Yet Another Critique Of The Goldstone Report--How The UN And Goldstone Ignored International Law

Daled Amos
09 August '10

True, Goldstone and his friends will continue to ignore the criticisms of the Goldstone Report, just as they have claim that such criticisms do not even exist.

But they do.

In The Goldstone Report and International Law, Peter Berkowitz, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, writes that aside from the bias of the Goldstone Report, the emphasis of the criticisms of the report have focused on the mistakes in both the factual and legal findings of the report--

But another and more far-reaching issue, which should be of great significance to those who take seriously the claims of international law to govern the conduct of war, has scarcely been noticed. And that pertains to the disregarding of fundamental norms and principles of international law by the United Nations Human Rights Council (hrc), which authorized the Goldstone Mission; by the Mission members, who produced the Goldstone Report; and by the hrc and the United Nations General Assembly (of which the hrc is a subsidiary organ), which endorsed the report’s recommendations. Their conduct combines an exaltation of, and disrespect for, international law. It is driven by an ambition to shift authority over critical judgments about the conduct of war from states to international institutions. Among the most serious political consequences of this shift is the impairment of the ability of liberal democracies to deal lawfully and effectively with the complex and multifarious threats presented by transnational terrorists.

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