The United States Senate has unanimously approved a resolution which calls on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone Commission's report on the war in Gaza in 2008/09. The resolution urges the UN Human Rights Council "to reflect the author's repudiation of the Goldstone report's central findings, rescind the report and reconsider further Council actions with respect to the report's findings." The resolution also calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon to "do all in his power to redress the damage to Israel's reputation" and to "reform" the Human Rights Council "so that it no longer unfairly, disproportionately and falsely criticizes Israel on a regular basis."
Earlier on Thursday, three co-authors of the report on Gaza said they stood firmly behind their work and rejected recent calls to reconsider or retract the document. “The report of the [2009] fact-finding mission contains the conclusions made after diligent, independent and objective consideration of the information related to the events within our mandate, and careful assessment of its reliability and credibility. We firmly stand by these conclusions,” the trio wrote in a letter they published by the British newspaper 'The Guardian'.
The three mission members, Hina Jilani of Pakistan, Christine Chinkin of Britain and Desmond Travers of Ireland, spoke out after their former chairman, Richard Goldstone, wrote an opinion piece in the 'Washington Post' earlier this month saying that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” He stated that the report erroneously accused Israel of intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. He also wrote that he concurred with a follow-up UN report that stated that Israel had investigated, transparently and in good faith, allegations made in the Goldstone Report, while Hamas “has done nothing.”
