Abraham Rabinovich: Judge's devastating reversal on Gaza

The Goldstone report two years ago was one of the most crushing condemnations of Israel ever made by a supposedly impartial body, exposing the country's political and military leaders to possible prosecution as war criminals and pushing the country to the margins of respectability.

The mea culpa issued by Judge Richard Goldstone last weekend - an act of exceptional courage by an honorable man - is a devastating blow to his own standing as a jurist and to the comforting notion of judges as even-handed arbiters.

In his report, Goldstone went beyond the evidence presented to his commission, ignored common sense and arbitrarily skewed his conclusions against Israel. The fact that the South African jurist is Jewish and has close ties to Israel made his denunciation of it seem all the weightier.

His major error was in fudging context. Only about 5 per cent of the 575-page report dealt with the firing by Hamas of rockets and mortar shells into Israel. This was presented only after a lengthy analysis of Israel's incursion and alleged wrongdoings, sapping the narrative of what should have been its central element - cause and effect.

The report does not make clear that there would not have been an incursion were it not for the firing of some 8000 rockets and shells over the years into Israel. Nor did it make clear that Israel issued repeated warnings to Hamas until the eve of the incursion that it would attack if the rocketing was not halted.

The party that provoked the war was clearly Hamas. The decision to fight in Gaza's built-up areas despite the inevitable casualties to civilians was likewise Hamas'. So was the decision to boobytrap houses, which the Israeli army was obliged to clear with bulldozers, and to employ suicide bombers in civilian dress, making it difficult to distinguish fighters from civilians.

The report called the incursion, in which some 1400 Palestinian militants and civilians were killed, "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population". Far less emphasis is given to the terrorising for years of the tens of thousands of Israelis subject to random rocketing from Gaza.

The report also paid scant notice to the fact that Israel, in an act apparently without precedent in the history of war, telephoned thousands of Gaza residents during the three weeks of fighting to warn them to leave their homes because of an impending air or artillery strike. To persuade residents who were reluctant to leave, helicopters fired small rockets at a corner of the roofs.

Numerous Palestinians testified afterwards that these calls saved their lives. Similar warnings were given to those without phones by leaflets dropped from planes.

When the report cites incidents of civilians being killed in their homes by shellfire, it suggests deliberate targeting with intent to kill. But the report offers no evidence to support such a far-reaching accusation nor has any subsequently emerged.

Accusing Israel of exaggerated use of firepower, the report says that with its precision weaponry and intelligence resources, Israel should have been able to pinpoint military targets without hitting civilians. It is a finding that ignores the chaos that prevails in any battle, let alone one fought in densely built-up areas. Most of Israel's own casualties in Gaza were the victims of friendly fire - Israeli shells and gunfire.

In his Washington Post article, Goldstone said new evidence had emerged since his report that had substantially altered his conclusions.

"If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone document would have been a very different document."

However, the evidence already available at the time told a very different story from the one he chose to offer the world.

* Abraham Rabinovich is a Herald correspondent in Jerusalem