Political leaders who held top positions in the Olmert administration united
over the weekend in their calls for South African Judge Richard Goldstone to
take steps to correct harm done to Israel by the report published under his
name.
Former ministers, whether currently in the coalition or opposition,
agreed that the article Goldstone published in Friday’s
Washington Post needed
to be followed by further acts on the international stage.
RELATED:Netanyahu: Throw Goldstone Report into dustbin of historyComment: Goldstone the belated penitent“Operation
Cast Lead was an important and justified operation with or without Goldstone. It
is better now than later, but the correction must be more significant than a
newspaper article. The Goldstone Report was not factual, and built on a
significant failure,” complained opposition chairwoman Tzipi Livni, who served
as foreign minister in the Olmert administration.
“I cannot accept all
the comparisons between terrorists, who seek to kill civilians and children, and
IDF soldiers, who act against terror targeting civilians. All of the comparisons
are fundamentally, morally and legally unfounded. If Goldstone wants to correct
it, an article is insufficient. He should correct it in the same forums that
condemned Israel in the spirit of his report.”
Interior Minister Eli
Yishai (Shas), who served as both deputy prime minister and as industry, trade
and labor minister in the Olmert administration, called on Goldstone to write
“the real report that he should have, focusing on how Palestinian terror
paralyzed the life of the children of the south.”
Yishai said he
expressed that same sentiment in a letter he recently sent to the
judge.
“Goldstone should have the same [amount of] courage to publish a
personal apology to all residents of Israel, as he had to publish an untruthful
report,” Yishai said in a statement Saturday night.
Following the Friday
publication of Goldstone’s opinion piece, in which he said that he would have
written the report differently in retrospect, MK Miri Regev (Likud), chairwoman
of the Knesset’s Forum Against the Delegitimization of Israel, said she planned
to send a letter to UN representatives in Israel demanding that they immediately
shelve the report “in order to erase it from the pages of history.”
“The
Goldstone Report is similar in its credibility to The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion and the European blood libels,” continued Regev.
“There should be an
urgent hearing on the negligence of the report’s author, as well as regarding
all of the organizations that flocked to him.”
Jonah Mandel contributed
to this report.