Reply #37: reply

[shira]

What makes you think they don't have lots of good exculpatory information that would compel a better outcome?

whether they have lots of good exculpatory info. or not wouldn't make a difference...note what was included in the MFA's Gaza Legal Facts and Aspects and totally ignored, minimized, or explained away.

All I get so far is Goldstone would somehow hide it all and they are all bigots and so on; but it would seem to me that had Israel cooperated and provided lots of exculpatory information, which would all be documented, and had the Goldstone commission ignored and obfuscated that in an egregious way, then Israel would be in a much stronger position than it is in now to critizice the report, because they can (and do) argue that the report is based on the information provided to them, which is what reports are supposed to do, report on the information they have.

But the Goldstone commission has ALREADY obfuscated and ignored in a major way - so what makes you think something different would have happened had the IDF participated? Gaza Legal Aspects and Facts was available to Goldstone and instead of accounting for the information within, Goldstone obfuscated and ignored it.

In addition, realize that some major press was given to lawyers and organizations calling for the ouster of one of the commission's members (Chinkin) for the views she publicized soon after OCL. She had no business being in the commission with her biased views. This highly publicized criticism had no impact whatsoever.

In addition to that, Goldstone said he wouldn't participate in the commission unless the mandate was changed in order to hold Hamas also accountable. That mandate was never changed by the UNHRC even though it was requested by Goldstone. And judging by the commission's reluctance to account for the most damaging evidence against Hamas, the UNHRC got it's way again.

Finally, check out all the references I just provided of Hamas human-shielding. Those newspaper articles, youtube video, etc. was easily available to Goldstone and it was all ignored. Are you saying it's Israel's responsibility to see to it that a so-called "fact-finding" mission accounts for very accessible evidence that can be easily retrieved by the likes of you and me? Because if so, what does that say about the commission - are they that incompetent or just dishonest?