this obscure theological term has taken on a meaning of its own. According to The Forward, "the term moser entered Israeli political discourse in 1995 in the wake of Rabin's assassination by radical settler supporter Yigal Amir, when Amir cited some rabbis' designation of Rabin as a moser as part of his justification for carrying out the murder." The Forward quoted Michael Karpin, an Israeli journalist and the author of a book on Rabin's assassination, as follows: "Afte...

A co-author of the Goldstone Gaza report, which accuses both Hamas and Israel of war crimes, claims the Gaza militant group fired only two rockets at Israel prior to last year's winter conflict, according to a new report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The center, headed by Dore Gold, former Israel Ambassador to the UN, revealed the report at a press conference on Wednesday. The report refers to recent remarks made by Desmond Travers, a retired Irish army colonel, who was one of four members of the fact-finding mission to Gaza and Israel.     Travers rejects the idea that Israel launched the offensive in Gaza on December 27, 2008, as an act of self-defense in response to Hamas rockets. The Jerusalem center report says he bases this idea on a "fact" that he presents that in the month prior to start of the war, only "something like two" rockets that fell on Israel. The report quotes an extensive interview with Travers in the Middle ...

Israel's account of its conduct during the Gaza war was challenged on Monday after evidence emerged apparently contradicting one of the army's key findings, The Guardian reported. Israel last week submitted a 46-page response to a highly critical United Nations inquiry by South African judge Richard Goldstone, which accused both Israel and Hamas of "grave breaches" of the fourth Geneva Convention. In the report, Israel claimed its forces abided by international law throughout the war last year and denied targeting the al-Badr flour mill in northern Gaza, which was severely damaged during the IDF's three-week offensive.     But the UN mine action team, which handles ordnance disposal in Gaza, maintains that the remains of a 500-pound Mk82 aircraft-dropped bomb were found in the ruins of the mill last January. This evidence directly contradicts the Israeli report, which challenged allegations that the building was deliberately targeted and specifically state...

An Israel Defense Forces brigadier general and another officer with the rank of colonel endangered human life during last year's military campaign in the Gaza Strip by firing white phosphorous munitions in the direction of a compound run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the Israeli government official says. The finding aknowledges, at least in part, allegations by international organizations. It was contained in a report that the government provided to the United Nations over the weekend in response to last September's Goldstone Commission report. Gaza Division Commander Brig. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg and Givati Brigade Commander Col. Ilan Malka, were the subject of disciplinary action by GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Gallant after headquarters staff found that the men exceeded their authority in approving the use of phosphorus shells that endangered human life, the Israeli government report said.     The incident in question occurred on Januar...

Two days after Israel submitted its response to the Goldstone report that accused the IDF of possible crimes against humanity during last year's Operation Cast Lead, prominent lawyer and political commentator Professor Alan Dershowitz said that the jurist, someone he once considered a friend, was "a traitor to the Jewish people." Speaking to Army Radio, Dershowitz said the “Goldstone report is a defamation written by an evil, evil man." He said the jurist "allowed himself to be used to give a hechsher, a certification of purity, to defamation," and that Goldstone is a "man who uses his language and words against the Jewish people." Elaborating, the professor said that it would be as if the writers of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion "had asked a prominent Jew to read the report and sign it" to give it approval. "I regarded him as a friend, but I now regard him as an absolute traitor," he said. When Dershowitz was a...

Israel submitted to the United Nations its response to the allegations of war crimes made in the Goldstone commission report which investigated the Israel Defense Forces' offensive in the Gaza Strip last year, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday. Friday marks the three-month deadline set by the United Nations General Assembly for issuing its own report on the Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza Strip. "This morning we handed the UN a report of the investigations and operations that took place during Operation Cast Lead," Barak, who was speaking at a Jewish National Fund tree-planting ceremony near the Negev town of Omer, said. "This report stresses that the IDF is like no other army, both from a moral standpoint as well as from a professional standpoint."     "The Goldstone Report is a distorted, false, and irresponsible report," Barak said. "All of the soldiers and officers whom we sent to battle need to know that the state of Israel stand...

Israel  will not set up a special panel to investigate last winter's Gaza offensive, a Cabinet minister said Tuesday, rejecting a key demand of a UN report  that accused the military of war crimes. Information Minister Yuli Edelstein said Israel would submit a document to the UN later this week that deals only with Israel's own investigations of its conduct during the three-week war. Those investigations have been conducted by the military, which has exonerated itself of any systematic wrongdoing. Gaza War "To the best of my knowledge, there is no intention to create an investigative committee," Edelstein, a member of the ruling Likud party, told Israel Radio, saying he had checked with his colleagues in the Cabinet. It was not certain that Edelstein's comments were Israel's last word on the subject. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was out of the country, and his office declined comment. Read More: Ynet

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Monday that he has decided to establish an independent panel of inquiry to evaluate the findings of the Goldstone Commission's probe into the Gaza war last year. Abbas has ordered all relevant parties within the Palestinian Authority to cooperate with this initiative, which would focus on human rights violations allegedly carried out by his PA security forces during Operation Cast Lead. The panel will comprise eight members and is to be headed by former Palestinian supreme court president, Isa Abu Sharar.     The UN-sponsored report, which was authored by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, has demanded that both Israel and Hamas carry out independent investigations into the war crimes allegations it raises. The Palestinian Authority had no role in the Gaza war. It lost jurisdiction over the coastal territory during a bloody Hamas coup in June 2007, 18 months before Israel embarked on Operation Cast Lead. Isra...

Israel was set to submit its rebuttal on Thursday to a United Nations report accusing it of having committed war crimes in Gaza last winter. Though the Israeli response has been kept under wraps, it is expected to list the essential flaws in the report and explain why the report is biased against Israel and tainted with many problems. By February 5, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was to file a compilation of all the responses to the report, authored by renowned South African jurist Richard Goldstone. In its rebuttal, Israel was to explain the reasons behind the offensive in the Gaza Strip and what it terms the hardships of fighting against a terror organization that operates inside civilian homes, schools, hospitals and UN facilities. Israel launched its three-week offensive in Gaza in December 2008 in an effort to halt near daily rocket fire from the coastal strip onto its southern communities. The Goldstone report has demanded that both Israel and Hamas carry out independe...