"If I had known then what I know now," begins South African jurist Richard Goldstone in a Washington Post op-ed, then my scathing 2009 U.N. Human Rights Council report on Israel's deadly three-week incursion into Gaza "would have been a different document." Goldstone goes on to distance himself from one of the report's most explosive claims: That Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians, a potential war crime. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now called on the U.N. to retract the Goldstone Report, saying the op-ed vindicates Israel. Does it?
Yes, Israel deserves an apology: Goldstone's op-ed "can be summarized in two words: Never mind," says the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. He doesn't just undermine his "disastrously wrong report" and its most incendiary findings. He also charges that the U.N. Human Rights Council is embarrassingly anti-Israel. The U.N. needs to formally scrap the Goldstone Report, then admit it isn't "an honest broker in the Middle East."
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