JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Goldstone face-off in Geneva

By Uriel Heilman · October 1, 2009

At this week's debate in the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on the Goldstone commission report , a disfigured Israeli victim of a rocket attack on Sderot unnerves the report's author, Richard Goldstone, UN Watch reports:

In a surprise appearance arranged by the Geneva human rights organization UN Watch, Dr. Mirela Siderer --an Israeli doctor who was brutally disfigured in 2008 by a rocket attack fired from Gaza into her Ashkelon medical clinic -- pointedly accused Goldstone of ignoring her July oral testimony in his report, and of failing to disclose material information concerning the prior statements of the Human Rights Council and panel members declaring Israel guilty in advance. Click for video. The speech was published in full today by Canada's National Post, and covered widely in Switzerland, Israel and worldwide.

 

Sitting on the dais, Goldstone was visibly shaken by Dr. Siderer's challenge and scrambled for a copy of her speech. His response to the plenary ignored 7 of her questions, and inadequately responded to the 8th. See full text and video below. For UN Watch's play-by-play Twitter of today's heated debate, click here.

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