Exposing Goldstone on the Law

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/10/exposing-goldstone/index.shtml

1. The Goldstone report draws its conclusions on the basis of 36 incidents it says it investigated. The report says that incidents are illustrative and therefore justify the broader conclusions made by the report. But Goldstone admits that the report lied in saying that the incidents are "illustrative" and in saying that the Mission worked according to its self-described neutral mandate rather than the official biased one. Goldstone says "We chose those 36 because they seemed to be, to represent the most serious, the highest death toll, the highest injury toll. And they appear to represent situations where there was little or no military justification for what happened." In other words, the Mission chose incidents that were seen as NOT ILLUSTRATIVE, and, rather, most likely to support a finding of war crimes.

2. Goldstone repeatedly misstates the law in the interview.

1. Goldstone implicitly misstates the rule of distinction. Goldstone rightly says that the rule of distinction requires combatants to distinguish between "combatants and innocent civilians." But then, he "pro