WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. Senate unanimously approved a resolution calling on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone report.
Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) initiated the resolution last week after Richard Goldstone, a former South African judge, retracted a key conclusion of the U.N. report he helped author on the 2009 Gaza war — that Israel had targeted civilians as a policy.
The resolution, passed April 14, "calls on the United Nations Human Rights Council members to reflect the author’s repudiation of the Goldstone report’s central findings, rescind the report, and reconsider further Council actions with respect to the report’s findings."
Similar legislation is now circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives. Unlike the non-binding Senate resolution, the House bills would tie U.N. funding to the rescinsion of the Goldstone report.
Goldstone has also said that much of the remainder of the report still stands, such as Israel’s alleged slowness in prosecuting individuals accused of war crimes. His three fellow committee members said they stand by the report in its entirety.
