Jerusalem – The Goldstone report, which accuses Israel of war crimes in the course of Operation Cast Lead, was raised Thursday for discussion at the UN Human Rights Council, at the request of the Palestinian Authority.

Ahead of the discussion and the subsequent vote that will decide if the report will be adopted by the UN, Israel is getting into high gear.

Despite the low chances of obtaining a majority in Israel’s favor in the vote, politicians and diplomats are trying to influence a few countries in order to recruit them to Israel’s side.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said last week that the Israeli battle against the report is very difficult because of the majority against Israel in the UN and in a number of UN committees.

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He says that this battle will preoccupy Israel in the coming years.

High-ranking government sources said that as of now, the chances of the Goldstone report not being adopted are very low and it appears that the Palestinians will succeed in obtaining a majority.

At the moment, Israel is focusing its public relations activity in the countries belonging to the European Union, the African states, Asia and South America.

As part of the Israeli PR campaign, the work was divided between four people: President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Each of them received a list with a number of heads of state with whom they will talk and ask them not to support the report.

Israel will warn that adopting the Goldstone report means ending the peace process, because Israel will not agree to wage a legal-diplomatic battle along with conducting a peace process.

“The Goldstone report will be part of the international discourse for a long time yet and will be a heavy burden on Israel in the international arena,” said a high-ranking Israeli source.

“We can cope with its ramifications but the problem is that it turns Israel into the defendant and makes the state into a leper. It’s not good for Israel when it is spoken about as if it is a country that commits war crimes.”

What particularly irks Israel is that Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are now aligned. The UN secretary general expressed his support for discussing the report at the U.N. Human Rights Council.

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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