US 'concerned' with Goldstone report

"We have long expressed our very serious concern with the mandate that was given by the Human Rights Council prior to our joining the council, which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable." (Susan Rice)

Unfortunately (predictably), no such reservations and concerns about the Goldstone Report were voiced either by the European Union or by European governments.

Source: article by E.B. Solomont, TJP

The United States expressed grave reservations Thursday with the findings and recommendations of a UN report that accused Israel of war crimes during the Gaza conflict and left open the possibility of prosecution at The Hague.
"We have very serious concerns about many recommendations in the report," Ambassador Susan Rice, the permanent US representative to the UN, told reporters following a closed Security Council meeting.

The nearly 600-page report, presented on Tuesday by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, and recommended that if no appropriate independent inquiry takes place in Israel within six months, the Security Council should refer the matter to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

"We will expect and believe that the appropriate venue for this report to be considered is the Human Rights Council," Rice said on Thursday, in the first official American response to Goldstone's report. "We have long expressed our very serious concern with the mandate that was given by the Human Rights Council prior to our joining the council, which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable." [...]

Several members of Congress issued sharp condemnations of the Goldstone Report, which they said ignored Israel's need to defend itself against terrorism.

"In the self-righteous fantasyland inhabited by the authors, there's no such thing as terrorism, there's no such thing as Hamas, there's no such thing as legitimate self-defense," Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, said in a statement. "Certainly, the United States should do all that it can to ensure as little time as possible is wasted on this distraction from the real work of making peace," he said.

In a similar vein, a joint statement by Reps. Shelley Berkley of Nevada and Eliot Engel of New York staunchly defended Israel's right to defend itself against rocket and mortar attacks from the north and the south.

"Israel took every reasonable step to avoid civilian casualties," they wrote. "It is ridiculous to claim that Israel did not take appropriate actions to protect civilian populations."

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