One of Goldstone’s conditions for leading the fact finding mission was that the panel have the authority to investigate Hamas’s actions as well. Paragraph 1,950 of the report states that because rockets and mortars launched out of Gaza did not have an intended military target, they were a “deliberate attack against the civilian population. These actions would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.”
That allegation against Hamas, however, was noticeably not retracted Friday in Goldstone’s column. “Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and 'possibly crimes against humanity' by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying – its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets,” he wrote in The Washington Post.
