Goldstone Retracts War Crimes Claim against Israel

The Israelis welcomed Goldstone’s comments. Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Mark Regev, in an interview with Bridges for Peace, said, “We think that this is a very significant admission. Ultimately, if the author of the report says the report is not accurate, there’s no reason for the United Nations to lend any credence to this report.”

Regev noted that Israel was acting in “justified self-defense” in Gaza against terrorists who had fired thousands of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians. He said the Gaza terrorists “had no qualms whatsoever about targeting civilians and about using Gaza’s civilian population as a human shield.”

Regev said that outside of Israel, the nation’s approach has not only been defended as having acted appropriately with regard to civilians, it has even been praised. “We were trying to be as surgical as is possible, to seek out Hamas, to neutralize their ability to hurt us, to shoot rockets at the Israeli public…We didn’t seek to hurt Gaza’s civilian population.”