Goldstone’s criticism of one-sided UN resolution ignored

Goldstone’s criticism of one-sided UN resolution ignored

On 16 October, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed Resolution S-12/1, endorsing the Goldstone Report and pointedly condemning Israel. It made no mention of Hamas’ aggression against communities in southern Israel despite the fact that this is mentioned in the report. The resolution further criticised Israel’s policies in East Jerusalem and the holy sites. The report’s author, Richard Goldstone criticised the resolution for its one-sidedness; however, this aspect of the story was inadequately addressed in subsequent reporting. Conversely, all of the publications emphasised Israel’s hostility towards the resolution. Only The Times offered a full account, including a key quote from Goldstone. The remaining broadsheets and the BBC either totally omitted the fact that Hamas was not criticised in the resolution or played down the fact.

The clearest example of the decontextualisation of Israel’s opposition to resolution S–12/1 was in Rory McCarthy’s piece in The Guardian, ‘Israel angrily rejects UN resolution that could open the way for Gaza war crimes investigations’. It opened: ‘Israel has angrily rejected what it called a "one-sided" resolution by the UN human rights council yesterday that backed a highly critical report on the Gaza war’. However, it failed to mention anywhere in the page spread the reason for Israel’s rejection. Israel’s rejection was reiterated later in the article, following McCarthy’s speculation that the vote ‘may result in a US veto at the UN security council to protect Israel from scrutiny.’  

Quoting an Israeli official stating that, ‘Israel rejects the one-sided resolution’ and noting that ‘Israel has criticised the council in the past for an anti-Israel bias’ the piece simply excluded the fact that the UNHRC resolution in question solely criticised Israel.

The Independent and the Financial Times took the approach of mentioning only in the second half of their respective articles that according to Israel, the resolution, ‘ignored Hamas abuses’ and ‘ignored Israeli attacks on Israeli civilians’. BBC Online also gave the impression that the exclusion from the resolution of any criticism of Hamas was an Israeli allegation rather than an objective fact: ‘The Israeli foreign ministry rejected the "one-sided resolution", which it said ignored "the murderous attacks perpetrated by Hamas and other terrorist organisations against Israeli civilians"’

Only The Times gave a clear picture of the nature of Israel’s opposition to the UNHRC resolution. Catherine Philp and James Hider’s article stated: ‘Richard Goldstone, the author of the report, said the draft resolution saddened him, “as as (sic) it includes only allegations against Israel. There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas, as we have done in the report”.’