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[Excerpt:]

"On a factual level, the Goldstone report is notoriously flawed and one-sided. Much of the 575-page document was cut and pasted from unsubstantiated and suspect reports from nongovernmental organizations with openly anti-Israel sentiments. Some of the "witnesses" interviewed by the mission were disguised Hamas officials. The fact that Hamas loves the report should raise eyebrows about its contents. Even more troublingly is the report’s fatal moral blind spot, which is ignoring the differences between Israel, a sovereign state, and Hamas, a terrorist organization. The Israeli armed forces are professional organizations governed by strict policies to limit civilian deaths during the conduct of war. Israel is a signatory to the Geneva conventions and respects the rights of noncombatants. After the conflict, Israel conducted some 100 investigations into reports of misconduct by its troops. Killing civilians is central to Hamas’ military doctrine. Hamas launched 7,000 rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli cities between the pullout from Gaza in 2005 and 2009. During the ground fighting in Gaza, Hamas routinely used mosques, schools and hospitals as military sites and employed civilians as human shields. Hamas exploited the chaos of the conflict to round up Palestinian political opponents, some of whom were crippled with shots to the legs, while others were reportedly executed. There is no moral equality between Hamas and Israel any more than there is between al Qaeda and the United States. Yet under the Goldstone logic, terrorists and sovereign states are identical. The incidental, unintentional civilian deaths Israel caused during the Gaza conflict are condemned as war crimes; the widespread and intentional Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are basically ignored. The Goldstone model makes it impossible for civilized states to strike effectively against the world’s barbarians who are fighting a shadow war against decency that views innocent noncombatants as both legitimate targets and useful shields."