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Israel Calls on UN to Retract Gaza War Crimes Report

   Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in a 22-day war
   that ended in January, 2009.

   Robert Berger | Jerusalem  April 03, 2011
   Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pictured here at a weekly
   meeting of his cabinet April 3, 2011, has issued a written statement
   calling on the UN to retract its Gaza war crimes report

Photo: Reuters

   Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pictured here at a weekly
   meeting of his cabinet April 3, 2011, has issued a written statement
   calling on the UN to retract its Gaza war crimes report

   Israel is going on the offensive against a scathing United Nations
   report about alleged atrocities against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
   The move follows an about-face by the report's author.
   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding that the United Nations
   retract a report that accused Israel of war crimes during the Gaza
   conflict two years ago.
   Netanyahu told his Cabinet that he is launching an international
   campaign to clear Israel's name.
   He was responding to an article in the Washington Post by the report's
   author, Richard Goldstone, who backtracked on his key accusation that
   Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians. Goldstone said if
   he knew then what he knows now, the report would have looked much
   different. But he said his U.N. team lacked information because Israel
   refused to cooperate with the investigation.
   The Goldstone Report sparked outrage in Israel, which said that its
   three-week assault on Gaza was legitimate self-defense against years of
   Palestinian rocket attacks. Netanyahu described the report as a "smear
   campaign."
   The Israeli prime minister said it is rare for those who disseminate
   libel to retract it, but that is what happened with the Goldstone
   Report. Therefore, he said, a committee of top officials would work to
   repeal the report and minimize "the great damage" it has done to the
   state of Israel.
   The U.N. report also accuses the Palestinian militant group Hamas that
   rules Gaza of war crimes for deliberately targeting Israeli civilians.
   And Goldstone did not retract that charge in his newspaper article.
   Hamas described Goldstone's about-face as reprehensible. Fawzi Barhoum,
   a spokesman for the organization, said Goldstone caved into threats and
   pressure from Israel, the United States and Jewish lobby groups around
   the world. Hamas said the killing of 1,400 Palestinians during the Gaza
   War is proof of Israeli war crimes.
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