Former Ambassador Says Damage Control Needed on Goldstone

Gil Ronen
A7 News

Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., Dore Gold, said Wednesday that Israel can do much to minimize the damage caused by the Goldstone report as it is transferred to the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council.
The name of the game now, said Gold, is the Security Council and the Hague International Court. “These are the determining bodies because if the General Assembly decides to transfer the report to the Hague Court then we could find ourselves in a similar situation to the one we were in several years ago, with regard to the [securit fence.”

Gold, who heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told Arutz Sheva: “This is a very complex strategy, but first of all we need to remember that there are several states that are also dealing with terrorism that we need to bring over to our side. It was very jarring that the French suddenly walked out of the vote.”

“The British who are dealing with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq can understand the situation we are in, when all sorts of Islamic groups operate from within civilian areas. Countries like France and India also deal with this in North Africa and those countries need to be made to realize this and identify with us. We also need to strengthen the United States in which large sections identify with Israel. We need to show them that this report contains many untrue facts – such as, for instance, the claim that terrorists did not operate from within mosques. This is a claim we can easily refute.”

Dr. Gold rejects the contentions that Israel was wrong not to cooperate with the Goldstone Committee's investigators. “There are enough Israeli elements that tried to give the committee materials and were rejected by its representatives. We in the JCPA sent materials to the committee but they ignored them. There were IDF officers and British officers who wanted to testify but they were ignored.”
Comment on this story