Goldstone Report Should Not be Postponed - Newspaper

The official newspaper al-Thawra lambasted the US attitude towards the recent United Nations Goldstone report, which concluded that war crimes were committed by both sides during the Israeli war against Gaza in January.



Washington criticised the report for focusing on crimes committed by Israel and not drawing attention to the actions of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.



In an October 5 editorial, the daily’s editor-in-chief, Asaad Abboud, criticised Arab states and the Palestinian authority for agreeing that the UN human rights committee should postpone looking into the findings of the report until March.



The columnist said that the US “exploited the weakness and the state of confusion of the Palestinian authority” and influenced it to accept the delay.



In another editorial published the following day, Abboud accused Arab states of turning a blind eye to the report.

He said that while the Israeli prime minister launched an attack against the UN report, Arab nations remained mostly silent, which had contributed to “killing the report”. He said discussing it in March would make it “lose all its power and momentum”.

He considered that the decision to postpone looking into the report proved Israel’s international influence.

The writer called on the international community, Arab lobby groups, Islamic countries and non-aligned states to deploy their best efforts to push for the report to be discussed soon.