The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday endorsed a report calling on Israel and Hamas to conduct credible investigations into alleged war crimes by their combatants or face possible prosecution by the International Criminal Court in the Hague.  That would envisage, among others, both Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, the then Israeli prime minister and defense minster, respectively, appearing before the Court on charges of commissioning war crimes.

With only the United States and five European allies objecting, the council fully endorsed the findings and recommendations of an expert panel led by South African jurist, Judge Richard Goldstone, that investigated the Gaza conflict.

Twenty-five nations, including Russia and China, voted for the resolution and 16 nations abstained or did not vote. The Goldstone panel said Israel used disproportionate force, deliberately targeted civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure.

Israeli officials worry that investigations will further isolate the Jewish state and encourage private lawsuits against Israeli officials and soldiers in countries that accept jurisdiction for war crimes beyond their borders. Last month, British activists tried, but failed on account of claimed diplomatic immunity, to get a British court to order Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak's arrest during his visit to London.

The Israelis have rejected the U.N. report's recommendation for a special inquiry on their conduct in Gaza.  While welcoming Friday's vote and calling for trials of Israelis, Hamas said it would investigate the U.N. allegations against it.

The US, however, has promised to use its veto in the Security Council to block any Resolution against Israel, notwithstanding that a clear majority of the world's population of 6.5 billion people, have endorsed the Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza. 

Such an action by the United States goes contrary to all democratic process and opposes the Geneva Conventions to which she is a signatory.

It dramatically highlights the urgent necessity for change in the UNSC procedures that allow one nation to impose its decision upon the world.  It should be possible to pass any resolution by a simple majority of the council, in accordance with established and accepted democratic principles.  The present system is anachronistic, undemocratic, encouraging to dissent and detrimental to co-existence between nations and to world peace.

It must have been an unenviable challenge for the Israel Foreign Ministry to endeavor to try to discredit the report of the eminent South African Jurist, Judge Goldstone, who has an impeccable record in the field of human and civil rights, both at home and abroad.  

The first insuperable problem was that he is not only a recognized authority on international human rights legislation and convention, but he is Jewish!   So the standard allegation of anti-Semitism, was impossible.  Furthermore, it is recorded that he is also a Zionist!  So a charge of anti-Zionism was also out of the question.

They could not attack his professional record, which was impeccable.  So what action could be taken in damage limitation?

The matter had, and has, suddenly become urgent.  If the world fully accepts the report, then Israel is branded a human rights violator and a perpetrator of war crime.

The Israeli government and its Foreign Ministry went into overdrive.  'Goldstone's opinion was already made up before the investigation began and that is why we refused to co-operate in establishing the facts', they said.

Contemporaneously, they issued urgent instructions to thousands of (usually paid) pro-Israel, Hasbara correspondents to refute, deny, rebut, disprove, counter, contest, contradict, reject, invalidate or otherwise attempt to obscure the evidence reported by Goldstone to the UN, on comment on internet sites, worldwide.

Unfortunately for the Foreign Ministry, but fortunately for the truth, the international community has been shocked at the allegations of gratuitous killing of hundreds of innocent children and over a hundred women in three weeks of unchecked violence, together with the wholesale destruction of Gaza's infrastructure including 'houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings'.

The Report alleges 'an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population.'   That, the Report states, 'could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed.'

The Israeli Government is in deep trouble as the allegations become more widely known, because there are few who now believe its denials and fewer still, its continuing propaganda. And there is a palpable sense of shock as the evidence unfolds as to what transpired in those three weeks of state-sponsored killing and destruction, under the pretext of self-defense.