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Stands Up For Israel’s Right to Defend Itself and Combats Bias Against Israel at the United Nations
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 9, 2009
CONTACT: Bob Decheine, 202-225-5061; 202-550-7869 (cell)
(Washington, DC) - On Tuesday, November 3, 2009, Congressman Rothman (D – NJ) was interviewed on Al Jazeera English about his views on the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ (the Goldstone Report). Standing in the Cannon Rotunda, Congressman Rothman said, “The report was written not to talk about 12,000 rockets intentionally sent by Hamas to slaughter Israeli men, women and children versus the Israelis trying in many respects to minimize the damage to innocent Palestinian civilians.”
Rothman also stated that, “the Goldstone Report was biased from the very beginning. The instructions to the Goldstone Commission were biased, so the results were biased. The bottom line is that we want peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the greater Arab world. We want a better life for the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. To continue to talk about a report, which is biased and one-sided does not help. Let’s get the parties to the negotiating table to create two states: the Jewish state of Israel and a contiguous strong state of Palestine and get these people a better life.”
Rothman has been closely following the progression of the Goldstone Report in the United Nations (UN) and has shared his views face to face with President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton. Continuing his strong advocacy against the report, on November 3, Congressman Rothman voted in favor of H. Res. 867, a resolution calling on the President and the Secretary of State to strongly and unequivocally oppose any further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ and any other measures stemming from this report in multilateral fora. The resolution passed the U.S. House of Representatives 344 - 36, with 22 voting Present.
On January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed Resolution A/HRC/S-9/L.1, which authorized a fact-finding mission regarding Israel’s conduct during Operation Cast Lead against violent militants in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009. Operation Cast Lead was conducted with the goal of ending the barrage of rocket fire from Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza that have plagued Israeli citizens since 2001. The fact-finding mission was established on April 3, 2009 by the President of the UNHRC naming Richard Goldstone of South Africa to head the mission. The Goldstone Commission released its final report on September 25, 2009.
H. Res. 867 stated that “the [UNHCR] resolution pre-judged the outcome of its investigation, by one-sidedly mandating the ‘fact-finding mission’ to ‘investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by … Israel, against the Palestinian people … particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression’; and “the mandate of the `fact-finding mission’ makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel’s defensive measures.”
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