As about-faces go, Judge Richard Goldstone’s recantation of the ferociously anti-Israel UN report that bears his name can only compete with fantasy examples, such as the Pope questioning the existence of God or Marx declaring in a tucked-away letter to Engels that capitalism is actually where it’s at.
Writing at the weekend in The Washington Post, the South African jurist announced that he and his “fact-finding mission", appointed with rank bias by the UN Human Rights Council in 2009 to investigate Operation Cast Lead, was wrong to accuse Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The Goldstone Report had found Israel guilty of “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humilia and terrorise a civilian population.”
