Concern over Israel war crimes charges
AUSTRALIAN communal leaders are mulling over the implications of the United Nations report into the Gaza war which alleged that war crimes had been committed by both the Israel Defence Forces and Hamas.
NAOMI LEVIN
LOCAL response to the United Nations report into the Gaza war has been quiet, with Australian community leaders taking time to mull over its implications.
The report, released on Tuesday morning by South African legal expert Justice Richard Goldstone, found evidence of war crimes from both the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Hamas.
Among the findings, were that Israel was engaged in “wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons” during the conflict in December and January.
It also said Hamas’ rocket attacks on southern Israel involved “the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations”.
Philip Chester, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, said on Wednesday morning that it was too soon to have a clear understanding of the implications of the report.
“I’m very cautious about assessing this report until I see an official Israel government response,” he said. “I take this all with a very large grain of salt.”
While Israel’s Ambassador to Australia Yuval Rotem had not yet prepared a public comment on the UN report, the embassy distributed the official Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs response.
“The report effectively ignores Israel’s right to self-defence, makes unsubstantiated claims about its intent, and challenges Israel’s democratic values and the rules of law,” the Foreign Minister’s spokesman’s office said.
But Australian National University international law expert Professor Don Rothwell warned against dismissing the inquiry’s report.
“If an inquiry of this type had been undertaken by someone who might have been seen as a political partisan, or someone of a political nature as opposed to someone of a legal nature, then clearly there would be a capacity to dismiss the report,” Prof Rothwell said.
“I think in this instance, the composition of the inquiry team and the eminence of the people involved make it more difficult to dismiss than might otherwise be the case with this type of inquiry.”
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