Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday continued the Israeli full frontal assault against the United Nations report compiled by retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone. The report accused the Jewish State of committing war crimes in its counter-terror operation in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
"The United Nations' conference in Geneva could be a disaster for peace and a disaster for the fight against terror,” Netanyahu said, in a meeting with ambassadors from the Asia-Pacific region. He was referring to the conference of the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, where Goldstone presented his final report on Operation Cast Lead.
"The basic principle of the legitimate right of a democratic country to retaliate against terror is being crushed by a body belonging to the U.N. and this is a terrible blow to the organization,” Netanyahu said.
"There is, once again, a danger that the U.N. will return to the dark days in which it compared Zionism to racism,” the Prime Minister – and former U.N. ambassador – told his guests, adding that “the Goldstone Report will make the U.N. irrelevant.”
Barak Opposes External Inquiry
Also on Wednesday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak denied a report in the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Yediot Acharonot, which claimed he had suggested that Israel establish a committee of inquiry to probe the allegations of the Goldstone Report.
The Defense Minister's bureau stated that the minister trusts the IDF's investigations into the operation and is opposed to any external inquiry.
Barak's bureau added that the Goldstone Report “is false, tendentious and manipulative” and that it creates a false equivalence between bloodthirsty terrorists and their victims, who utilize the right to self-defense.