(JTA) — Richard Goldstone would have to ask the United Nations on behalf of his committee to rescind its report on Israel’s actions during the 2009 Gaza war to set such an action in motion, a U.N. spokesman said.
The U.N. Human Rights Council, which commissioned the report, has not received such a request, The Associated Press reported Monday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a host of other Israeli officials and organizations have called on the United Nations to cancel the Goldstone Report after the former South African judge wrote in an Op-Ed Saturday in The Washington Post that Israel did not intentionally target civilians as a policy during the Gaza War, withdrawing a critical allegation in the Goldstone Report released in September 2009.
"We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report," Goldstone wrote. "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."
Meanwhile, the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, citing an unnamed source close to Goldstone, reported Sunday that the former South African judge first approached The New York Times to print his Op-Ed, but that the newspaper turned him down.
"We do not comment on our editing and reporting procedures," The New York Times said in response.
But Politico’s Ben Smith reported Monday that a "source familiar with the paper’s dealings" said that Goldstone approached the Times a couple weeks ago with a "very different" Op-Ed that did not repudiate the Goldstone Report’s claim that Israel intentionally targeted civilians.
Later, Smith said he received an e-mail from Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy: "We did in fact receive an Op-Ed submission from Richard Goldstone on March 22, but that piece bears no resemblance to the one that was published in the Washington Post on Sunday."
