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Goldstone Reconsidered, Richard D. Rosen

Richard D. Rosen

Following the 2008-2009 Israeli-Hamas war, the Human Rights Council dispatched a fact-finding mission headed by South African Jurist Richard Goldstone to investigate the hostilities. In September 2009, the mission issued its findings in a nearly 500-page report containing a variety of complaints against Israel, the most explosive of which was that Israel, as a matter of state policy, intended to kill Palestinian civilians and destroy their property. A year and a half later, Justice Goldstone reconsidered the mission’s conclusion, acknowledging that Israel may not have deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians during the conflict. This paper argues that Justice Goldstone’s reconsideration of …