Did Israel commit war crimes? The world may never know.

The US House today passed a resolution (seen here) condemning a UNHRC report (Goldstone Report) on Israeli and Hamas actions during its war on Gaza (Cast Lead). You can see the report here(pdf). The mandate for the report was to look into war crimes allegations by Israel and Hamas during the conflict. The reason it was determined by congress to be biased was that it did not investigate Hamas rocket attacks during the years preceding this conflict. Unfortunately for the US House and Rep Steven Rothman (D-NY), who said:

"The report was not written to talk about 12,000 rockets intentionally sent by Hamas to slaughter Israeli men, women and children, versus the Israelis trying in many respects to minimise the damage to Palestinian civilians. So there have been completely different standards applied,"

the report did actually cover this topic, as well as many other misdeeds by Hamas and the Palestinians.

The other main complaint, via Steny Hoyer, was that the report singles out Israel among all other nations. Apparently the US House believes that if there are some nations that have faced no repercussions for committing war crimes, it is then unfair to hold any nation at all accountable for war crimes because it would be singling them out. This, even though the report is critical of both sides in the conflict.

Richard Goldstone, the principal author of the report, sent a letter to Congress detailing the factual inaccuracies in their resolution, which ironically was meant to show factual inaccuracies in his report. He did an interview with Bill Moyers that i would highly recommend watching. It is slightly longish but worth a view.

The question and investigation of war crimes is not, as many would claim (including the House resolution), a denial of Israel or any other group their right to self defense. Attempting to ensure international law is adhered to during armed conflict can be construed as a denial of self defense only by an extreme stretch of logic. As Goldstone said in his letter:

It is again factually incorrect to state that the Report denied Israel the right of self-defense. The report examined how that right was implemented by the standards of international law. What is commonly called ius ad bellum, the right to use military force was not considered to fall within our mandate. Israel’s right to use military force was not questioned.