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KOSHER DELIGHT - YOUR JEWISH ONLINE MAGAZINE!
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KD MAGAZINE!
ב"ה
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 Countering Bias and Misinformation mainly about the Arab-Israel conflict
An open letter to Judge Goldstone re Cast Lead statistics
From
Maurice Ostroff
January 16, 2011
Dear Judge Goldstone,
It has been a considerable time since I last wrote an open
letter to you, but I believe that you will not only be willing
but anxious to clarify questions that have arisen as a result of
the widely publicized statement by Hamas interior minister Fathi
Hammad in his interview with Al-Hayat last November 1. The
Minister quoted figures of combatant casualties in the Cast Lead
Operation that according to Islamic News 'roughly match the
709 "terror operatives" that the military of Israel said it had
killed during the fighting which included members of the Hamas-run
police force'
Fathi Hammad's figures contradict the ratio of one in five of
the persons killed being a combatant as reported by PCHR and Al
Mezan that was accepted seriously by your Mission as stated in
clause 361 of the Report. It is now obvious that your Mission
was mistaken in accepting the reports of various NGO's while
summarily rejecting the detailed counterclaims by the Government
of Israel that has now been vindicated, namely, that at that
stage Israel had recorded the names of 1,166 Palestinians
killed, 709 of them identified as operatives of Hamas and
various other terror organizations and that 295 uninvolved
Palestinians were killed during the operation, 89 of them under
the age of 16, 49 of them women and that in addition, there were
162 names of men that had not yet been attributed to any
organization.
You have said in the past that the information the Mission
received would not be admissible as evidence in a criminal court
and I have difficulty in reconciling this with the statement in
clause 361 of your report which states "The counterclaims
published by the Government of Israel fall far short of
international law standards". In the circumstances it is
fair to ask whether the claims by the NGO's which the Mission
accepted and which have since proved to be unreliable, met these
law standards.
The realization that the mission was very mistaken in its belief
that statistics from non-governmental sources are generally
consistent, as stated in clause 361, should raise a red flag in
evaluating other claims made by them, which should now be
re-examined.
The analysis of the role of the Gaza police force in Chapter 7
of your report is commendably realistic and it is difficult to
understand why the police casualties are regarded by some as
civilians. There is no doubt that the Gaza police incorporates
the Executive Force (al-Quwwa al-Tanfiziyya) which,
according to a Reuters report of June 20, 2007 numbered 6,000
men and was outlawed by Mahmoud Abbas. It has been described by
The Telegraph and others as a paramilitary police force and even
the Hamas interior minister acknowledged that when Israel
targeted the police stations, "250 martyrs were killed, from
Hamas and other factions".
An ICRC document "Interpretive Guidance on the notion of
direct participation in hostilities under international
humanitarian law" published in May 2009 concludes that "..even
under the terms of the Hague Regulations and the Geneva
Conventions, all armed actors showing a sufficient degree of
military organization and belonging to a party to the conflict
must be regarded as part of the armed forces of that party".
This certainly includes the Gaza police force and justifies the
attacks on the police stations.
While writing, I must mention that I am bothered by an aspect of
the methodology used by B'Tselem whose reports greatly
influenced your final report. In an explanatory note on
its web site B'tselem states "Persons
who do not fulfill a 'continuous combat function' are a
legitimate object of attack only when taking a direct part in
hostilities (for example, on their way to fire a rocket, during
the firing of the rocket, and on the way back)" and B'Tselem
adds that wherever there is a doubt regarding the actions of a
person, the doubt works in the individual's favor, and it is
forbidden to target the person for attack.
Does this imply that for example, a combatant who
has fired fifty rockets into civilian areas of Israel, and who
does so on a regular basis but is killed during a lull while
enjoying a cup of coffee in a restaurant, is treated in
B'Tselem's records and in your report as a civilian casualty?
During the Ta'anit Tzedek's rabbical conference call with you in
October 2009 you said that if some of the allegations that the
Mission found to be true were not proven beyond a reasonable
doubt, you would absolutely accept that and it wouldn't be
surprising. Well the aforementioned public statement by Hamas
interior minister convincingly shows that the "disproportionate"
civilian casualties cited in the Report and which form a
significant portion of the grounds on which Israel has been
subjected to international vilification, have been proven beyond
doubt to be inaccurate. In the circumstances I and my readers
look forward to your acknowledgment of this error.
Sincerely
Maurice Ostroff
Click here for
more on the Goldstone Report
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