Israeli condemnation was swift, although it did not cooperate with the inquiry and denied the panel entry to Israel and the West Bank.
According to the AP,
The report provoked a furor in Israel, whose Foreign Ministry said it was "appalled and disappointed." Radio stations devoted heavy chunks of air time to interviews with outraged officials and critical legal experts. "Classic Anti-Semitism," blared the headline of an opinion piece in the Israel Hayom daily.The report "was flawed from A-to-Z", the UN panel was "biased" and some of its findings "ludicrous", said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.
Regev also said, it "was born in sin. Countries with atrocious human rights records sit there and criticize Israel. It's not just Israel that criticized the Human Rights Council. Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon have criticized its obsession with Israel," referring to the former and current U.N. secretaries general.
The Israeli foreign ministry immediately dismissed the report as "one-sided" but added that despite its reservations, they would read the report "carefully" and are committed "to acting fully in accordance with international law and to examining any allegations of wrongdoing by its own forces."
However, the Israeli Government soon after rejected conducting an independent inquiry into the conduct of its military attack on the Gaza Strip last December and January The report recommended Israel do this.
Israel's president, Shimon Peres, issued a statement condemning the report, saying it mocked history and that the authors would not have written it had they lived in Sderot (what would they write if they lived in Gaza? - ed.).
In a further demonstration of rejection of the report from across the Israeli political spectrum, an aide to Labor party figure Ehud Barak said the report encouraged terrorism and is helping mobilize a legal defense:
[It] not only rewards terror it also encourages it... The defense establishment is gearing to give legal counsel to IDF officers and the proper legal and diplomatic steps are already underway in order to render this report invalid.Supporters of Israel declared the report anti-Semitic, despite the fact the primary author, Judge Goldstone, is Jewish. Goldstone's daughter even told Israeli Army radio that her father's participation softened the report.
Despite the orchestrated response, the report will increase pressure on the Israeli government, both within and externally.
Israeli human rights groups issued a statement calling on the government to "conduct an independent and impartial investigation into the suspicions."
The Palestinian Authority welcomed the report. "We hope it will be a beginning for the international community to hold Israel accountable for its continuing crimes," spokesman Ghassan Khatib told a German Press Agency.
"We hope that Israel will implement its recommendations and if it won't, then the security council should go to the International Court of Justice in the Hague to bring to justice the people responsible for these crimes."
Also, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) urged the UN Human Rights Council to seek accountability for human rights violations and international crimes committed by the Israeli Army, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups during the recent war in Gaza.
