12 April 2011
Legislation calling on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone Report is circulating in both houses of Congress. A resolution, introduced at the Senate last week by the Democrat senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, and her republican colleague James Risch from Idaho, calls on the UN Human Rights Council to "reflect the author’s repudiation of the Goldstone report’s central findings, rescind the report, and reconsider further Council actions with respect to the report’s findings."

Richard Goldstone, in an ‘Washington Post’ op-ed ten days ago, said the 2009 report on the Gaza war which he co-authored had been wrong in concluding that Israel had as a policy intentionally targeted civilians. The former South African judge, who is Jewish, did not withdraw demands for investigations into the report's findings that individual soldiers may have committed war crimes, and since publishing his article he repeatedly said he would not work to retract the report.

In the US House of Representatives, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (pictured), the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has been circulating a letter asking colleagues to join her in sponsoring a UN Accountability Act to include language demanding the revocation of the Goldstone report and withhold the US portion of funds spent on Goldstone's investigation and its follow-on consequences. "This legislation will also condition funding to the UN on a number of other reforms that are vital to make the UN more transparent, accountable, effective, and objective," the letter says.

It also acknowledges that Goldstone's "retraction" was not far reaching. "Even while partially retracting his own unsubstantiated accusations, he still defends the report in many respects and puts the blame on Israel for not cooperating with his mission and providing it with exculpatory evidence. Given the mission's biased origin and mandate, Israel was clearly justified in not wishing to legitimize those who would inevitably seek to falsely condemn her," Ros-Lehtinen wrote.

Separately, the Republican Congressman Joe Walsh is seeking sponsors for legislation that would withhold US funding for the United Nations until the Goldstone Report is retracted. Several House members, in statements and floor speeches, already have called on the Obama administration to press for the report's rescission.

"The Goldstone Report is a lie," New York Representative Eliot Engel (Democract) said on the floor of the House of Representatives last week. "The United Nations should kill it once and for all, and we should be leading the way."