Despite earlier public comments by Israel's Interior Minister Eli Yishai to the contrary, Judge Richard Goldstone did not promise him he would work to nullify the UN report on Gaza that bears his name.
Israel's Interior Minister Eli Yishai claimed that during a phone call with Judge Goldstone yesterday, the retired South African judge promised him he would work towards nullifying his report to the UN that investigated possible war crimes committed in Gaza by Israel and Hamas in 2009.
From yesterday's JPost:
Additionally, Yishai said that Goldstone made a promise to work towards retracting his UN report. Former ambassador to the UN Danny Gillerman, who also spoke with Goldstone, added that the judge would not act immediately to do so.
http://www.jpost.com/...
However, an interview with the AP today quotes Judge Goldstone saying exactly the opposite. Goldstone even says that the quote attributed to him by Yishai is simply false.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Goldstone said that Yishai had called him on Monday to thank him for an op-ed piece published Friday in The Washington Post in which the judge wrote that new information had come to light that made him rethink his central conclusions.
Goldstone said, however, that he never discussed the report with Yishai in the telephone conversation. Israeli leaders have called for the report to be retracted since it was issued in 2009.
"There was absolutely no discussion about the Goldstone report on the call," the jurist said in a telephone interview from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Goldstone said he thanked Yishai for calling and "stated that my concern was to work for truth, justice and human rights."
http://www.haaretz.com/...
And in another bizarre twist to his recent controversial opinion piece now called, the Goldstone Retort by his critics, the New York Times and Washington Post had to explain why one rejected Goldstone's recent op-ed while the other printed a significantly different version of Goldstone's op-ed. In the Goldstone op-ed published by the Washington Post, Goldstone appeared to distance himself from some of the UN report's harsh criticism of Israel's failure to cooperate with the UN commissioned investigative panel he led.
The New York Times has denied rumors that it refused to print an opinion piece authored by jurist Richard Goldstone in which he retracted some of the statements made in his UN Human Rights Council report on the war between Israel and Gaza in 2008-2009, political columnist Ben Smith reports in Politico.
A New York Times spokesperson stated in an e-mail that the paper did, in fact, receive an op-ed submission from Goldstone on March 22, but that the piece that he submitted at that time was significantly different from the one that he eventually published in the Washington Post on April 3.
http://www.haaretz.com/...
Goldstone told the AP that his change of mind is with regard to "intention" by Israel to cause civilian casualties only. Goldstone further explained that if Israel had carried out transparent, credible internal investigations of its forces and cooperated with the UN Fact Finding Mission during their investigation, the conclusions from the UN report may have been different still.
"As appears from the Washington Post article, information subsequent to publication of the report did meet with the view that one correction should be made with regard to intentionality on the part of Israel," the judge said.
"Further information as a result of domestic investigations could lead to further reconsideration, but as presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time."