Yesterday the Obama administration held a conference call in which a "senior administration official" assured the participants that the Obama administration would not allow the Goldstone Report, a work product of the UN's Human Rights Council that indicts Israel for war crimes in Operation Cast Lead, to reach the UN Security Council or the International Criminal Court. The Goldstone Report has been almost unanimously condemned as biased against Israel (the only group that didn't condemn the report was, of course, J Street). And this rare moment of support for Israel from the Obama administration drew praise from unlikely quarters. The Wall Street Journal editorialized that "it has rightly made it clear that it will not allow the report to reach the level of the Security Council, much less the International Criminal Court."
But apparently this support for Israel was not intentional but a result of some...miscommunication. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, a true friend to the Jewish people (a righteous gentile, if you will), was asked to deliver the bad news:
The White House says an official "misspoke" when he said the Obama administration would not allow the Goldstone report recommendations on Israel's conduct in the Gaza war to reach the International Criminal Court.
A top White House official told Jewish organizational leaders in an off-the-record phone call Wednesday that the U.S. strategy was to "quickly" bring the report -- commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council and carried out by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone -- to its "natural conclusion" within the Human Rights Council and not to allow it to go further, Jewish participants in the call told JTA.
Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, called JTA later to say the official "misspoke" and that administration policy on the Goldstone report remains as articulated last week by Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador.
Perhaps the administration views the prospect of international war crimes charges against Israeli troops and commanders as convenient leverage in negotiations with Netanyahu, or perhaps this administration simply wants to see Israelis charged with war crimes for exercising their inalienable right to self-defense.
