Gaza Blogging: Meeting with Justice Richard Goldstone

Chronicles of a delegation of U.S. citizens traveling to Gaza organized by CodePink and supported by U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice, Rome, Italy

3 June 2009

As luck would have it, we just happened to be in Gaza at the same time as Justice Richard Goldstone, the Jewish South African judge who is leading the UN Human Rights Council investigation of the assault on Gaza. He and his team had just arrived in Gaza on Wednesday, the day before we were leaving and our brilliant CodePink organizers managed to arrange a meeting with him.

The international fact finding mission has been given the mandate “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.”

He started off by saying that though they had planned to enter through Israel, they had been forced, like us, to travel through Rafah. “We had hoped Israel would cooperate with our investigation, but unfortunately that have chosen not to.” He also commented on the immense amount of data and the very short time period his mission has been given to complete their report – just three months. They had held their first hearings in Geneva in early May and this was the first trip to the area.

[Read the report]