Click refresh to see new updates during the day
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice responded to the Goldstone report.
“We have very serious concerns about many of the recommendations in the report,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said Thursday in response to the findings of a UN team that investigated the recent war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
—-
Rice told reporters following a Security Council session that the US “is reviewing very carefully what is a very lengthy document. We have long expressed our very serious concern with the mandate that was given (to Goldstone’s team) by the Human Rights Council prior to our joining the Council, which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.
“We will expect and believe that the appropriate venue for this report to be considered is the Human Rights Council (in Geneva) and that’s our strong view. And most importantly, our view is that we need to be focused on the future,” she said.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
5:30PM: Here is a nice rebuttal of some Goldstone report findings by a non-Jewish, Aussie blogger.
1:52PM: Yet another example of what miserable failures we are at ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Four Magen David Adom teams evacuated six Palestinians to the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv and the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Zerifin after suffering serious burn wounds from a gas pipe explosion in a restaurant in Gaza on Thursday.
All six are members of the same family and four of them are children. They were transferred to Israel through Erez crossing.
1:35PM: Gorilla boy aka the poisonous midget has delivered his Rosh Hashanah message:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday the Holocaust was a “lie” and a pretext to create a Jewish state that Iranians had a religious duty to confront.
“The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false … It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim,” he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of annual anti-Israel Quds Day rally.
“Confronting the Zionist regime is a national and religious duty,” the Iranian president said.
—-
“This regime [Israel] will not last long. Do not tie your fate to it?. This regime has no future. Its life has come to an end,” he said in the speech broadcasted live on state radio.
And..
“If the Holocaust was planned by the West, why won’t you allow any research on the Holocaust? The Holocaust has turned into a black box and they won’t let anyone open it and examine it… If this is such an important event, why won’t you let us reveal the reality to the entire world?”
Ahmadinejad reiterated his past “proposal”, to have the Jews immigrate to other country. “Why don’t they immigrate to Canada or the United States? They can go live in other countries. The Palestinian people don’t have to pay for your crime. What is the Palestinians’ sin?
“The Zionists are the greatest criminals in history. Resisting the Zionists is a national duty and a religious commandment and a human duty. The Zionist regime is a tree with rotten roots,” Ahmadinejad said.
He added, “It’s clear that this fake regime was established for colonialist goals, and there is no logic behind its establishment.” The crowd responded by chanting, “Death to Israel.”
And a happy new year to you too, big little guy.
1:25PM: Amir Mizroch of the Jerusalem Post:
During his investigations into possible war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during Operation Cast Lead, Judge Richard Goldstone asked a group of prominent South African expatriates living in Israel to persuade government officials here to cooperate with his commission.
Goldstone told them the commission’s findings and recommendations would be more balanced if Israel made its case.
The expats traveled to Jerusalem with the message, but after a relatively short briefing with Israeli experts, the delegation did a complete about-face and supported Israel’s position of having nothing to do with the UN fact-finding mission.
The trick: Israeli officials briefed the visitors on what Goldstone’s commission was already doing in Gaza, on the makeup of the UN Human Rights Council and on the rancid history of the HRC’s deliberate targeting of Israel.
Officials in Jerusalem say the decision not to cooperate with Goldstone has been vindicated, because the commission largely ignored, or twisted, the information already made available to it to suit its needs.
12:28PM: Here’s some women you don’t want to mess with.
10:30AM: The latest Jerusalem Post caption blooper could actually work well as a slip of the Freudian kind.
I mean, they both don’t seem to be taking the Iranian threat seriously.
10:05AM: One of the ploys used by opponents of Israel is to point to the relatively low number of Israeli casualty figures. For example, we just saw Richard Goldstone mentioning the number of Israelis killed by rockets compared to the number of palestinians killed.
But what about those who were lucky enough to survive terror attacks, yet were still injured? This next heartbreaking video should give you an idea as to the devastating impact of palestinian terror attacks, which reaches far beyond the official casualty figures.
