International Law-New Revelations About the UN Goldstone Report that Seriously Undermine its Credibility
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http://www.jcpa.org/...78&PID=0&IID=3377&TTL=New_Revelations_About_the_UN_Goldstone_Report_that_Seriously_Undermine_its_Credibility[12/13/2010 1:55:23 PM]
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Home » International Law » New Revelations About the UN Goldstone Report that Subscribe
Seriously Undermine its Credibility
by  Dore Gold  |   Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi Your email here
Published February 2010
 Daily Alert
New Revelations About the UN Goldstone Report  Jerusalem Issue Brief
that Seriously Undermine its Credibility   Post Holocaust Anti-Semitism
   Changing Jewish
Dore Gold and Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi Communities
  GO
Col. (ret.) Desmond Travers was one of the four members of the UN Fact
International Law
Finding Mission that produced what is widely called the Goldstone Report.
The Mission  investigated Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip between What do you know
December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009.  Travers joined the Irish about International
Defense Forces in 1961 and retired after forty years. As the only former Law?
officer who belonged to Justice Richard Goldstone's team, he was the
senior figure responsible for the military analysis that provided the basis
for condemning Israel for war crimes.
After following his repeated public appearances with the other mission
members in July 2009, and especially in light of his most recent
interviews, serious flaws have now become evident in the methodology he
followed, in his collection and processing of data, and in the conclusions
he draws. In the past, the flaws in the Goldstone report, and especially its
lack of balance, have been criticized by the London Times, the TEST YOURSELF:
Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, but the How do we apply
fundamental problems of its military analysis have not been fully International Humanitarian
addressed. In the material presented here, this becomes evident in four Law during wartime?
specific ways:
Our Fellows' Books
1. A Fundamental Bias against the Israel Defense Forces
During the Mission's collection of testimonies from Palestinian
psychologists in the Gaza Strip, Travers asked them straight out to
explain how Israeli soldiers could kill Palestinian children in front of their
parents. In an interview with Middle East Monitor, on February 2, 2010,
he asserted that in the past Israeli soldiers had "taken out and deliberately
shot" Irish peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon. Both of these
statements by Travers are completely false. It should be stressed that one
of the most vicious and unsubstantiated conclusions in the Goldstone
Report is the suggestion that Israel deliberately killed Palestinian civilians.
La Shoah
While Travers assumes the worst of intentions on the part of the Israel - Freddy Eytan-
Defense Forces, he praises Hamas for their cooperation with the Mission.
When he was asked about Hamas intimidation that affected the Mission's Publications List
inquiries, he replied that that there was "none whatsoever." Yet the Show Publications
Goldstone Report itself noted in Paragraph 440 that those interviewed in
By Year
Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of Palestinian
armed groups because of a "fear of reprisals." He rejects the notion that By Author
Hamas shielded its forces in the civilian population and does not accept
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the idea that Israel faced asymmetric warfare.
Keywords
International Law-New Revelations About the UN Goldstone Report that Seriously Undermine its Credibility

2. False Information Reported About Weapons Systems Topic

All
All

Travers comes up with a story that the IDF had unmanned aerial vehicles Date
(UAV's) that could obtain a "thermal signature" on a Gaza house and Anytime
Anytime
detect that there were large numbers of people inside. Incredibly, he then
suggests that with this information that certain houses were "packed with
people," the Israeli military would then deliberately order a missile strike Send to a friend
on these populated homes. The primary technical problem with his theory
is that Israel does not have UAV's that can see though houses and pick Print page
up a thermal signature. More importantly, Israel used UAV's to monitor
that Palestinian civilians left houses that had received multiple warnings,
precisely because Israel sought to minimize civilian casualties, a fact that
Travers could not fathom, because of his own clear biases.

3. Completely Inaccurate Data

Travers rejects that Israel began military operations against the Gaza
Strip on December 27, 2008 as an act of self-defense in response to
Hamas rockets. He bases this idea on a "fact" that he presents that in the
month prior to start of the war, there were only "something like two"
rockets that fell on Israel. Israeli military sources found that there were in
fact 32 rockets fired from Gaza at Israel over three days alone--between
December 16 and 18, 2008. He adds to his analysis that at this time
Hamas sought to extend the tahdiya, or lull arrangement--which he called
a cease-fire. Yet the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas announced
on December 17 that the lull would come to an end two days later and
would not be renewed. The head of the Hamas political bureau in
Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, announced the end of the lull on December
14. To say that Hamas wanted to continue the lull is a complete distortion
of events.

In his Middle East Monitor interview, Travers states that he "only came
across two incidents of where there was an actual combat situation" - the
exchange of fire between Israel and Hamas. Because he minimizes the
possibility that Israel was engaged in real combat in the Gaza Strip, it
follows that he naturally conclude that Israel was essentially attacking
non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead.

4. Lack of Professionalism in Conducting Thorough Investigations

Travers relies on his own prejudices when he looks into the question of
whether Gazan Mosques had been militarized by Hamas and turned into
weapons depots. In an interview with Harpers, published on October 29,
2009, Travers makes a sweeping generalization: "We found no evidence
that mosques were used to store munitions." He then dismissed those
who suggested that was the case by saying: "Those charges reflect
Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion."
How many mosques did Travers investigate? He admits that the Mission
only checked two mosques.

Of course, srael produced photographic proof that large amounts of

weapons were stored in mosques, like the Zaytun Mosque. In a
subsequent interview, Travers rejected the Israeli proof: "I do not believe
the photographs."  He described the photographs as "spurious." Travers
appears to be bothered by proof that contradicts the conclusions he
reaches on the basis of a very limited investigation. In early 2010, Colonel
Tim Collins, a British veteran of the Iraq War, visited Gaza for BBC
Newsnight and inspected the ruins of a mosque that Israel had destroyed
because it had been a weapons depot. He found that there was evidence
of secondary explosions cause by explosives stored in the mosque cellar.
Travers clearly did not make the effort that Collins made.

In his questioning of Palestinian witnesses in the Gaza Strip, Travers

http://www.jcpa.org/...78&PID=0&IID=3377&TTL=New_Revelations_About_the_UN_Goldstone_Report_that_Seriously_Undermine_its_Credibility[12/13/2010 1:55:23 PM]

International Law-New Revelations About the UN Goldstone Report that Seriously Undermine its Credibility

does not ask the questions that a military advisor should raise. He did not
ask those giving testimony if they were member of the Izz al-Din al-
Qassam units of Hamas and were combatants. He also failed to ask them
straight out if their homes had been used to store munitions, like Grad
rockets. Instead, his questions reflected his ideological bias.

Travers most recent interview also had a disturbing additional element.

When addressing the role of British officers in defending Israel's claims,
Travers suddenly adds: "Britain's foreign policy interests in the Middle
East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists." Travers implies
that British Jews have interests that differ from Britain's own national
interests and that Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is
influenced by these considerations. This statement, unless corrected,
places Travers is a position in which his views are suspect of being
motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices. Even without this last statement, he
clearly emerges as an individual who is not qualified to take part in any
serious fact-finding mission and the U.N. should not seek his services in
the future. Given his statements, Justice Richard Goldstone should
repudiate Col. Travers and completely reject the conclusions that he
reached as a result of his work.

Watch a Video of Dore Gold Discussing the New Revelations

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