The
United Nations General Assembly has voted in favour of resolution
endorsing a UN-sponsored report into war crimes committed during
Israel's war on Gaza.
The Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war
crimes, was endorsed by the assembly on Thursday by a margin of 114 to
18, after two days of debate.
Forty-four member-nations abstained from voting.
I have been to the Gaza Strip twice
and southern Israel once since the 2008-09 war, where I had the opportunity
to listen to accounts from both people about what had happened to them
during that time. Israelis showed me thickly walled rooms that act as
bomb shelters and explained air raid siren systems in Sderot and Ashqelon.
As difficult as their situation was, nothing could have prepared me
for the level of destruction I found in Gaza.
In a stunning
blow against international law and human rights, the U.S. House of
Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Tuesday
attacking the report
of the United Nations Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission on
the Gaza conflict.
Shame on the House of Representatives, and on the Democratic
leadership of the House, for pushing through a resolution once again
blindly taking the side of Israeli aggression.
I’m referring to the vote on Tuesday, by a lopsided 344-to-36 margin, to condemn the Goldstone report on Gaza.
The
US House of Representatives has rejected as "irredeemably biased" the
findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war
crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.
The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding
resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his
opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard
Goldstone, a South African judge.
UNITED NATIONS - Arab U.N. delegates circulated a draft resolution on Monday that would require Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to bring a U.N. report alleging war crimes in the Gaza Strip before the Security Council.
A special meeting of the 192-nation assembly on Wednesday will debate the U.N. report on the December-January war in the Gaza Strip and vote on the draft resolution.
That report accused Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants of war crimes and was prepared by a U.N. fact-finding commission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone.
Before
House Members vote on H.Res. 867, regarding the U.N. Goldstone report
on the Gaza conflict, there are a few questions worth asking.
Two loud wake-up calls came in from the Middle East over the weekend. The next voice you hear will
be from the U.S. House of Representatives, which
will vote this week (perhaps as soon as Tuesday) on H.R. 867, an AIPAC-sponsored
resolution denouncing the Goldstone Report. That's the UN fact-finding mission
accusing Israel as well as
Hamas of war crimes in Israel's attack on Gaza last December.
On Tuesday,
November 3, Congress is poised to vote on H.Res.867, which calls on the
“President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any
endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United
Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral
fora.’ ”
